To increase the neutron detection efficiency of Bulk-Micromegas (MICRO-MEsh GAseous Structure) neutron detectors, researchers from Lanzhou University (China), IRFU-CEA (France), and the University of Tennesse-Knoxville (USA) have proposed three novel converters (Fig. 1). When validated using Monte Carlo simulations, the design shown in Fig.1 C results in a threefold increase in neutron detection efficiencies. This work is described in detail in SCI CHINA: Tech. Sci. 2013, 43（3）.
Earth
Boulder, Colo., USA - The April 2013 issue of Lithosphere is now available. Four classic research papers cover the Saint Elias Mountains of Yukon and British Columbia, Canada; the Nacimiento fault near San Simeon, California, USA; the western Alps; and the Caledonides in Scandinavia. An invited review relays the significance of dynamic topography to long-term sea level change. This month's research focus article, which is open access online, discusses the revolution in remote sensing-LiDAR-laser altimetry swath mapping.
PASADENA, Calif.—Chemists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory believe they can now explain one of the remaining mysteries of photosynthesis, the chemical process by which plants convert sunlight into usable energy and generate the oxygen that we breathe. The finding suggests a new way of approaching the design of catalysts that drive the water-splitting reactions of artificial photosynthesis.
Images told the story: lower Manhattan in darkness, coastal communities washed away, cars floating in muck. Superstorm Sandy, a harbinger of future extreme weather intensified by climate change, caught the country off guard in October.
Unprepared for the flooding and high winds that ensued, the East Coast suffered more than $70 billion in property damage and more than 100 deaths.
Will Americans prepare and invest now to minimize the impact of disasters such as Sandy, or deal with storms and rising sea levels after they occur?
ANN ARBOR—Wouldn't it be convenient if you could reverse the rusting of your car by shining a bright light on it? It turns out that this concept works for undoing oxidation on copper nanoparticles, and it could lead to an environmentally friendly production process for an important industrial chemical, University of Michigan engineers have discovered.
HOUSTON – (March 28, 2013) – Graphene, the single-atom-thick form of carbon, has become famous for its extraordinary strength. But less-than-perfect sheets of the material show unexpected weakness, according to researchers at Rice University in Houston and Tsinghua University in Beijing.
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- It appears that the majority of spouses/partners of physicians in the United States are happy with their relationships, according to Mayo Clinic research. Of the about 900 spouses/partners of physicians who responded to a national survey, 85 percent said that they were satisfied in their relationship and 80 percent said they would choose a physician spouse/partner again if they could revisit their choice. These values are similar to those of married adults in the U.S. overall. The study appears in the March edition of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
"Our method allows the 3-D imaging of the local structures in materials at atomic resolution, and it is expected to find application in materials sciences, nanoscience, solid state physics and chemistry," he said.
"It turns out that there are details we can only see when we can look at materials in three dimensions," said co-author Laurence D. Marks, a professor of materials science and engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Since the plate tectonics revolution of the 1960s, scientists have known that new seafloor is created throughout the major ocean basins at linear chains of volcanoes known as mid-ocean ridges. But where exactly does the erupted magma come from?
Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego now have a better idea after capturing a unique image of a site deep in the earth where magma is generated.
The next generation of computers promises far greater power and faster processing speeds than today's silicon-based based machines. These "quantum computers" — so called because they would harness the unique quantum mechanical properties of atomic particles — could draw their computing power from a collection of super-cooled molecules.
But chilling molecules to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, the temperature at which they can be manipulated to store and transmit data, has proven to be a difficult challenge for scientists.
A new look at conditions after a Manhattan-sized asteroid slammed into a region of Mexico in the dinosaur days indicates the event could have triggered a global firestorm that would have burned every twig, bush and tree on Earth and led to the extinction of 80 percent of all Earth's species, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.
Boulder, Colo., USA - New Geology articles cover using the architecture of ancient lava-fed deltas to estimate paleo-water levels and past ice thicknesses; bubbles and bubble haloes in lava; iron-silicate microgranules; the importance of durable, biomineralized hard parts; the link between wastewater disposal and earthquakes; shells, ocean pH, and atmospheric CO2; a SWEET hypothesis for mound-building on Mars; marine oxygenation may have preceded oxygenation on land; analysis of fossil plant tissues from Pakistan; and imaging the Transition fault.
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The proliferation of sensor-studded cellphones could lead to a wealth of data with socially useful applications — in urban planning, epidemiology, operations research and emergency preparedness, among other things. Of course, before being released to researchers, the data would have to be stripped of identifying information. But how hard could it be to protect the identity of one unnamed cellphone user in a data set of hundreds of thousands or even millions?
New research from the Antarctic Peninsula shows that the summer melt season has been getting longer over the last 60 years. Increased summer melting has been linked to the rapid break-up of ice shelves in the area and rising sea level.
Engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have developed a portable mapping system -- carried in a backpack -- that can be used to automatically create annotated physical maps of locations where GPS is not available, such as in underground areas and on ships.
Produced for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Enhanced Mapping and Positioning System (EMAPS) captures a floor-plan-style map of the area traversed as well as 360-degree photos and sensor readings of that area using a combination of lasers and sensors.