Earth
Researchers at Queen's University have discovered how molecules in glass or plastic are able to move when exposed to light from a laser. The findings could one day be used to facilitate medicinal drug distribution by allowing doctors to control the time and rate at which drugs are delivered into the body. The drugs, in a solid plastic carrier, could be released through the body when exposed to light.
Internationally renowned geophysicist Dr Wouter Schellart has developed the first dynamic model to explain the mystery of the largest and most fascinating volcano in Europe, Mount Etna.
Dr Schellart's results from fluid dynamic models provide an alternative explanation for the existence of Mount Etna, its geological environment and evolution, as well as volcanism in the surrounding region.
Computer-modelled comparison of online football gamblers' behaviour during play and during half-time shows distinct real-time differences, begging the question what motivates betting behaviour when play is not underway?
Research published today, Thursday 7 October 2010, in New Journal of Physics (co-owned by the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society), details how researchers from Trinity College Dublin have analysed data and identified betting trends during the 2007-08 Champions' League Tournament.
In recent decades documented biological changes in the far Northern Hemisphere have been attributed to global warming, changes from species extinctions to shifting geographic ranges. Such changes were expected because warming has been fastest in the northern temperate zone and the Arctic.
But new research published in the Oct. 7 edition of Nature adds to growing evidence that, even though the temperature increase has been smaller in the tropics, the impact of warming on life could be much greater there than in colder climates.
Advocates for seeding regions of the ocean with iron to combat global warming should be interested in a new study published today in Geophysical Research Letters. A Canada-US team led by University of Victoria oceanographer Dr. Roberta Hamme describes how the 2008 eruption of the Kasatochi volcano in the Aleutian Islands spewed iron-laden ash over a large swath of the North Pacific. The result, says Hamme, was an "ocean productivity event of unprecedented magnitude"—the largest phytoplankton bloom detected in the region since ocean surface measurements by satellite began in 1997.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Doppler weather radar will significantly improve forecasting models used to track monsoon systems influencing the monsoon in and around India, according to a research collaboration including Purdue University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
Causal relationship between rainfall and earthquakes detailed
This review article explores natural crustal earthquakes associated with the elements of the hydrologic cycle, which describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth, including hurricanes and typhoons. The theory of hydroseismicity, first articulated in 1987, attributes most intraplate and near-intraplate earthquakes, to the dynamics of the hydrological cycle.
Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- A prototype device developed in Hong Kong will allow laboratory researchers to non-invasively test drugs for their ability to kill tumors by subjecting cancerous cells with different concentration gradients. The new device is built upon microfluidics -- a set of technologies that allows the control and manipulation of fluids at the sub-millimeter scale -- and is described in the American Institute of Physics' journal Biomicrofluidics.
Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- The explosion of portable communication devices that we enjoy today -- such as cell and smart phones, Bluetooth hands-free units, and wireless Internet networks -- has resulted in part from the development of a wide variety of integrated circuits that create, process and receive the microwave frequencies on which the communication is based.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) An important step –– one that is essential to the ultimate construction of a quantum computer –– was taken for the first time by physicists at UC Santa Barbara. The discovery is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Irvine, Calif. — Freshwater is flowing into Earth's oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world's oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.
Palo Alto, CA—Geologists have found evidence that some 55 million years ago a river as big as the modern Colorado flowed through Arizona into Utah in the opposite direction from the present-day river. Writing in the October issue of the journal Geology, they have named this ancient northeastward-flowing river the California River, after its inferred source in the Mojave region of southern California.
An analysis of geological records that preserve details of the last known period of global warming has revealed 'startling' results which suggest current targets for limiting climate change are unsafe.