Earth

Research collaboration between India and Germany has intensified. This was highlighted by Professor Matthias Kleiner, President of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), during a visit to India taking him to several universities and research institutes in New Delhi on Nov. 3 and 4, 2011.

The world's first prototype of a hand-held fingerprint drug testing device has been created by UK technology company Intelligent Fingerprinting.

The unique device detects drugs and other substances from the sweat contained in fingerprints and will enable mobile testing with instant results.

A spin-out of the University of East Anglia (UEA), Intelligent Fingerprinting Ltd is based in the NRP Innovation Centre at the Norwich Research Park. The company developed the prototype with eg technology – a product design, development and engineering consultancy based in Cambridge.

Kawasaki Disease (KD) is a severe childhood disease that many parents, even some doctors, mistake for an inconsequential viral infection. In fact, if not diagnosed or treated in time, it can lead to irreversible heart damage. After 50 years of research, including genetic studies, scientists have been unable to pinpoint the cause of the disease.

SALT LAKE CITY -- A truck-mounted radar dish often used to chase Midwest tornadoes is getting a workout in Utah this month as University of Utah meteorologists use it to get an unprecedented look inside snow and rain storms over the Salt Lake Valley and the surrounding Wasatch and Oquirrh mountains.

"For students who love snow, it's every bit as thrilling as chasing tornadoes," says avid skier and atmospheric sciences Professor Jim Steenburgh. "That's why we call it storm chasing, Utah style."

Providence, RI--- In the 19th century, Lord Kelvin made the inspiredguess that elements are knots in the "ether". Hydrogen would be onekind of knot, oxygen a different kind of knot---and so forththroughout the periodic table of elements.

Not to pick up electrons, but tweezers made of electrons. A recent paper* by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Virginia (UVA) demonstrates that the beams produced by modern electron microscopes can be used not just to look at nanoscale objects, but to move them around, position them and perhaps even assemble them.

November 8, 2011 - Health costs exceeding $14 billion dollars, 21,000 emergency room visits, nearly 1,700 deaths, and 9,000 hospitalizations are among the staggering impacts of six climate change-related events in the United States during the last decade, according to a first-of-its-kind study published in November 2011 edition of the journal Health Affairs.

Why there is stuff in the universe—more properly, why there is an imbalance between matter and antimatter—is one of the long-standing mysteries of cosmology. A team of researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just concluded a 10-year-long study of the fate of neutrons in an attempt to resolve the question, the most sensitive such measurement ever made. The universe, they concede, has managed to keep its secret for the time being, but they've succeeded in significantly narrowing the number of possible answers.

NOAA's updated Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the direct climate influence of many greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, shows a continued steady upward trend that began with the Industrial Revolution of the 1880s.

The release of massive amounts of carbon from methane hydrate frozen under the seafloor 56 million years ago has been linked to the greatest change in global climate since a dinosaur-killing asteroid presumably hit Earth 9 million years earlier. New calculations by researchers at Rice University show that this long-controversial scenario is quite possible.

The number of species being recognised as endangered is ever increasing and a new study, published in Conservation Biology, reveals the unanimity among conservation scientists of expectations of a major loss of biological diversity. The survey also shows a growing acceptance of controversial strategies such as triage, a decision to prioritise resources and not to intervene to save some highly threatened species.

Researchers at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, have developed a new, lower-voltage method of generating extra-long, lightning-like electrical arcs. The arcs are created when an electrical impulse is applied to a thin copper wire that subsequently explodes.

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – November 7, 2011 – An analysis of precipitation data collected from a lakebed in New York and a Rhode Island estuary has provided a link between the variability of precipitation in the Northeast with that of the Southwest. The results validate climate models that predict an increasing number of extreme weather events.

The research was published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Oct. 19.

The world's coastal marine ecosystems are being overlooked, both in terms of their ecological importance and their potential as a rallying point for conservation. Writing in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems Project Seahorse Director Dr. Amanda Vincent argues that increased protections are needed for the first 10 metres of depth of the world's oceans, where the richest diversity of marine habitats and animal life can be found and where most ocean-related human activity takes place.

People are eating more and more fish. To meet rising demand, fish are increasingly being cultivated in fish farms. Aquaculture is the fastest-developing branch of the global food industry, with annual growth of nine per cent. This rapid rise is also pushing up demand for fish feed, producers of which are facing a formidable challenge, because the supply of fishmeal and fish oil – important ingredients in feed – is dwindling. They are set to be replaced by crops such as soya, maize and rape, but the trouble with these is that feed pellets made from them might contain pesticides.