Earth

CLEVELAND – Molecules that are twisted are ubiquitous in nature, and have important consequences in biology, chemistry, physics and medicine. Some molecules have unique and technologically useful optical properties; the medicinal properties of drugs depend on the direction of the twist; and within us – think of the double helix – twisted DNA can interact with different proteins.

This twisting is called chirality and researchers at Case Western Reserve University have found they can use a macroscopic brute force to impose and induce a twist in an otherwise non-chiral molecule.

Scientists have found that the distinctive glossiness of the buttercup flower (Ranunculus repens), which children like to shine under the chin to test whether their friends like butter, is related to its unique anatomical structure. Their findings were published today, 14 December, in the Royal Society journal Interface.

The Holy Grail of high-energy physics — the predicted but elusive Higgs boson — is almost within reach, and the Brandeis high-energy physics group, along with other particle physicists around the world collaborating on making the finding, is almost giddy with excitement.

PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day.

New York University physicists are part of a research team that has narrowed the search for the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is a building block of the universe. In an announcement made today in Geneva, scientists said they have found signs of its existence and narrowed the regions where the elusive particle could be.

"If these first hints evolve into a conclusive observation of the Higgs boson, it will be a triumph of human intellect and ingenuity," said NYU physicist Kyle Cranmer, one of the project's researchers.

Today's announcement from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN points to promising signs for the existence of the Higgs boson. Weizmann Institute scientists have been prominent participants in ATLAS, one of the two experiments to produce results in the search for this elementary particle. Prof. Giora Mikenberg was the ATLAS Muon Project leader for many years and now heads the Israeli LHC team. Prof. Ehud Duchovni heads the Weizmann Atlas group as well as a small group looking for SUSY signals. Prof Eilam Gross is currently the ATLAS Higgs physics group convener.

A team of scientists have made it easier to study atomic or subatomic-scale properties of the building blocks of matter (which also include protons, neutrons and electrons) known as fermions by slowing down the movement of a large quantity of gaseous atoms at ultra-low temperature. This is according to a study recently published in EPJ D¹ as part of a cold quantum matter special issue, by researchers from the Paris-based École Normale Supérieure and the Non-Linear Institute at Nice Sophia-Antipolis University in France.

NEW YORK (December 13, 2011) – The Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a southern elephant seal for an astonishing 18,000 miles – the equivalent of New York to Sydney and back again.

WCS tracked the male seal from December, 2010, to November, 2011. The animal – nicknamed Jackson – was tagged on the beach in Admiralty Sound in Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile. WCS conservationists fitted Jackson with a small satellite transmitter that recorded his exact location when he surfaced to breathe.

DURHAM, N.C. – Increased salinity and concentrations of trace elements in one West Virginia watershed have been tied directly to multiple surface coal mines upstream by a detailed new survey of stream chemistry. The Duke University team that conducted the study said it provides new evidence of the cumulative effects multiple mountaintop mining permits can have in a river network.

"Whereas others in the same plots, you wouldn't know they were in the heat. They had lots of flowers and lots of good growth. There was really a big difference between these two extremes which was just wonderful for us," Byrne said.

Many of the plants that handled the heat well were from lines Byrne has been breeding for four rose generations, or about 10 years.

"We know they are black spot tolerant, and were hoping they were heat tolerant," he said. "So now we have some lines that have both traits at high levels which is good."

For a long time miniaturization has been the magic word in electronics. Dr. Willi Auwaerter and Professor Johannes Barth, together with their team of physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), have now presented a novel molecular switch in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Decisive for the functionality of the switch is the position of a single proton in a porphyrin ring with an inside diameter of less than half a nanometer. The physicists can set four distinct states on demand.

EAST LANSING, MI—Wine grape production in the Great Lakes Viticultural Region can be a challenging enterprise. Spring frost, winter injury, short and variable growing seasons, and cool, humid growing conditions subject grape vines to disease, including harvest season cluster rot. Tight-clustered wine grape varieties in the region show varying susceptibility to cluster rot; cultivars such as Pinot gris, Pinot noir, Riesling, Seyval, and Vignoles are all susceptible, making it difficult to achieve maximum fruit maturity for these economically important varieties.

ITHACA, N.Y. — No laggards, those bees and plants.

As warm temperatures due to climate change encroach winter, bees and plants keep pace.

Berkeley — Trees are dying in the Sahel, a region in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, and human-caused climate change is to blame, according to a new study led by a scientist at the University of California, Berkeley.

The appearance of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere probably did not occur as a single event, but as a long series of starts and stops, according to an international team of researchers who investigated rock cores from the FAR DEEP project.