Earth

In the quest for dark matter, physicists rely on particle colliders such as the LHC in CERN, located near Geneva, Switzerland. The trouble is: physicists still don't exactly know what dark matter is. Indeed, they can only see its effect in the form of gravity. Until now, theoretical physicists have used models based on a simple, abstract description of the interaction between dark matter and ordinary particles, such as the Effective Field Theories (EFTs). However, until we observe dark matter, it is impossible to know whether or not these models neglect some key signals.

URBANA, Ill. - Although the Amazon Jungle may appear to be perpetually green, a University of Illinois researcher believes there are actually seasonal differences of photosynthesis, with more occurring during the dry season and less during the wet season. Understanding how a rainforest that occupies 2.7 million square miles of South America functions is crucial to the future health of the entire planet.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Land managers, forestry professionals and conservationists seek to predict how trees will grow so they can better manage existing forests and regrow forests after logging operations. Previous tree growth models can reasonably predict how trees grow once they are about 20 years old and achieve "crown closure" with the trees in the forest around them. Crown closure occurs when trees in a specific area grow wide and tall enough that their canopies connect.

FROSTBURG, MD (July 26, 2016)--A new study suggests that improvements in air quality over the Potomac watershed, including the Washington, D.C., metro area, may be responsible for recent progress on water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. Scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science have linked improving water quality in streams and rivers of the Upper Potomac River Basin to reductions in nitrogen pollution onto the land and streams due to enforcement of the Clean Air Act.

AMHERST, Mass. - A recent research report about one of the largest lithium brine and salt deposits in the world in Chile's Atacama Desert by geoscientists from the University of Massachusetts Amherst is the first to show that water and solutes flowing into the basin originate from a much larger than expected portion of the Andean Plateau.

This finding, to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, can help in the design of security policies even more so since future global warming from human-made greenhouse-gas emissions will increase natural disasters and therefore likely also risks of conflicts and migration.

A new global study has found that one in three large cities spend 50 percent more on water treatment costs as a result of damage to the ecological quality of their watersheds.

This study found that urban source watershed degradation is widespread globally, with 9 in 10 cities losing significant amounts of natural land cover to agriculture and development in the watersheds that supply their drinking water. This has led to polluted water and an increase in water treatment costs that represent a liability in excess of $100 billion US (net present value).

New Haven, Conn. - Yale physicists have created something similar to a Moebius strip of moving energy between two vibrating objects, opening the door to novel forms of control over waves in acoustics, laser optics, and quantum mechanics.

The discovery also demonstrates that a century-old physics theorem offers much greater freedom than had long been believed. The findings are published online July 25 in the journal Nature.

Bears, wolves and other large carnivores are frightening beasts but the fear they inspire in their prey pales in comparison to that caused by the human 'super predator.'

PULLMAN, Wash.--Washington State University researchers have met the long-standing scientific challenge of watching a material change its crystal structure in real time.

While exposing a sample of silicon to intense pressure--due to the impact of a nearly 12,000 mph plastic projectile--they documented the transformation from its common cubic diamond structure to a simple hexagonal structure. At one point, they could see both structures as the shock wave traveled through the sample in less than half a millionth of a second.

Tropical Storm Darby brought rainfall, gusty winds and rough surf to the Hawaiian Islands over the weekend of July 23 and 24, and was still raining over them on Monday, July 25, 2016. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite passed over the islands and calculated rainfall rates from Darby.

Hurricane Georgette is a major hurricane in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of the powerful storm that showed a clear eye.

On July 24, at 21:20 UTC (5:20 p.m. EDT) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured an image of Hurricane Georgette in the eastern Pacific Ocean that showed an open eye with strong bands of thunderstorms circling the center.

About the same amount of atmospheric carbon that goes into creating plants on land goes into the bodies of tiny marine plants known as plankton. When these plants die and sink, bacteria feed on their sinking corpses and return their carbon to the seawater. When plankton sink deep enough before being eaten, this carbon is taken out of circulation as a greenhouse gas to remain trapped in the deep ocean for centuries.

No matter whether it is acoustic waves, quantum matter waves or optical waves of a laser -- all kinds of waves can be in different states of oscillation, corresponding to different frequencies. Calculating these frequencies is part of the tools of the trade in theoretical physics. Recently, however, a special class of systems has caught the attention of the scientific community, forcing physicists to abandon well-established rules.

A highly sensitive chemical sensor based on Raman spectroscopy and using nitrogen-doped graphene as a substrate was developed by an international team of researchers working at Penn State. In this case, doping refers to introducing nitrogen atoms into the carbon structure of graphene. This technique can detect trace amounts of molecules in a solution at very low concentrations, some 10,000 times more diluted than can be seen by the naked eye.