Earth

VANCOUVER, CANADA - Over the decades X-ray crystallography has been fundamental in the development of many scientific fields. The method has revealed the structure and function of many biological molecules, including vitamins, drugs, proteins and nucleic acids such as DNA. However, in order to obtain good data, large single crystals are required. These are often nearly impossible to grow. There also is the problem that X-rays damage delicate biological samples.

PHILADELPHIA — Pompeii-like, a 300-million-year-old tropical forest was preserved in ash when a volcano erupted in what is today northern China. A new study by University of Pennsylvania paleobotanist Hermann Pfefferkorn and colleagues presents a reconstruction of this fossilized forest, lending insight into the ecology and climate of its time.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Geologists are hoping to learn a great deal about geologic carbon sequestration from injecting 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into sandstone 7,000 feet beneath Decatur, Ill. And they're hoping the public learns a lot from the endeavor, too.

Dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMS) have recently been a major focus of magnetic semiconductor research. A laboratory from the University of Science and Technology of China explored the feasibility of doping manganese (Mn) into zinc sulfide (ZnS) to obtain magnetic semiconductors.

In a remarkable feat of micro-engineering, UNSW physicists have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal.

The tiny electronic device, described today in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates.

This unprecedented atomic accuracy may yield the elementary building block for a future quantum computer with unparalleled computational efficiency.

New clues as to how the Earth's remote ecosystems have been influenced by the industrial revolution are locked, frozen in the ice of glaciers. That is the finding of a group of scientists, including Robert Spencer of the Woods Hole Research Center. The research will be published in the March 2012 issue of Nature Geoscience.

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a new method for chemically altering graphene, a development that could be a step toward the creation of faster, thinner, flexible electronics.

The past decade has witnessed a significant growth in Asian air pollution, causing a great concern for air quality and climate. If government policy makers hope to contain the problem, they will need increased research and better computer models of black carbon and other aerosol pollutants, also known as atmospheric brown cloud (ABC), according to University of Iowa engineering professor Gregory Carmichael.

Worldwide, smoke from landscape fires contributed to an average of 339,000 deaths per year between 1997 and 2006, according to new research published in Environmental Health Perspectives and released today during the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Vancouver, B.C. (Wednesday, February 15, 2012) – In 1997, a forest fire in Indonesia ignited an area of peatlands that smouldered for months. By the time it was over, the fire had released greenhouse gases equal to 20 to 40 percent of the total worldwide emissions that year from fossil fuels.

But that could be a drop in the bucket compared to future emissions from peat fires. Indonesian peatlands are dwarfed by Canada's. The total area of all peatland in Canada is estimated to be about twice the size of Saskatchewan.

Satellite images, air quality measurements and smoke forecasting models are useful tools to help individuals and public health professionals prepare for smoke episodes in areas at risk from forest fire smoke, according to University of British Columbia researcher Michael Brauer.

Brauer shares his insight into the health impacts of smoke exposure and suggests effective strategies to mitigate them today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada.

AMES, Iowa – The instant communications technology that nurtured grassroots revolutions in the Arab world could also help farmers cope with climate change, according to Iowa State University researchers.

Quantum cryptography is the ultimate secret message service. Now new research, to be presented at the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting, shows it can counter even the ultimate paranoid scenario: when the equipment or even the operator is in the control of a malicious power.

Just as NASA engineers test new rocket designs in computer studies before committing themselves to full prototypes, so physicists will often model matter under various circumstances to see whether something new appears. This is especially true of atomtronics, a relatively new science devoted to creating artificial tailored materials consisting of neutral atoms held in an array with laser beams, or atoms moving along a desired track under electric or magnetic influence.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The use of hydraulic fracturing in shale gas development took center stage Friday as a panel of U.S. and Canadian experts discussed the contentious practice in a three-hour symposium hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).