Earth

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have developed a new method for studying bacterial swimming, one that allows them to trap Escherichia coli bacteria and modify the microbes' environment without hindering the way they move.

The new approach, described this month in Nature Methods, uses optical traps, microfluidic chambers and fluorescence to get an improved picture of how E. coli get around.

TORONTO, ON – An international team of physicists has for the first time observed magnetic behaviour in an atomic gas, addressing a decades-old debate as to whether it is possible for a gas or liquid to become ferromagnetic and exhibit magnetic properties.

Understanding the evolution and domestication of maize has been a holy grail for many researchers. As one of the most important crops worldwide and as a crop that appears very different from its wild relatives as a result of domestication, understanding exactly how maize has evolved has many practical benefits and may help to improve crop yields.

Princeton University scientists have shown that, in ancient times, the Earth's magnetic field was structured like the two-pole model of today, suggesting that the methods geoscientists use to reconstruct the geography of early land masses on the globe are accurate. The findings may lead to a better understanding of historical continental movement, which relates to changes in climate.

Summary: A new analysis of climate risk, published by researchers at MIT and elsewhere, shows that even moderate carbon-reduction policies now can substantially lower the risk of future climate change. It also shows that quick, global emissions reductions would be required in order to provide a good chance of avoiding a temperature increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level — a widely discussed target. But without prompt action, they found, extreme changes could soon become much more difficult, if not impossible, to control.

When we hear about organisms contaminated by heavy metals, we generally think of pollution from human activity. However, there are always exceptions to the rule and cadmium is one of them. This metal, which is used to manufacture rechargeable batteries among other things, also occurs naturally in the marine environment.

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 1, 2009) – Trauma patients who were intoxicated before their injuries were more likely to survive than trauma patients who suffered similar injuries but were sober at the time, according to a study published in the October edition of the American Surgeon that was conducted by researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed).

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Worldwide, thousands of workers die every year from mining accidents, and instantaneous coal outbursts in underground mines are among the major killers. But although scientists have been investigating coal outbursts for more than 150 years, the precise mechanism is still unknown.

BATON ROUGE – For Sophie Warny, LSU assistant professor of geology and geophysics and curator at the LSU Museum of Natural Science, years of patience in analyzing Antarctic samples with low fossil recovery finally led to a scientific breakthrough. She and colleagues from around the world now have proof of a sudden, remarkably warm period in Antarctica that occurred about 15.7 million years ago and lasted for a few thousand years.

This release is available in http://chinese..org/zh/emb_releases/2009-10/ci-nwt092909.php">Chinese.

It's not every day you find clues to the planet's inner workings in aquarium scum. But that's what happened a few years ago when University of Washington researchers cultured a tiny organism from the bottom of a Seattle Aquarium tank and found it can digest ammonia, a key environmental function. New results show this minute organism and its brethren play a more central role in the planet's ecology than previously suspected.

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 30, 2009) -- U.S. seismologists have found evidence that the massive 2004 earthquake that triggered killer tsunamis throughout the Indian Ocean weakened at least a portion of California's famed San Andreas Fault. The results, which appear this week in the journal Nature, suggest that the Earth's largest earthquakes can weaken fault zones worldwide and may trigger periods of increased global seismic activity.

Wild salmon and farmed salmon can now be distinguished from each other by a technique that examines the chemistry of their scales.

Dr Clive Trueman, who is based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton said:

New work by chemists at UC Davis shows that ethylene, a gas that is important both as a hormone that controls fruit ripening and as a raw material in industrial chemistry, can bind reversibly to tin atoms. The research, published Sept. 25 in the journal Science, could have implications for understanding catalytic processes.

Ethylene has long been known to react with transition metals such as iron or copper, but was not thought to react reversibly with metals such as tin or aluminum, said Philip Power, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and senior author on the paper.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Sept. 28, 2009 -- The Department of Energy's Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), already the world's most powerful facility for pulsed neutron scattering science, is now the first pulsed spallation neutron source to break the one-megawatt barrier.