TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida State University chemist's work could lead to big improvements in our ability to detect and eliminate specific toxins in our environment.
Featured on the cover of the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), Sourav Saha's specialized work to strip electrons from the toxic chemical known as fluoride is producing a variety of unique results.
Glass is strong enough for so much: windshields, buildings and many other things that need to handle high stress without breaking. But scientists wholook at the structure of glass strictly by the numbers believe some of the latest methods from the microelectronics and nanotechnology industry could produceglass that's about twice as strong as the best available today.
The high elevation flat surfaces characteristic of the Norwegian landscape are in geologically terms young, according to a paper in Nature Geoscience.
In a paper recently published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the University of Bergen (UiB) and ETH Zurich have demonstrated that ice sheets have extensively shaped the fjords of Norway for the last 2.8 million years.
There is evidence that some microbial life had migrated from the Earth's oceans to land by 2.75 billion years ago, though many scientists believe such land-based life was limited because the ozone layer that shields against ultraviolet radiation did not form until hundreds of millions years later.
But new research from the University of Washington suggests that early microbes might have been widespread on land, producing oxygen and weathering pyrite, an iron sulfide mineral, which released sulfur and molybdenum into the oceans.
The tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea during the pre-monsoon season (May – June) have intensified since 1997 compared to 1979 - 1997. This has been attributed to decreased vertical wind shear due to the dimming effects of increased anthropogenic black carbon and sulfate emissions in the region.
LOS ANGELES – Research conducted at the University of Southern California (USC) indicates that at least 8 percent of the more than 300,000 cases of childhood asthma in Los Angeles County can be attributed to traffic-related pollution at homes within 75 meters (a little less than 250 feet) of a busy roadway.
SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 23, 2012 – A University of Utah study suggests something amazing: Periodic changes in winds 15 to 30 miles high in the stratosphere influence the seas by striking a vulnerable "Achilles heel" in the North Atlantic and changing mile-deep ocean circulation patterns, which in turn affect Earth's climate.
"We found evidence that what happens in the stratosphere matters for the ocean circulation and therefore for climate," says Thomas Reichler, senior author of the study published online Sunday, Sept. 23 in the journal Nature Geoscience.
CO2 tariffs would probably have only a small impact on global emissions. Why? There are a lot of knobs that explain the pronounced imbalances between emission importers and exporters and the US trade deficit is one of them. So interventions in world trade, like CO2 tariffs, would only have a small impact on global emissions.
Naked mole-rats evolved to thrive in an acidic environment that other mammals, including humans, would find intolerable. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago report new findings as to how these rodents have adapted to this environment.
The study was published online this week on PLOS ONE.
The tsunami in Japan in March 2011 unleashed a series of negligence related with the resulting nuclear disaster. A scientific study headed by Spanish researchers has for the first time identified those atomic power plants that are more prone to suffering the effects of a tsunami. In total, 23 plants are in dangerous areas, including Fukushima I, with 74 reactors located in the east and southeast of Asia.
Finding the similarities between volleyball and snooker may seem quite tricky. However, a group of physicists have found that the spread of scores, otherwise known as distribution, across their ranking systems are almost identical.
They've also shown that this is the same for almost all sports, whether their ranking systems are based on points or the earnings of each individual or team.
Findings from the Research and Development Data Link Project showed that both parent companies of U.S. multinational companies and U.S. affiliates of foreign multinational companies devoted about three-fourths of their R&D expenditures to development activities in 2007.
This newly developed information is from the Research and Development Data Link Project--a joint project of the National Science Foundation, U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis.
HOUSTON -- (Sept. 21, 2012) – The androgen receptor in human cells inhibits fat accumulation, but its activity can be sabotaged by glucocorticoids, steroids that regulate fat deposition and are known drivers of obesity and insulin resistance, said researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) in a report in the journal Chemistry & Biology (https://www.cell.com/chemistry-biology/home).
Plans are being implemented to create plastic floating islands containing papyrus plants to help protect the ecosystems of a renowned lake in the Rift Valley, Kenya.
The German REWE Group is funding a papyrus restoration partnership between UK-owned tea producer and flower grower Finlays and Dr David Harper, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Leicester, which aims to recreate the water-cleansing services of papyrus as artificial floating islands.