Earth | Page 656 | Science Codex

Human impact has created a 'plastic planet,' research shows

Evidence suggests Earth is entering an 'Age of Plastic'Plastics can travel thousands of miles and get caught up in 'oceanic garbage patches'If all the plastic made in the last few decades was clingfilm there would be enough to put a layer around the whole EarthPlastics are so durable and widespread that they will form fossils to persist into the Earth's far future

Planet Earth's oceans and lands will be buried by increasing layers of plastic waste by the mid-century due to human activity, according to research led by the University of Leicester.

Creating 'greener' wrinkle-resistant cotton fabric

Ironing is a tedious chore, but wearing crumpled clothing is unprofessional. That's why "wrinkle-resistant" garments have become so popular. But the current methods for making these textiles often release formaldehyde - a chemical that in large amounts is hazardous to human health - into the air and water. Now a team reports in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering a method for making wrinkle-resistant cotton fabrics that is more environmentally friendly and cost effective.

IBS report electric transport across molybdenum disulfide grain boundaries

The Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics (CINAP) within IBS has reported results correlating the flake merging angle with grain boundary (GBs) properties, and proven that increasing the merging angle of GBs drastically improves the flow of electrons. This correlates to an increase in the carrier mobility from less than 1 cm2V-1s-1 for small angles, to 16cm2 V-1s-1 for angles greater than 20°. The paper, entitled, 'Misorientation-angle-dependent electrical transport across molybdenum disulfide grain boundaries' is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Q: How many ways can you arrange 128 tennis balls? A: 10^250

A bewildering physics problem has apparently been solved by researchers, in a study which provides a mathematical basis for understanding issues ranging from predicting the formation of deserts, to making artificial intelligence more efficient.

In research carried out at the University of Cambridge, a team developed a computer program that can answer this mind-bending puzzle: Imagine that you have 128 soft spheres, a bit like tennis balls. You can pack them together in any number of ways. How many different arrangements are possible?

Designing a pop-up future

What if you could make any object out of a flat sheet of paper?

That future is on the horizon thanks to new research by L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). He is also a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and member of the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology, at Harvard University.

What do lentils have to do with geology?

Boulder, Colo., USA - When clayey materials are compressed and sheared, they commonly develop a "scaly fabric" wherein the clay is divided by braided shear surfaces into lentil-shaped chips. Although such scaly fabrics are found at the bed of glaciers, the base of landslides, and in gougey faults, little is known about how they form or how they deform. In their article for Geology, Matthew Tarling and Christina Rowe use dry lentils to help explore this process.

Ecotourism, natural resource conservation proposed as allies to protect natural landscapes

Athens, Ga. - If environmentalists want to protect fragile ecosytems from landing in the hands of developers--in the U.S. and around the globe--they should team up with ecotourists, according to a University of Georgia study published in the Journal of Ecotourism.

New report finds near-term update to social cost of carbon unwarranted

WASHINGTON - There would not be sufficient benefit to updating estimates of the social cost of carbon (SCC) within a year based only on the revision of a specific climate parameter in the existing framework used by the government's interagency group to measure the SCC, says a new interim report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Titan targets tumors

Since lasers were first produced in the early 1960s, researchers have worked to apply laser technology from welding metal to surgeries, with laser technology advancing quickly through the last 50 years.

Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy all play important roles in cancer treatment, and sometimes the best successes come from combining all three approaches.

Solving hard quantum problems: Everything is connected

Quantum systems are extremely hard to analyse if they consist of more than just a few parts. It is not difficult to calculate a single hydrogen atom, but in order to describe an atom cloud of several thousand atoms, it is usually necessary to use rough approximations. The reason for this is that quantum particles are connected to each other and cannot be described separately. Kaspar Sakmann (TU Wien, Vienna) and Mark Kasevich (Stanford, USA) have now shown in an article published in Nature Physics that this problem can be overcome.

Spanish missions triggered Native American population collapse, indirect impact on climate

New interdisciplinary research in the Southwest United States has resolved long-standing debates on the timing and magnitude of American Indian population collapse in the region.

The severe and rapid collapse of Native American populations in what is now the modern state of New Mexico didn't happen upon first contact with Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s, as some scholars thought. Nor was it as gradual as others had contended.

Model explains huge recurring rainstorms in tropical Indian and Pacific oceans

El Niño is fairly well understood, and by now it's a household word. But another huge system in the tropical Indian and Pacific oceans, which wreaks similar havoc in world weather, is relatively unknown and is just beginning to be explained.

University of Washington scientists have published a mathematical model that could help explain and forecast the Madden-Julian Oscillation, a massive cluster of thunderstorms that plays a role in global weather.

Anti-hydrogen origin revealed by collision simulation

Antihydrogen is a particular kind of atom, made up of the antiparticle of an electron - a Positron - and the antiparticle of a Proton - an antiproton. Scientists hope that studying the formation of anti hydrogen will ultimately help explain why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe. In a new study published in EPJ D, Igor Bray and colleagues from Curtin University, Perth, Australia, demonstrate that the two different numerical calculation approaches they developed specifically to study collisions are in accordance.

O, no: Ozone levels elevated in presence of wildfire smoke

FORT COLLINS, COLO. - For those living with the threat to life and property from wildfires, Colorado State University scientists have some more bad news: Wildfire smoke seems to elevate levels of ozone, a nasty air pollutant with proven adverse health effects.

Climate change: Ocean warming underestimated

To date, research on the effects of climate change has underestimated the contribution of seawater expansion to sea level rise due to warming of the oceans. A team of researchers at the University of Bonn has now investigated, using satellite data, that this effect was almost twice as large over the past twelve years than previously assumed. That may result in, for example, significantly increased risks of storm surges. The scientists are presenting their findings in the renowned scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).