Earth

A lot of large particles of dust and pollen in the atmosphere may make your nose twitch, but they can lead directly to greater precipitation in clouds, Colorado State University atmospheric scientists have discovered for the first time.

SALT LAKE CITY—During SNM's 57th Annual Meeting, investigators presented the results of a multidisciplinary study involving the capture of radiation luminescence and radioactive-excited nanoparticles to help detect subtle signs of disease. Currently, nuclear medicine agents and imaging technology image the behavior of particles at the cellular, molecular and atomic levels, but radioactive materials also emit barely visible light that can be detected with highly sensitive optical imaging technology. This discovery could lead to new, state-of-the-art imaging techniques.

Berkeley — Vegetation around the world is on the move, and climate change is the culprit, according to a new analysis of global vegetation shifts led by a University of California, Berkeley, ecologist in collaboration with researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.

Chinese researchers have successfully built an electromagnetic absorbing device for microwave frequencies. The device, made of a thin cylinder comprising 60 concentric rings of metamaterials, is capable of absorbing microwave radiation, and has been compared to an astrophysical black hole (which, in space, soaks up matter and light).

Through studying the newly-found cyprinid fish fossils, Wang and Chang have shown that the existence of comparatively rich waters in the Kunlun Pass Basin on the southern slope of the East Kunlun Mountain (at 4769 m above sea level) and possible connections between the water systems on north and south sides of the East Kunlun Mountain during the Pliocene. They also suggest a more humid climate in the area during the Pliocene than it is today and a less amplitude of uplift (approximately 1000 m) since the Pliocene than previously proposed.

A variety of structural phenomena in exotic short-lived nuclei far from stability, especially in systems close to the particle drip lines, challenge model descriptions based on the self-consistent mean-field approximation. Because the Fermi level in a drip-line nucleus is very close to the continuum, both weakly-bound states and low-lying positive energy single-particle resonant states are essential to determine the ground state properties of such systems.

In the paper the authors from the Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing proposed a new model trying to explain the knee at cosmic ray spectra. The knee kept as a puzzle in cosmic ray physics for nearly half a century. The work was inspired by the recent observation of anomalous excess of electrons and positrons in cosmic rays. The work tries to explain the knee and the electron/positron excess in a single model.

HAMILTON, CANADA—June 2, 2010 –Scientists have captured the first images of electrons that appear to take on extraordinary mass under certain extreme conditions, thus solving a 25-year mystery about how electrons behave in metals. The discovery could help with the design of new materials for high-temperature superconductors.

The findings by scientists from McMaster University, Cornell University, the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven and Los Alamos National Laboratories, are published in the current issue of Nature.

For most people, frustration is a condition to be avoided. But for scientists studying certain "frustrated" ensembles of interacting components – that is, those which cannot settle into a state that minimizes each interaction – it may be the key to understanding a host of puzzling phenomena that affect systems from neural networks and social structures to protein folding and magnetism.

UPTON, NY — Using a microscope designed to image the arrangement and interactions of electrons in crystals, scientists have captured the first images of electrons that appear to take on extraordinary mass under certain extreme conditions. The technique reveals the origin of an unusual electronic phase transition in one particular material, and opens the door to further explorations of the properties and functions of so-called heavy fermions. Scientists from the U.S.

If tectonic plate collisions cause volcanic eruptions, as every fifth grader knows, why do some volcanoes erupt far from a plate boundary?

A study in Nature suggests that volcanoes and mountains in the Mediterranean can grow from the pressure of the semi-liquid mantle pushing on Earth's crust from below.

"The rise and subsidence of different points of the earth is not restricted to the exact locations of the plate boundary. You can get tectonic activity away from a plate boundary," said study co-author Thorsten Becker of the University of Southern California.

Tropical Storm Agatha made landfall this weekend in El Salvador and Guatemala, and crossed into the western Caribbean. Like Agatha Christie, the famous mystery writer, Agatha was somewhat of a forecasting mystery until today.

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