Earth

The current theory of continental drift provides a good model for understanding terrestrial processes through history. However, while plate tectonics is able to successfully shed light on processes up to 3 billion years ago, the theory isn't sufficient in explaining the dynamics of the earth and crust formation before that point and through to the earliest formation of planet, some 4.6 billion years ago. This is the conclusion of Tomas Naæraa of the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, a part of the University of Copenhagen.

TEMPE, Ariz. — An international team, led by the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and including members from Arizona State University, has shown how the world's most powerful X-ray laser can assist in cracking the atomic code of biomolecules, including a small protein found in egg whites.

In this month's Physics World, Sidney Perkowitz, Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus at Emory University, explains how applied physics led to the innovation of flameless cooking in the late 19th century and addresses the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population in a cleaner, more efficient way.

DURHAM, N.C. -- The search for alternatives to fossil fuels has prompted growing interest in the use of wood, harvested directly from forests, as a carbon-neutral energy source.

But a new study by researchers at Duke and Oregon State universities finds that leaving forests intact so they can continue to store carbon dioxide and keep it from re-entering the atmosphere will do more to curb climate change over the next century than cutting and burning their wood as fuel.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Paving a highway across South America is providing lessons on the impact of road construction elsewhere.

That's what a University of Florida researcher and his international colleagues have determined from analyzing communities along the Amazonian portion of the nearly 4,200-mile Interoceanic Highway, a coast-to-coast road that starts at ports in Brazil and will eventually connect to ones in Peru.

Many pharmaceutical companies in a new survey are making progress in embracing the guiding principles of green chemistry, which seek to minimize the use of potentially hazardous substances in producing medications, reduce the generation of waste and operate in other environmentally friendly ways. That's the conclusion of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

In the depths of the earth, it is anything but peaceful: large quantities of liquids carve their way through the rock as fluids, causing magma to form. A research team led by the University of Münster, has shown that the fluids flow a lot faster through solid rock than previously assumed. In the Chinese Tian Shan Mountains, fluids pushed their way to the earth's mantle from great depths in just 200 years rather than in the course of tens or even hundreds of thousands of years.

The human tongue has just one receptor type for detecting sweetness but about25 different ones for bitter flavors. Scientists at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke (DIfE) have now identified the two receptors, hTAS2R4 and hTAS2R14, that detect the bitter after taste of Stevia.

Enormous volcanic eruptions with potential to end civilizations may have surprisingly short fuses, researchers have discovered.

AMES, Iowa – Graphene has caused a lot of excitement among scientists since the extremely strong and thin carbon material was discovered in 2004. Just one atom thick, the honeycomb-shaped material has several remarkable properties combining mechanical toughness with superior electrical and thermal conductivity.

Some of the steepest mountain slopes in the world got that way because of the interplay between terrain uplift associated with plate tectonics and powerful streams cutting into hillsides, leading to erosion in the form of large landslides, new research shows.

The work, presented online May 27 in Nature Geoscience, shows that once the angle of a slope exceeds 30 degrees – whether from uplift, a rushing stream carving away the bottom of the slope or a combination of the two – landslide erosion increases significantly until the hillside stabilizes.

WASHINGTON — Without immediate action, a new National Research Council report warns, the academic veterinary community could fail to prepare the next generation of veterinarians for faculty teaching and research positions as well as for jobs in state diagnostic laboratories, federal research and regulatory agencies, and the pharmaceutical and biologics industry. Although the supply of veterinarians is growing, more than half of veterinary students seek training in companion animal or pet medicine.

Boulder, Colorado, USA – The June GSA TODAY science article is now online and open access at http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/. In this issue, Gregory Retallack and Joshua Roering of the University of Oregon enter the long-standing debate as to whether rock platforms along coasts and rivers are the product of physical erosion or chemical weathering above the water table.

San Andreas Fault in Santa Cruz Mountains – large quakes more frequent than previously thought

HOUSTON -- (May 30, 2012) -- A detailed analysis of more than 4 million absorbent minerals has determined that new materials could help electricity producers slash as much as 30 percent of the "parasitic energy" costs associated with removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions.

The research by scientists at Rice University, the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) was published online this week in the journal Nature Materials.