Earth

MERCED, Calif. — California isn't going to face a superstorm like Hurricane Sandy because the Pacific Ocean is too cold to feed that kind of weather system.

But that doesn't mean California won't see extreme weather, say researchers from the University of California, Merced.

AMES, Iowa – The human body has more than a trillion cells, most of them connected, cell to neighboring cells.

How, exactly, do those bonds work? What happens when a pulling force is applied to those bonds? How long before they break? Does a better understanding of all those bonds and their responses to force have implications for fighting disease?

What is light made of: waves or particles? This basic question has fascinated physicists since the early days of science. Quantum mechanics predicts that photons, particles of light, are both particles and waves simultaneously. Reporting in Science, physicists from the University of Bristol give a new demonstration of this wave-particle duality of photons, dubbed the 'one real mystery of quantum mechanics' by Nobel Prize laureate Richard Feynman.

Boulder, CO, USA – Sea levels are rising faster than expected from global warming, and University of Colorado geologist Bill Hay has a good idea why. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 meters by the year 2100. But current sea-level rise measurements meet or exceed the high end of that range and suggest a rise of one meter or more by the end of the century.

BOULDER -- Expanding its focus on the link between the atmosphere and human health, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is launching a three-year, international study into the impact of open-fire cooking on regional air quality and disease.

The study will break new ground by bringing together atmospheric scientists, engineers, statisticians, and social scientists who will analyze the effects of smoke from traditional cooking methods on households, villages, and entire regions.

Boulder, CO, USA – How have humans influenced Earth? Can geoscientists measure when human impacts began overtaking those of Earth's other inhabitants and that of the natural Earth system? Responding to increasing scientific recognition that humans have become the foremost agent of change at Earth's surface, organizers of this GSA technical session have brought together speakers and poster presentations from a variety of sources in order to answer these questions and define the "Geomorphology of the Anthropocene."

Plant roots are surrounded by thousands of bacteria and fungi living in the soil and on the root surface. To survive in this diverse environment, plants employ sophisticated detection systems to distinguish pathogenic microorganisms from beneficial microorganisms.

Here the so-called chitin molecules from microorganisms, along with modified versions, play an important role as they are detected by the plant surveillance system. Legumes, for example, build a defence against pathogenic microorganisms in response to simple chitin molecules.

This month's special issue of Physics World is devoted to animal physics, and includes science writer Stephen Ornes explanation of how pond skaters effortlessly skip across water leaving nothing but a small ripple in their wake.

As Ornes writes, our current understanding of the mechanisms adopted by the pond skater is down to the efforts of David Hu, who as a mathematics graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent four years studying their behaviour.

Halving the amount of nitrogen fertiliser used in certain areas of China would substantially decrease greenhouse gas emissions without affecting crop productivity and the area's natural carbon sink.

This is according to a new study, published today, 1 November, in IOP Publishing's Environmental Research Letters, which showed that a 60 per cent reduction in fertiliser use would significantly reduce emissions from areas that are, anyway, "over-fertilised", such as the North China Plain and middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin.

Berkeley — The more time it takes for an earthquake fault to heal, the faster the shake it will produce when it finally ruptures, according to a new study by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, who conducted their work using a tabletop model of a quake fault.

Cambridge, Mass. - October 31, 2012 - Scientists have created new kinds of particles, 1/100th the diameter of a human hair, that spontaneously assemble themselves into structures resembling molecules made from atoms. These new particles come together, or "self-assemble," to form structures in patterns that were previously impossible to make and hold promise for manufacturing advanced optical materials and ceramics.

Magnetically speaking, photons are the mavericks of the engineering world. Lacking electrical charge, they are free to run even in the most intense magnetic fields. But all that may soon change. In a paper published in Nature Photonics, an interdisciplinary team from Stanford University reports that it has created a device that tames the flow of photons with synthetic magnetism.

A team of physicists from Europe and South Africa showed that electrons moving randomly in graphene can mimic the dynamics of particles such as cosmic rays, despite travelling at a fraction of their speed, in a paper about to be published in EPJ B.

WASHINGTON--Around the globe, mariners and navies alike have long observed and included weather and sea states in navigational planning when plotting course or developing military strategy. And although forecasting had become an integral function by the start of the 20th century, these predictions were often crude and qualitative.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Predation by otters keeps urchin populations in check, allowing kelp –– a favorite food of urchins –– to flourish. But what if otters were harvested to near extinction for their fur? The resulting overabundance of urchins would decimate the kelp forest, leaving little food or shelter for fish and invertebrates. And so it may go, as declines in these species are likely to affect others.