Earth

Researchers have been able to teleport information from light to light at a quantum level for several years. In 2006, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute succeeded in teleporting between light and gas atoms. Now the research group has succeeded in teleporting information between two clouds of gas atoms and to carry out the teleportation – not just one or a few times, but successfully every single time. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature Physics.

Increases in temperature as a result of climate change are mirrored in lake waters where temperatures are also on the rise. A new study, by Dr. Martin Dokulil, retired researcher from the Institute for Limnology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, forecasts surface water temperatures in large Austrian lakes for 2050 and discusses the impact on the lakes' structure, function and water quality. The research is published online in Springer's journal Hydrobiologia.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 6, 2013 -- Colombia sits atop a complex geological area where three tectonic plates are interacting, producing seismicity patterns that have puzzled seismologists for years. Now seismologists have identified the "Caldas tear," which is a break in a slab that separates two subducting plates and accounts for curious features, including a "nest" of seismic activity beneath east-central Colombia and high grade mineral deposits on the surface.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) current practice of removing free-ranging horses from public lands promotes a high population growth rate, and maintaining them in long-term holding facilities is both economically unsustainable and incongruent with public expectations, says a new report by the National Research Council. The report says that tools already exist for BLM to better manage horses and burros on healthy ecosystems, enhance public engagement and confidence, and make the program more financially sustainable.

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered surprising changes in electrical resistivity in iron-based superconductors. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, offer further evidence that magnetism and superconductivity are closely related in this class of novel superconductors.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have reported* the first observation of the "spin Hall effect" in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a cloud of ultracold atoms acting as a single quantum object. As one consequence, they made the atoms, which spin like a child's top, skew to one side or the other, by an amount dependent on the spin direction. Besides offering new insight into the quantum mechanical world, they say the phenomenon is a step toward applications in "atomtronics"—the use of ultracold atoms as circuit components.

Tiny bubbles of water found in quartz grains in Australia may hold the key to understanding what caused the Earth's first ice age, say scientists.

The Anglo-French study, published in the journal Nature, analysed the amount of ancient atmospheric argon gas (Ar) isotopes dissolved in the bubbles and found levels were very different to those in the air we breathe today.

Today's nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technologies, like quantum information processing and nuclear spintronic technologies, are based on an intrinsic quantum property of electrons and atomic nuclei called "spin." Electrons and nuclei can act like tiny bar magnets with a spin that is assigned a directional state of either "up" or "down." NMR/MRI signals depend upon a majority of nuclear spins being polarized to point in one direction. The greater the polarization, the stronger the signal. Researchers with the U.S.

A Georgia State University researcher is the first to show that the Clean Air Act of 1970 caused a rebound in rainfall for a U.S. city.

Jeremy Diem, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, analyzed summer rainfall data from nine weather stations in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 1948 to 2009. He discovered that precipitation increased markedly in the late 1970s as pollution decreased following passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970.

Diem also noted that pollution in the 1950s and 1960s caused rainfall to drop in the Atlanta area.

Bubbles in a champagne glass may add a festive fizz to the drink, but microscopic bubbles that form in a material called metallic glass can signal serious trouble. In this normally high-strength material, bubbles may indicate that a brittle breakdown is in progress.

That's why Johns Hopkins researchers used computer simulations to study how these bubbles form and expand when a piece of metallic glass is pulled outward by negative pressure, such as the suction produced by a vacuum. Their findings were published recently in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Some 40 million years before rock and roll singer Jim Morrison's lyrics earned him the moniker "the Lizard King," an actual king lizard roamed the hot tropical forests of Southeast Asia, competing with mammals for food and other resources.

A team of U.S. paleontologists, led by Jason Head of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, describes fossils of the giant lizard from Myanmar this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Their analysis shows that it is one of the biggest known lizards ever to have lived on land.

A team of researchers including members of the University of Chicago's Institute for Molecular Engineering highlight the power of emerging quantum technologies in two recent papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). These technologies exploit quantum mechanics, the physics that dominates the atomic world, to perform disparate tasks such as nanoscale temperature measurement and processing quantum information with lasers.

What do swimmers like trout, eels and sandfish lizards have in common? According to a new study, the similar timing patterns that these animals use to contract their muscles and produce undulatory swimming motions can be explained using a simple model. Scientists have now applied the new model to understand the connection between the electrical signals and body movement in the sandfish.

A new analysis led by the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station encourages resource managers to consider a broadened view of forests as consumers of water.

A shift in thinking toward reducing the risk of water stress to vegetation can help forests maintain their resilience and health in a changing climate, according to a paper published online in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

ST. LOUIS -- The time between pregnancies is a golden window for obese women to lose weight, a Saint Louis University study finds.

The research, led by Arun Jain, M.D., visiting scholar in SLU's department of obstetrics, gynecology and women's health, also found that obese women should be counseled not to gain excessive weight during pregnancy.