Physicists from UCLA and Japan have discovered evidence of "natural nuclear accelerators" at work in our Milky Way galaxy, based on an analysis of data from the world's largest cosmic ray detector.
The research is published Aug. 20 in the journal Physical Review Letters.
College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- Scientists at Tohoku University in Japan have recorded data at a density of 4 trillion bits per square inch, which is a world record for the experimental "ferroelectric" data storage method. As described the journal Applied Physics Letters, which is published by the American Institute of Physics, this density is about eight times the density of today's most advanced magnetic hard-disk drives.
College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- Solar energy is an environmentally-friendly way of producing electricity and is considered to be one of the most appealing options for the future.
College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- Wave energy is surging ahead as a viable source of renewable energy to generate electricity -- with Australia's southern margin identified by the World Energy Council as one of the world's most promising sites for wave-energy generation.
College Park, MD (August 17, 2010) -- In developing countries such as India, small hydroelectric power (SHP) projects represent a potentially large but largely untapped source of energy, primarily because the cost of constructing the sites is thought to be higher per kilowatt of generated power than the cost of large plants.
The Wildlife Conservation Society today released initial field observations that indicate that a dramatic rise in the surface temperature in Indonesian waters has resulted in a large-scale bleaching event that has devastated coral populations.
WCS's Indonesia Program "Rapid Response Unit" of marine biologists was dispatched to investigate coral bleaching reported in May in Aceh–a province of Indonesia–located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. The initial survey carried out by the team revealed that over 60 percent of corals were bleached.
While Arctic sea ice has been diminishing in recent decades, the Antarctic sea ice extent has been increasing slightly. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology provide an explanation for the seeming paradox of increasing Antarctic sea ice in a warming climate. The paper appears in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science the week of August 16, 2010.
NEW YORK (August 16, 2010) -- The first study to compare the effectiveness of the birth control pill in women with marked weight differences has found that the pill works equally well in women with obesity and thinner women. This new finding by physician-scientists at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center refutes a long-held conviction among many doctors that the pill may not reliably prevent pregnancy in women who are overweight or obese.
HOUSTON, Aug. 16, 2010 – A very aggressive disease with a poor prognosis, gallbladder cancer may be connected to higher exposure to estrogens, according to a group of researchers at the University of Houston (UH).
A large collaboration of physicists working at the Fermilab Tevatron particle collider has discovered evidence of an explanation for the prevalence of matter over antimatter in the universe. They found that colliding protons in their experiment produced short-lived B meson particles that almost immediately broke down into debris that included slightly more matter than antimatter. The two types of matter annihilate each other, so most of the material coming from these sorts of decays would disappear, leaving an excess of regular matter behind.
Sumatra experiences frequent seismic activity because it is located near the boundary of two of Earth's tectonic plates. Earthquakes occur at 'subduction zones,' such as the one west of Indonesia, when one tectonic plate is forced under another--or subducts. Instead of sliding across one another smoothly, the plates stick, and energy builds up until they finally slip or 'rupture', releasing that stored energy as an earthquake.
A study in the July 9, 2010, issue of Science identifies changes in oceanic circulation that followed past glacial retreat. The article, titled, "Deep Water Formation in the North Pacific during the Last Glacial Termination" is by Axel Timmermann of the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and his colleagues.
An international team of geoscientists has uncovered geological differences between two segments of an earthquake fault that may explain why the 2004 Sumatra Boxing Day Tsunami was so much more devastating than a second earthquake generated tsunami three months later. This could help solve what was a lingering mystery for earthquake researchers.
Sumatra experiences frequent seismic activity because it is located near the boundary of two of Earth's tectonic plates. Earthquakes occur at 'subduction zones,' such as the one west of Indonesia, when one tectonic plate is forced under another -- or subducts. Instead of sliding across one another smoothly, the plates stick, and energy builds up until they finally slip or 'rupture', releasing that stored energy as an earthquake.
Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.