Earth

AMHERST, Mass. – Using one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, an international team including physicists Laura Cadonati and Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are now measuring the flow of solar neutrinos reaching earth more precisely than ever before. The detector probes matter at the most fundamental level and provides a powerful tool for directly observing the sun's composition.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- University of Illinois physicists have experimentally demonstrated for the first time how three-dimensional conduction is affected by the defects that plague materials. Understanding these effects is important for many electronics applications.

Led by physics professor Brian DeMarco, the researchers achieved complete localization of quantum matter waves in three dimensions, first theorized roughly half a century ago. The group published its findings in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Science.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Rifting is one of the fundamental geological forces that have shaped our planet. Were it not for the stretching of continents and the oceans that filled those newly created basins, Earth would be a far different place. Yet because rifting involves areas deep below the Earth's surface, scientists have been unable to understand fully how it occurs.

DURHAM, N.H. – A technology commonly used to map the bottom of the deep ocean can also detect gas seeps in the water column with remarkably high fidelity, according to scientists from the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This finding, made onboard the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer in the Gulf of Mexico, will lead to more effective mapping of these gas seeps and, ultimately, enhanced understanding of our ocean environments.

Bremerhaven, 6 October 2011. In the central Arctic the proportion of old, thick sea ice has declined significantly. Instead, the ice cover now largely consists of thin, one-year-old floes. This is one of the results that scientists of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association brought back from the 26th Arctic expedition of the research vessel Polarstern.

Large, persistent populations of genetically engineered canola 1 have been found outside of cultivation in North Dakota. As genetically engineered crops become increasingly prevalent in the United States, concerns remain about potential ecological side effects.

Not long ago, geologically speaking, a now-vanished lake covered a huge expanse of today's Canadian prairie. As big as Hudson Bay, the lake was fed by melting glaciers as they receded at the end of the last ice age. At its largest, Glacial Lake Agassiz, as it is known, covered most of the Canadian province of Manitoba, plus a good part of western Ontario. A southern arm straddled the Minnesota-North Dakota border.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5—Few people have ever claimed to see three rainbows arcing through the sky at once. In fact, scientific reports of these phenomena, called tertiary rainbows, were so rare—only five in 250 years—that until now many scientists believed sightings were as fanciful as Leprechaun's gold at a rainbow's end. These legendary optical rarities, caused by three reflections of each light ray within a raindrop, have finally been confirmed, thanks to photographic perseverance and a new meteorological model that provides the scientific underpinnings to find them.

A new insight into global photosynthesis, the chemical process governing how ocean and land plants absorb and release carbon dioxide, has been revealed in research that will assist scientists to more accurately assess future climate change.

In a paper published today in Nature, a team of US, Dutch and Australian scientists have estimated that the global rate of photosynthesis, the chemical process governing the way ocean and land plants absorb and release CO2, occurs 25% faster than previously thought.

Constructing buildings, power-plants and roads has driven a substantial increase in China's CO2 emission growth, according to a new study involving the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Fast growing capital investments in infrastructure projects led to the expansion of the construction industry and its energy and CO2 intensive supply chain, such as steel and cement production. As a result of this transformation of China's economy, more and more CO2 was released per unit of gross domestic product – a reversion of a long-term trend.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—October 4, 2011— A team of scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and Yale University have begun to unravel the complex process by which cells take in and store microscopic fat molecules, suggesting new directions for further research into solutions for obesity and its related conditions, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease.

Green tea may slow down weight gain and serve as another tool in the fight against obesity, according to Penn State food scientists.

Obese mice that were fed a compound found in green tea along with a high-fat diet gained weight significantly more slowly than a control group of mice that did not receive the green tea supplement, said Joshua Lambert, assistant professor of food science in agricultural sciences.

"In this experiment, we see the rate of body weight gain slows down," said Lambert.

Scientists have created a working cloaking device that not only takes advantage of one of nature's most bizarre phenomenon, but also boasts unique features; it has an 'on and off' switch and is best used underwater.

The researchers, from the University of Dallas, Texas, have demonstrated the device's ability to make objects disappear in a fascinating video shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YO4TTpYg7g

Findings by researchers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute and their colleagues at Tohoku University and in the Netherlands have resolved a long-standing debate over the structure of water molecules at the water surface. Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the research combines theoretical and experimental techniques to pinpoint, for the first time, the origin of water's unique surface properties in the interaction of water pairs at the air-water interface.

STONY BROOK, NY and STANFORD, Calif., Oct. 3, 2011–Changing human activities coupled with a dynamic environment over the past few centuries have caused fluctuating periods of decline and recovery of corals reefs in the Hawaiian Islands, according to a study sponsored in part by the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stony Brook University.