A new study by an international team of over 130 scientists has shed light on the climate, and ice, of the prehistoric past. Utilizing new techniques for ice dating, the team–including ESS‘ Edwin Waddington and Michelle Koutnik–found that temperatures during the peak interglacial period about 125,000 years ago were quite warm, yet the Greenland ice sheet melted less than previously thought. 

Last week the Pacific Northwest National Lab announced a new initiative with University of Washington. The Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing has the aim of mining’ big data’ and  addressing challenges ranging from climate change to energy management. Read more here! 

There is a strong trend toward publishing scientific findings in open access journals, where the results are then freely available for other scientists or decision-makers rather than locked behind paywalls. Yet, there is no oversight of these journals, so “predatory publishing” has become a problem. A newly launched tool developed in part by UW researchers shows that open-access journals’ fees do not correlate particularly strongly with their influence, as measured by a citation-based index. 

Another high-level Hanford official has quit, after the Department of Energy ignored a memo he sent warning about potential meltdowns at the nuclear ranch’s waste treatment facility, currently under construction. Read more here.