Philadelphia, PA, November 2, 2011 – Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) has undergone substantial development and offers important advantages compared with other well-established imaging modalities. In the November/December issue of Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, published by Elsevier, a series of articles on key topics in CMR will foster greater understanding of the rapidly expanding role of CMR in clinical cardiology.
Earth
Graphene, which is composed of a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb-like lattice (like atomic-scale chicken wire), is the world's thinnest material – and one of the hardest and strongest. Indeed, the past few years have seen an explosion of research into the properties and potential applications of graphene, which has been touted as a superior alternative to silicon.
El Cerrito, Calif. -- Details of an earthquake that rocked the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand in February 2011 may transform the way scientists assess the potential threat of fault lines that run through urban centers.
Hydrogen offers great promise as a renewable energy source. It's staggeringly plentiful (the most abundant element in the Universe) and environmentally friendly (used in a fuel cell, it gives off only water). Unfortunately, storing and transporting hydrogen for personal use is a significant engineering challenge.
Climate change, land use and other human-driven factors could pit savannas and forests against each other by altering the elements found by Princeton University researchers to stabilize the two. Without this harmony, the habitats, or biomes, could increasingly encroach on one other to the detriment of the people and animals that rely on them.
ARLINGTON, Va.-- Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) hit a materials research milestone in the Office of Naval Research's (ONR) Electromagnetic Railgun program when they fired a laboratory-scale system for the 1,000th time Oct. 31.
"A significant amount of development has been coming out of NRL to support the program," said Roger Ellis, ONR's Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) program officer. "It's a key piece of making railgun successful."
SAN FRANCISCO -- Birds are getting bigger in central California, and that was a big surprise for Rae Goodman and her colleagues.
Goodman uncovered the trend while working as a graduate student for San Francisco State University biologist Gretchen LeBuhn, analyzing data from thousands of birds caught and released each year at two sites near San Francisco Bay and the Point Reyes National Seashore.
UN University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health today published a study of the changing language related to water in high-level declarations from eleven UN conferences on water and the environment over the past forty years. Both deepening and shallowing of key terms were evident throughout the documents and the report suggests effective strategies for highlighting and strengthening key concepts.
To slide; perchance to fatigue. "Wear is so common in sliding systems that it has acquired this air of inevitability," says Greg Sawyer, a professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Florida who leads a team of researchers hoping to overturn this assumption.
Jena (Germany) Nothingness – this is the research subject-matter of a team of theoretical physicists from the Universities Jena (Germany) and Graz (Austria). "The ground state of our world can't be described by the absence of all matter," Professor Dr. Holger Gies from the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena and the Helmholtz-Institute Jena explains. "This so-called quantum vacuum rather turns out to be a complex state of constantly fluctuating quantum fields with physical properties."
On Oct. 9 an underwater volcano started to emerge in waters off El Hierro Island in the Canaries, Spain. Researchers of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO, Ministry of Science and Innovation) only needed 15 days to map its formation in high resolution. The volcanic cone has reached a height of 100 m and the lava tongue flows down its side, even though its activity has slowed down in the past few days.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — New observations could improve industrial production of high-quality graphene, hastening the era of graphene-based consumer electronics, thanks to University of Illinois engineers.
By combining data from several imaging techniques, the team found that the quality of graphene depends on the crystal structure of the copper substrate it grows on. Led by electrical and computer engineering professors Joseph Lyding and Eric Pop, the researchers published their findings in the journal Nano Letters.
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- New research from the University of Missouri indicates that Atlantic Ocean temperatures during the greenhouse climate of the Late Cretaceous Epoch were influenced by circulation in the deep ocean. These changes in circulation patterns 70 million years ago could help scientists understand the consequences of modern increases in greenhouse gases.
Climate scientists say the world's target to stay below a global warming of 2 degrees, made at the United Nations conference in Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun 2010 will require decisive action this decade.
A comprehensive review of 193 emission scenarios from scientific literature to date has been published in Nature Climate Change by University of Melbourne and international scientists.