Earth

BETHESDA, Md., Sept. 2, 2010 – The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology expressed its disapproval and disappointment this week in response to the Aug. 23 ruling in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that granted a preliminary injunction barring federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research.

AMES, Iowa – Iowa State University researchers have found a way to produce high-value chemicals such as ethylene glycol and propylene glycol from biomass rather than petroleum sources.

PASADENA, Calif.—Using a diamond-anvil cell to recreate the high pressures deep within the earth, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found unusual properties in an iron-rich magnesium- and iron-oxide mineral that may explain the existence of several ultra-low velocity zones (ULVZs) at the core–mantle boundary. A paper about their findings was published in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).

Roberto Carlos' free kick goal against France in 1997's Tournoi de France is thought by many to have been the most skilful free kick goal - from 35m with a powerful curling banana trajectory - ever scored; but by others to have been an incredible fluke.

Taken in 1997, a year before the French won the World Cup, Brazilian Carlos's goal held France to a frustrating draw but, now, a group of French physicists – perhaps with a nostalgic eye to a happier time for French football – have computed the trajectory and shown that Carlos' goal was no fluke.

A major study of agriculture in Haiti after this year's earthquake has found that much of the emergency seed aid provided after the disaster was not targeted to emergency needs. The report concludes that seed aid, when poorly-designed, could actually harm farmers or depress local markets, therefore hampering recovery from emergencies.

Indeed, agricultural interventions in Haiti should move away from their emergency focus, and confront farmers' longer-term challenges, especially their poor access to new crop varieties.

The world's most established fisheries certifier is failing on its promises as rapidly as it gains prominence, according the world's leading fisheries experts from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego and elsewhere.

Measurements taken* at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may help physicists develop a clearer understanding of high-temperature superconductors, whose behavior remains in many ways mysterious decades after their discovery. A new copper-based compound exhibits properties never before seen in a superconductor and could be a step toward solving part of the mystery.

Old-fashioned snail mail with a postage stamp might be the answer for federal officials working to keep the waters off the U.S. coast from being overfished.

Anglers who fish for fun in U.S. coastal waters say the federal government currently relies on questionable data to determine which ocean locales are overfished and subsequently placed off limits to recreational and commercial fishing so stocks can rebuild.

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used a small crystal of ions (electrically charged atoms) to detect forces at the scale of yoctonewtons. Measurements of slight forces—one yoctonewton is equivalent to the weight of a single copper atom on Earth—can be useful in force microscopy, nanoscale science, and tests of fundamental physics theories.

Researchers describe how to carry out the first experimental test of string theory in a paper published tomorrow in Physical Review Letters.

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College Park, MD (August 31, 2010) -- Like most technologies, work on solar devices has proceeded in generational waves. First came bulk silicon-based solar cells built with techniques that borrowed heavily from those used to make computer chips. Next came work on thin films of materials specifically tailored to harvest the sun's energy, but still more or less borrowed from the realm of microelectronics manufacturing.