Using an experimental apparatus reminiscent of a classic Frankenstein movie, French researchers have coaxed laboratory-generated lightning into striking the same place, not just twice, but over and over. This feat of electrical reorientation used femtosecond (one quadrillionth of a second) pulses of laser light to create a virtual lightning rod out of a column of ionized gas. This is the first time that these laser-induced atmospheric filaments were able to redirect an electrical discharge away from its intended target and guide it to a normally less-attractive electrode.
Earth
More than one hundred years after the pioneering inventor Nikola Tesla first became fascinated with wireless energy transfer, the spread of mobile electronic devices has sparked renewed interest in the ability to power up without plugging in. Now researchers from Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Mass., have proposed a way to enhance the efficiency of wireless power transfer systems by incorporating a lens made from a new class of artificial materials.
Boulder, Colo., USA - Highlights include several studies based in the U.S. Sierra Nevada, including a description of "magma fingers" and the formation of granite in the high Sierra crest near Yosemite National Park. Other studies investigate knickzones in the South Fork of the Eel River, California; the Rodgers Creek-Maacama fault system in the northern California Coast Ranges and its relation to the San Andreas fault; and the frequency and severity of destructive debris flows in the Pacific Northwest.
The earth's structure can be compared to an orange: its crust is the peel supported by the earth's heavy mantle. That peel is made up of a continental crust 30 to 40 kilometers thick. It is much lighter than the thinner oceanic crust and protrudes from the earth's mantle because of its lower density, like an iceberg in the sea. "According to the current theory, the first continental crusts were formed when tectonic plates would collide, submerging oceanic crusts into the earth's mantle, where they would partially melt at a depth of approximately 100 kilometers.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Advances in fuel-cell technology have been stymied by the inadequacy of metals studied as catalysts. The drawback to platinum, other than cost, is that it absorbs carbon monoxide in reactions involving fuel cells powered by organic materials like formic acid. A more recently tested metal, palladium, breaks down over time.
Scientists have produced a previously unseen uranium molecule, in a development that could help improve clean-up processes for nuclear waste.
The distinctive butterfly-shaped compound is similar to radioactive molecules that scientists had proposed to be key components of nuclear waste, but were thought too unstable to exist for long.
Researchers have shown the compound to be robust, which implies that molecules with a similar structure may be present in radioactive waste.
An international team of physicists has determined a key parameter, which governs how neutrinos behave. This discovery measures a critical linchpin in the study of the tiny particles and in advancing the understanding of how these building blocks of all things, from galaxies to tea cups, came to be.
LONDON – (March 8, 2012) -- Ecotourism activities that use food to attract and concentrate wildlife for viewing have become a controversial topic in ecological studies. This debate is best exemplified by the shark dive tourism industry, a highly lucrative and booming global market. Use of chum or food to attract big sharks to areas where divers can view the dwindling populations of these animals has generated significant criticism because of the potential for ecological and behavioral impacts to the species.
Desert ants have adapted to a life in a barren environment which only provides very few landmarks for orientation. Apart from visual cues and odors the ants use the polarized sunlight as a compass and count their steps in order to return safely to their home after searching for food.
Christian Santangelo, Ryan Hayward and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently employed photographic techniques and polymer science to develop a new technique for printing two-dimensional sheets of polymers that can fold into three-dimensional shapes when water is added. The technique may lead to wide ranging practical applications from medicine to robotics
The journal Science publishes the research in its March 9 issue.
If you've been thinking our world is more green than frozen these days, you're right. A recent study has found that spring is indeed arriving earlier – and autumn later – in the suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The reason? The urban landscape traps heat in the summer and holds it throughout the winter, triggering leaves to turn green earlier in the spring and to stay green later into autumn. The result is a new, extended growing season.
A new discovery provides a crucial key to understanding how neutrinos – ghostly particles with multiple personalities – change identity and may help shed light on why matter exists in the universe.
In an announcement today (Thursday, March 8), members of the large international Daya Bay collaboration reported the last of three measurements that describe how the three types, or flavors, of neutrinos blend with one another, providing an explanation for their spooky morphing from one flavor to another, a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation.
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. – A team of researchers at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering have discovered that individual atoms can catalyze industrially important chemical reactions such as the hydrogenation of acetylene, offering potentially significant economic and environmental benefits. The research appears in the March 9 issue of Science.
An international team of physicists has developed a method for taking ultrafast 'sonograms' that can track the structural changes that take place within solid materials in trillionth-of-a-second intervals as they go through an important physical process called a phase transition.