Earth

Currently, Martin, Lauren Rohwer, and graduate intern Kyle Solis work with the vortex field mixing, among other projects. Their experimental report, recently appearing in the July issue of Physical Review, has generated interest, including a Physical Review Focus article and a Research Highlight in the September MRS Bulletin.

This type of magnetic mixing with particles that assemble into micro-stir bars isn't like the magnetic mixing done in high school chemistry class.

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have identified the dominant odor naturally produced in humans and birds that attracts the blood-feeding Culex mosquitoes, which transmit West Nile virus and other life-threatening diseases.

The groundbreaking research, published this week in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, explains why mosquitoes shifted hosts from birds to humans and paves the way for key developments in mosquito and disease control.

The largest congress worldwide on the topic of particle or ion therapy – radiation with heavy ions and protons – has taken place in the fall of 2009 in Heidelberg. Well over 600 international participants, especially from Japan and the USA, convened in the Heidelberg Town Hall for the annual meeting of the "Particle Therapy Cooperative Group" (PTCOG), including leading experts from the fields of radiation therapy, medical physics and oncology.

Red blood cells, which make up 45 percent of blood, normally take the shape of circular cushions with a dimple on either side. But they can sometimes deform into an asymmetrical slipper shape. A team of physicists have used simulations to explore how fluid flow might be responsible for this deformation, as well as how the deformation in turn affects blood flow. The insights could help understand the mechanisms involved in arterial disease and other blood flow-related ailments.

"There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel," says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following encompassing geoarchaeological research at the port of Caesarea. "Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence," she says.

While most people head to Myrtle Beach for vacation, a group of scientists have been hitting the famous South Carolina beach for years to figure out how to keep the sand from washing away.

Although they studied only a limited segment of beach, their work is a model for beach preservation that can apply elsewhere. And with talk of "balancing the sand budget" and money saved on restoration, their findings sound financial.

The study will be presented to scientists from around the world at the International Geological Programs Annual Conference, Oct. 25 to 31 in Myrtle Beach.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have successfully created in the laboratory a class of carbenes, highly reactive molecules, used to make catalysts – substances that facilitate chemical reactions. Until now, chemists believed these carbenes, called "abnormal N-heterocyclic carbenes" or aNHCs, were impossible to make.

Carbenes are made up of unusual carbon atoms and are usually unstable in nature. They attach themselves to metals to form metal-carbene complexes that serve as efficient catalysts used widely in the pharmaceutical industry.