Mix two parts cornstarch and one part water. Swirl your fingers in it slowly and the mixture is a smoothly flowing liquid. Punch it quickly with your fist and you meet a rubbery solid -- so solid you can jump up and down on a vat of it.
Earth
The Atlantic Ocean circulation (termed meridional overturning circulation, MOC) is an important component of the climate system. Warm currents, such as the Gulf Stream, transport energy from the tropics to the subpolar North Atlantic and influence regional weather and climate patterns. Once they arrive in the North the currents cool, their waters sink and with them they transfer carbon from the atmosphere to the abyss. These processes are important for climate but the way the Atlantic MOC responds to climate change is not well known yet.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - E. coli can live for weeks around the roots of produce plants and transfer to the edible portions, but the threat can be minimized if growers don't harvest too soon, a Purdue University study shows.
Catapults are often associated with a medieval means of destruction, but for some plants, they are an effective way to launch new life. Dispersing seeds greater distances by catapulting can provide selective advantages, including the establishment of populations in new environments and escape from certain threats.
In this week's PLoS Medicine Magazine, Trisha Greenhalgh and Jill Russell from the Queen Mary University of London discuss the relative merits of "scientific" and "social practice" approaches to evaluation and argue that eHealth evaluation is in need of a paradigm shift. They critique the previous PLoS Medicine series on evaluating eHealth, published in late 2009.
Source: Public Library of Science
A new material with a split personality -- part superconductor, part metal -- has been observed by a Princeton University-led research team. The discovery may have implications for the development of next-generation electronics that could transform the way information is stored and processed.
BOSTON (3:00 p.m. ET, November 1, 2010) — A class of compounds that interferes with cell signaling pathways may provide a new approach to cancer treatment, according to a study published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Early Edition. The compounds, called PITs (non-phosphoinositide PIP3 inhibitors), limited tumor growth in mice by inducing cell death.
In many areas of the world, including California's Mojave Desert, rain is a precious and rare resource. To encourage rainfall, scientists use "cloud seeding," a weather modification process designed to increase precipitation amounts by dispersing chemicals into the clouds.
When confined to a 2-dimensional sheet, some exotic particle-like structures known as anyons appear to entwine in ways that could lead to robust quantum computing schemes, according to research appearing in the November 1 issue of the journal Physical Review B. The physicists at Bell Laboratories who performed the research are hopeful the anyons can be induced to follow paths that twist into braids that would be much more resistant to disturbances that corrupt data and calculations in quantum computers relying on individual particles.
The ocean surface is 30 percent more acidic today than it was in 1800, much of that increase occurring in the last 50 years - a rising trend that could both harm coral reefs and profoundly impact tiny shelled plankton at the base of the ocean food web, scientists warn.
Changes in the ice mass covering Antarctica is a critical factor in global climate events and scientists at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences have now found that the year by year mass variations in the western Antarctic are mainly attributable to fluctuations in precipitation, which are controlled significantly by the climate phenomenon El Nino.
PHILADELPHIA — Researchers are one step closer to providing a new therapy for colon cancer, after findings revealed that a small molecule focal adhesion kinase (FAK) inhibitor known as Y15 effectively blocked cell viability, promoted detachment and apoptosis, and decreased tumor growth in mice. These findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research special conference on Colorectal Cancer: Biology to Therapy, held Oct. 27-30, 2010.