Earth

FORT COLLINS, COLORADO - The growing field of spin electronics - spintronics - tells us that electrons spin like a top, carry angular momentum, and can be controlled as units of power, free of conventional electric current. Nonvolatile magnetic memory based on the "spin torques" of these spinning electrons has been recently commercialized as STT-MRAM (spin transfer torque-magnetic random access memory).

This is the news of a ground-breaking study recently published in the open access journal PLOS ONE. Professor Christopher S. Henshilwood and Postdoctoral Fellow Karen L. van Niekerk from the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen (UiB) are among the co-authors of the paper. The lead author is Patrick Roberts, from the University of Oxford.

New research, led by the University of Southampton, suggests that the release of methane from the seafloor was much slower than previously thought during a rapid global warming event 56 million years ago.

The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could allow scientists to better understand the potential effects of rising ocean temperatures worldwide on current and future climate change.

Two scientists at the University of Central Florida have discovered how to get a solid material to act like a liquid without actually turning it into liquid, potentially opening a new world of possibilities for the electronic, optics and computing industries.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and 3M are teaming up to study whether adhesives can be developed to join heating, ventilation, air-conditioning and refrigeration components. Using neutron imaging capabilities at the lab's High Flux Isotope Reactor, the research team will characterize novel aluminum-to-copper adhesive bonding materials at the microscopic level.

Once a major hurricane, Madeline was a tropical storm that appeared shapeless on a visible satellite image as it was passing south of the big island of Hawaii. An infrared image showed the storm stretching from southwest to northeast.

Hurricane Lester continues to march to the west and NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite saw the storm as it was crossing from the Eastern Pacific to the Central Pacific Ocean and triggered new hurricane watches for Hawaii.

When a tropical cyclone crosses the 140 degree west longitude line, it has moved into the Central Pacific Ocean and warnings on the system will be issued by NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center (CPHC).

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Hurricane Gaston as it continued to track over the open waters of the North Central Atlantic Ocean and move farther away from Bermuda and toward the Azores Islands.

On Aug. 30 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 UTC) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible light image of Gaston. The VIIRS image revealed that the large cloudless eye surrounded by very powerful thunderstorms.

Publications on the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel indicate that numerous codes and hidden messages may have been inserted for various purposes. Now a new analysis suggests that Michelangelo may have concealed symbols associated with female anatomy when painting the chapel's ceiling.

When it comes to developing test questions, there's the ordinary way and the fancy way. The ordinary way is to just make up questions and put them on the test. However, this can lead to questions that are misleading, confusing, or simply don't test for the knowledge you're trying to measure. The fancy way takes a lot of possible questions, tries them out on students, and whittles them down to the most useful. But this process is both time-consuming and expensive.

A new predictive tool, which for the first time combines human perception of the environment with land-use planning and socioeconomic data, could help governments mitigate the impact of climate change in developing countries.

Scientists at the University of York are working in Tanzania, East Africa, to help produce new data and strategies that can contribute to decisions around the use of land for farming and urban development, as well as more sustainable future ecosystem management systems.

An ultrafast "electron camera" at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has made the first direct snapshots of atomic nuclei in molecules that are vibrating within millionths of a billionth of a second after being hit by a laser pulse. The method, called ultrafast electron diffraction (UED), could help scientists better understand the role of nuclear motions in light-driven processes that naturally occur on extremely fast timescales.

Scientists can now directly probe a previously hard-to-see layer of chemistry thanks to a unique X-ray toolkit developed at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The X-ray tools and techniques could be extended, researchers say, to provide new insight about battery performance and corrosion, a wide range of chemical reactions, and even biological and environmental processes that rely on similar chemistry.

Heavy rainfall is a big part of Tropical Depression 9, which is strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission, or GPM, core satellite passed over the gulf in space and measured that rate of rainfall.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Tropical Depression 9 to intensify over the next day or so. Vertical wind shear is predicted to be low and the tropical depression is moving over warmer water. Both of these factors will provide fuel for intensification.

Hurricane Madeline was a powerful Category 4 storm that has now weakened to a Category 1 storm as it nears the Big Island of Hawaii. NOAA's GOES-East satellite has been continuously capturing imagery of the storm that showed the structure has been weakening. Two NASA satellites confirmed that the storm was weakening.