Earth

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- After the last ice age peaked about 18,000 years ago, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide rose about 30 percent. Scientists believe that the additional carbon dioxide -- a heat-trapping greenhouse gas -- played a key role in warming the planet and melting the continental ice sheets. They have long hypothesized that the source of the gas was the deep ocean.

Theoretical physicists of the University of Innsbruck have formulated a new concept to engineer exotic, so-called topological states of matter in quantum mechanical many-body systems. They linked concepts of quantum optics and condensed matter physics and show a direction to build a quantum computer which is immune against perturbations. The scientists have published their work in the journal Nature Physics.

A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of the Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring that was caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere. University of Toronto physicist Kaley Walker was part of the international team behind the study to be published online Sunday, October 2 in Nature.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA -- Boston College researchers have discovered two early-stage phases of carbon nanotube growth during plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, finding a disorderly tangle of tube growth that ultimately yields to orderly rows of the nanoscopic tubes, according to a report in the latest edition of the journal Nanotechnology.

COPENHAGEN, DENMARK (3 OCTOBER 2011)—Responding to appeals from African leaders for new tools to deal with the effects of climate change on food production, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) has released a series of studies focused on "climate proofing" crops critical to food security in the developing world.

Volcanologists from the University of Leicester have uncovered one of the world's best-preserved accessible examples of a monstrous landslide that followed a huge volcanic eruption on the Canarian island of Tenerife.

Otto, NC—Forest Service Southern Research Station (SRS) scientists recently used long-term data from the Coweeta Hydrological Laboratory (Coweeta) in Western North Carolina to examine the feasibility of managing forests for water supply under the changing weather conditions forecast for the future.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- The carbon dioxide we exhale and the odors our skins emanate serve as crucial cues to female mosquitoes on the hunt for human hosts to bite and spread diseases such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever.

Two entomologists at the University of California, Riverside have now performed experiments to study how female Aedes aegypti -- mosquitoes that transmit yellow fever and dengue -- respond to plumes of carbon dioxide and human odor.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Sept. 30, 2011 -- Molecular motion in proteins comes in three distinct classes, according to a collaboration by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee, in research reported in Physical Review Letters.

The research team, directed by ORNL-UT Governor's Chairs Jeremy Smith and Alexei Sokolov, combined high-performance computer simulation with neutron scattering experiments to understand atomic-level motions that underpin the operations of proteins.

The heat is on where elephants roam. Daytime temperatures in the natural environment of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) average between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius. Elephants do not sweat or pant to cool down and their small surface-to-volume ratio restricts heat loss. Experts have long suspected that elephants may have a heat storage mechanism similar to that used by camels and other desert mammals.

In October's issue of Physics World, Phil Marshall, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, calls on physicists to pull their weight when it comes to climate change, drawing on his own research showing that astronomers average 23,000 air miles per year flying to observatories, conferences and meetings, and use 130 KWh more energy per day than the average US citizen.

Marshall says that physicists must not only act as "trusted voices" in climate-change debates, but also do all they can to reduce their own carbon footprints.

Researchers at the University of Leeds and Durham University have solved a long-standing problem that could revolutionize the way new plastics are developed.

The breakthrough will allow experts to create the 'perfect plastic' with specific uses and properties by using a high-tech 'recipe book.' It will also increase our ability to recycle plastics. The research paper is published in the prestigious journal Science on Thursday.

London. The global uptake of carbon by land plants may be up to 45 per cent more than previously thought. This is the conclusion of an international team of scientists, based on the variability of heavy oxygen atoms in the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere driven by the El Niño effect. As the oxygen atoms in carbon dioxide were converted faster than expected during the El Niño years, current estimates for the uptake of carbon by plants are probably too low. These should be corrected upwards, say the researchers in the current issue of the scientific journal NATURE.

Groundbreaking research by the National Physical Laboratory's (NPL) Quantum Detection Group and an international team of collaborators is underpinning the biggest change in the Système Internationale d'unités (SI Units) since the system began 50 years ago.

It has long been the goal of scientists to relate all of the unit definitions to fundamental constants of nature, making them stable and universal, and giving them closer links to each other and the quantities they measure.

The development of periodic structures in embryos giving rise to the formation of, e.g., spine segments, is controlled not by genes but by simple physical and chemical phenomena. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and the University Pierre et Marie Curie have proposed a straightforward theoretical model to describe the process, and studied how the segmentation is affected by internal, thermodynamic noise of the system. The results turned out to be counterintuitive.