Earth

A unique wave-generating machine that mimics the activity of real-life tsunamis with unprecedented realism has been used successfully in an Oxfordshire laboratory.

The simulator has copied the behaviour of the first massive wave of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Developed and built with Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding, the tsunami generator will improve understanding of how tsunamis behave.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2010 — Scientific advances in a rapidly emerging field termed "green chemistry" offer the brightest promise for guiding the American economy into a new era of sustainability, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency's top R&D official said today.

When it comes to three-dimensional puzzles, Rubik's Cube pales in comparison with the latest creation of Rice University geoscientist Richard Gordon. Gordon and collaborators Chuck DeMets of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Donald Argus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have just put the finishing touches on a 20-year labor of love, a precise description of the relative movements of the interlocking tectonic plates that account for about 97 percent of Earth's surface.

The WU-BESL uses the bright X-ray beam produced by the Advanced Photon Source, a particle accelerator designed to produce an intense beam of radiation, to probe the structure (or arrangement of atoms) in suspended liquids.

When it is not at Argonne, the WU-BESL inhabits a small room in the basement of Compton Hall at Washington University, where it is used for materials research that does not require X-rays.

ALBANY, Calif., March 19, 2010—Under a changing climate, patterns of forest disturbance are expected to change, but how will forest diseases respond? A summary of scientific information that addresses this question is now available on the Internet at http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/insect_disease/. The site includes a searchable bibliography. The summary, titled "Review of Literature on Climate Change and Forest Diseases of Western North America" is sponsored by the USDA Forest Service.

A team led by researchers from North Carolina State University has published a paper that describes the use of a technique called atomic layer deposition to incorporate "biological functionality" into complex nanomaterials, which could lead to a new generation of medical and environmental health applications. For example, the researchers show how the technology can be used to develop effective, low-cost water purification devices that could be used in developing countries.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21, 2010 — Two decades of atomic bomb testing in the atmosphere are yielding an unexpected bonus for consumers, scientists reported here today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). It's a new test to determine whether that Bordeaux or burgundy is from a fine vintage year and commands premium price or actually is a counterfeit vin ordinaire or cheap plonk worth much less.

SAN FRANCISCO, March 21, 2010 — Chemistry's often-overlooked role in fostering sustainability goes on parade this week with one of the largest and most comprehensive series of scientific reports on advances toward that goal and the challenges lying ahead. The 1,600 reports and other presentations are part of the theme — "Chemistry for a Sustainable World" — of the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, which opens here today.

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and affiliated with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) at the University of California at San Diego are undertaking an expedition to explore the rupture site of the 8.8-magnitude Chilean earthquake.

The quake is one of the largest in recorded history.

The scientists hope to capitalize on a unique scientific opportunity to capture fresh data from the event. They will study changes in the seafloor that resulted from movements along faults and submarine landslides.

Butterflies are emerging in spring over 10 days earlier than they did 65 years ago, a shift that has been linked to regional human-induced climate change in a University of Melbourne- led study. The work reveals for the first time, a causal link between increasing greenhouse gases, regional warming and the change in timing of a natural event.

Male pipefishes and their seahorse cousins are the only males that actually become pregnant and give birth, but pipefishes likely will never win any Father of The Year awards – their attitude towards their offspring can range from total love to total neglect, according to new findings from Texas A&M University researchers.

It might sound like a mashup of monster movies, but palaeontologists have discovered evidence of how an extinct shark attacked its prey, reconstructing a killing that took place 4 million years ago.

Such fossil evidence of behavior is incredibly rare but by careful, forensic-style analysis of bite marks on an otherwise well-preserved dolphin skeleton, the research team, based in Pisa, Italy, have reconstructed the events that led to the death of the dolphin, and determined the probably identity of the killer: a 4 m shark by the name of Cosmopolitodus hastalis.

Since its development in China thousands of years ago, silk from silkworms, spiders and other insects has been used for high-end, luxury fabrics as well as for parachutes and medical sutures. Now, National Science Foundation-supported researchers are untangling some of its most closely guarded secrets, and explaining why silk is so super strong.

Washington, D.C. — Metallic glasses are emerging as potentially useful materials at the frontier of materials science research. They combine the advantages and avoid many of the problems of normal metals and glasses, two classes of materials with a very wide range of applications. For example, metallic glasses are less brittle than ordinary glasses and more resilient than conventional metals. Metallic glasses also have unique electronic behavior that scientists are just beginning to understand.

PHILADELPHIA –- An interdisciplinary team of physicists and geologists led by the University of Pennsylvania has made a major step toward predicting where and how large floods occur on river deltas and alluvial fans.

In a laboratory, researchers created a miniature river delta that replicates flooding patterns seen in natural rivers, resulting in a mathematical model capable of aiding in the prediction of the next catastrophic flood.

The results appear in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters.