Earth

Wood or concrete? Railroads around the world face that decision as they replace millions of deteriorating cross ties, also known as railway sleepers, those rectangular objects used as a base for railroad tracks. A new report concludes that emissions of carbon dioxide — one of the main greenhouse gases contributing to global warming — from production of concrete sleepers are up to six times less than emissions associated with timber sleepers. The study is scheduled for the June 1 issue of ACS' Environmental Science & Technology.

PASADENA, Calif.—Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed an efficient method to detect entanglement shared among multiple parts of an optical system. They show how entanglement, in the form of beams of light simultaneously propagating along four distinct paths, can be detected with a surprisingly small number of measurements. Entanglement is an essential resource in quantum information science, which is the study of advanced computation and communication based on the laws of quantum mechanics.

Science has unearthed the secret to what might have been alchemy at Oldoinyo Lengai volcano in Tanzania.

There, in the ancient East African Rift at a place known to local Maasai people as the Mountain of God, Oldoinyo Lengai spews forth carbon dioxide-laden lavas called carbonatites. The carbonatites line the volcano's flanks like snowballs.

Oldoinyo Lengai is the only place on Earth where carbonatites currently erupt--and where carbon dioxide from a volcano doesn't vanish into thin air as a gas.

Monsoon is a global system, and many arrays of evidence indicate that it drives long-term cyclicity of the carbon reservoir in the global ocean. The new view is introduced in a substantial paper in Issue 7 (April 2009) of Chinese Science Bulletin.

For over 300 years, monsoon has been considered as a gigantic land-sea breeze of regional scale, but now it is considered as a global system over all continents but Antarctica. This new develoment in modern climatology, however, has not yet been responded by paleo-climatology.

Beef farmers can breathe easier thanks to University of Alberta researchers who have developed a formula to reduce methane gas in cattle.

By developing equations that balance starch, sugar, cellulose, ash, fat and other elements of feed, a Canada-wide team of scientists has given beef producers the tools to lessen the methane gas their cattle produce by as much as 25 per cent.

Rising shale gas production in the United States and Canada as well as potential natural gas supplies from Iraq could be pivotal in curbing Russia's ability to organize an "energy weapon" against European consumers, according to a new study released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Early indicator of changes in climate, ecosystems

Even for Northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis), which support commercial fisheries worldwide, timing is everything in life. The tiny creatures, eaten in shrimp rolls and shrimp salad, occupy a pivotal role in the oceanic food chain and may serve as early indicators of changing climate due to their sensitivity to temperature. Northern shrimp also seem to have an uncanny sense of reproductive timing, releasing their larvae to match the arrival of food and thus maximizing larval survival.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- New research findings could lead to faster, smaller and more versatile computer chips.

A team of scientists and engineers from Stanford, the University of Florida and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the first to create one of two basic types of semiconductors using an exotic, new, one-atom-thick material called graphene. The findings could help open the door to computer chips that are not only smaller and hold more memory -- but are also more adept at uploading large files, downloading movies, and other data- and communication-intensive tasks.

The creation of large-area graphene using copper may enable the manufacture of new graphene-based devices that meet the scaling requirements of the semiconductor industry, leading to faster computers and electronics, according to a team of scientists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.

A rare "Rydberg" molecule discovered by scientists from the University of Stuttgart and University of Oklahoma upheld scientific theory predicting the molecule existed. The team used a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to a temperature of 3 millionths of a degree above absolute zero to produce the molecule. The longest-lived molecule produced by the team survived only for 18 microseconds.

COLLEGE PARK, Md - Geologists may have uncovered the answer to an age-old question – an ice-age-old question, that is. It appears that Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the earth.

Source:

Source:

Source: