Earth

Northwestern University scientists have connected 250 years of organic chemical knowledge into one giant computer network -- a chemical Google on steroids. This "immortal chemist" will never retire and take away its knowledge but instead will continue to learn, grow and share.

A decade in the making, the software optimizes syntheses of drug molecules and other important compounds, combines long (and expensive) syntheses of compounds into shorter and more economical routes and identifies suspicious chemical recipes that could lead to chemical weapons.

Washington, D.C.—Carnegie scientists are the first to discover the conditions under which nickel oxide can turn into an electricity-conducting metal. Nickel oxide is one of the first compounds to be studied for its electronic properties, but until now scientists have not been able to induce a metallic state. The compound becomes metallic at enormous pressures of 2.4 million times the atmospheric pressure (240 gigapascals). The finding is published in Physical Review Letters.

(Edmonton) University of Alberta ecologist David Schindler has reviewed data from studies of controlling human-caused algae blooms in lakes and says controlling the input of the nutrient phosphorus is the key to fighting the problem.

Recent short-term algae studies claim that controlling the human input of both nitrogen and phosphorus into lakes must be reduced to control summer algae blooms.

AMES, Iowa – Edward Yu took note of the facts – nearly 2 million deaths each year, 9 million infected each year, developments of multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant and now totally drug-resistant strains – and decided to shift his research focus to tuberculosis.

Yu, an Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory researcher, has described in the journal Nature the three-part structure that allows E. coli bacteria to pump out toxins and resist antibiotics.

The Dead Sea, a salt sea without an outlet, lies over 400 meters below sea level. Tourists like its high salt content because it increases their buoyancy. "For scientists, however, the Dead Sea is a popular archive that provides a diachronic view of its climate past," says Prof. Dr. Thomas Litt from the Steinmann-Institute for Geology, Mineralogy and Paleontology at the University of Bonn.

Sparse halos of neutrinos within the hearts of exploding stars exert a previously unrecognized influence on the physics of the explosion and may alter which elements can be forged by these violent events.

John Cherry, a graduate student at UC San Diego, models stellar explosions, including a type called a core-collapse supernova. As these stars run out of fuel, their cores suddenly collapse to form a neutron star, which quickly rebounds sending seas of neutrinos through the surrounding stellar envelope and out into space.

A computer model that can identify the best molecular candidates for removing carbon dioxide, molecular nitrogen and other greenhouse gases from power plant flues has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the University of California (UC) Berkeley and the University of Minnesota. The model is the first computational method to provide accurate simulations of the interactions between flue gases and a special variety of the gas-capturing molecular systems known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs).