Earth

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Doppler weather radar will significantly improve forecasting models used to track monsoon systems influencing the monsoon in and around India, according to a research collaboration including Purdue University, the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.

Causal relationship between rainfall and earthquakes detailed

This review article explores natural crustal earthquakes associated with the elements of the hydrologic cycle, which describes the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth, including hurricanes and typhoons. The theory of hydroseismicity, first articulated in 1987, attributes most intraplate and near-intraplate earthquakes, to the dynamics of the hydrological cycle.

Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- A prototype device developed in Hong Kong will allow laboratory researchers to non-invasively test drugs for their ability to kill tumors by subjecting cancerous cells with different concentration gradients. The new device is built upon microfluidics -- a set of technologies that allows the control and manipulation of fluids at the sub-millimeter scale -- and is described in the American Institute of Physics' journal Biomicrofluidics.

Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- The explosion of portable communication devices that we enjoy today -- such as cell and smart phones, Bluetooth hands-free units, and wireless Internet networks -- has resulted in part from the development of a wide variety of integrated circuits that create, process and receive the microwave frequencies on which the communication is based.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) An important step –– one that is essential to the ultimate construction of a quantum computer –– was taken for the first time by physicists at UC Santa Barbara. The discovery is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Irvine, Calif. — Freshwater is flowing into Earth's oceans in greater amounts every year, a team of researchers has found, thanks to more frequent and extreme storms linked to global warming. All told, 18 percent more water fed into the world's oceans from rivers and melting polar ice sheets in 2006 than in 1994, with an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.

Palo Alto, CA—Geologists have found evidence that some 55 million years ago a river as big as the modern Colorado flowed through Arizona into Utah in the opposite direction from the present-day river. Writing in the October issue of the journal Geology, they have named this ancient northeastward-flowing river the California River, after its inferred source in the Mojave region of southern California.

An analysis of geological records that preserve details of the last known period of global warming has revealed 'startling' results which suggest current targets for limiting climate change are unsafe.

Genetically modified organisms have existed for thousands of years but more recently an anti-science contingent has been concerned, perhaps with reason, about their impact on the environment.

But genetically modified organisms, like forests of genetically altered trees and other plants, could also help save the environment and sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, according to a study in BioScience.

WASHINGTON, Oct.

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 29, 2010) -- A Rice University-led team of physicists is reporting the first success in a three-year effort to build a precision simulator for superconductors using a grid of intersecting laser beams and ultracold atomic gas.

New Haven, Conn.—The rules that govern the world of the very small, quantum mechanics, are known for being bizarre. One of the strangest tenets is something called quantum entanglement, in which two or more objects (such as particles of light, called photons) become inextricably linked, so that measuring certain properties of one object reveals information about the other(s), even if they are separated by thousands of miles. Einstein found the consequences of entanglement so unpalatable he famously dubbed it "spooky action at a distance."

A global temperature increase of up to 4.2 º C and the end of coral reefs could become reality by 2100 if national targets are not revised in the Copenhagen Accord, the international pledge which was agreed at last year's Copenhagen's COP15 climate change conference.

Scientists from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, in collaboration with colleagues from several developing countries, were able to restore a sleeping sickness parasite's susceptibility to drugs. The parasite causes sleeping sickness in cattle. Because it has become resistant against all currently available drugs, it causes enormous economic losses. Until now, that is.