Earth

Why does a solid metal that is engineered for ductility become brittle, often suddenly and with dramatic consequences, in the presence of certain liquid metal impurities?

The phenomenon, known as liquid metal embrittlement, or LME, has baffled metallurgists for a century.

Now, a team of ceramics researchers has shed light on LME by obtaining atomic-scale images of unprecedented resolution of the grain boundaries, or internal interfaces, where LME occurs.

A study published by researchers at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute (ASI) has shed first-ever light on a class of heterometallic molecular structures whose unique features point the way to breakthroughs in the development of lightweight fuel cell technology. The structures contain a previously-unexplored combination of rare-earth and d-transition metals ideally suited to the compact storage of hydrogen.

WASHINGTON -- Stereotypes suggest women are more cooperative than men, but an analysis of 50 years of research shows that men are equally cooperative, particularly in situations involving a dilemma that pits the interests of an individual against the interests of a group.

Additionally, men cooperate better with other men than women cooperate with each other, according to the research, published online by the American Psychological Association in Psychological Bulletin. Women tend to cooperate more than men when interacting with the opposite-sex, the analysis found.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main cause of global warming – increased by 45 % between 1990 and 2010, and reached an all-time high of 33 billion tonnes in 2010. Increased energy efficiency, nuclear energy and the growing contribution of renewable energy are not compensating for the globally increasing demand for power and transport, which is strongest in developing countries.

After the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011, the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant was severely compromised and radioactive material was found in the water in many of the surrounding areas, but the extent of this contamination remained unknown. In a study published today in the online journal PLoS ONE, researchers report that the reactor accident fallout extended as far as the San Francisco Bay area, resulting in elevated levels of radioactive material that were nonetheless very low and posed no health risk to the public.

The Universe wouldn't be the same without the Higgs boson. This legendary particle plays a role in cosmology and reveals the possible existence of another closely related particle.

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Sept. 21, 2011) -- University of Oregon researchers have devised a mathematically rich analytic approach to account for often-missing thermodynamic and molecular parameters in molecular dynamic simulations.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.: – A new plant that buries its seeds, the first in its family, is discovered in the Atlantic forest of Bahia, Brazil, by an international team of scientists.

A University of Alberta research team has turned their newly developed 3-D microscope technology on ancient sea creatures and hopes to expand its use.

Metrologists are measurement artists who are very precise – in the case of the Boltzmann constant up to the sixth decimal place. Whoever is able to determine it very exactly will cause a small revolution in the field of worldwide temperature measurement: The temperature unit will then no longer be based - as hitherto - on a chemico-physical material property, i.e. the triple point of water, but on an unchangeable fundamental constant.

UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden have discovered how an enzyme "knows" where to insert a double bond when desaturating plant fatty acids. Understanding the mechanism — which relies on a single amino acid far from the enzyme's active site — solves a 40-year mystery of how these enzymes exert such location-specific control.

A shipboard expedition off Norway, to determine how methane escapes from beneath the Arctic seabed, has discovered widespread pockets of the gas and numerous channels that allow it to reach the seafloor.

Methane is a powerful "greenhouse" gas and the research, carried out over the past week aboard the Royal Research Ship James Clark Ross, will improve understanding of its origins in this area, its routes to the sea floor and how the amount of gas escaping might increase as the ocean warms. This could have important implications for global climate change and ocean acidification.

A new paper explains weaknesses in our understanding of climate change and how we can fix them. These issues mean predictions vary wildly about how quickly temperatures will rise. This has serious implications for long term political and economic planning.

In biologically active enzyme substrate compounds, as can be found in medicines, water plays a more decisive role than has been imagined up to now. The surrounding water acts like an "adhesive", in order to keep the substrate at the right place on an enzyme. For this, the dynamism of the water is retarded. Scientists at the RUB under Prof. Dr. Martina Havenith (Physical Chemistry) in close cooperation with the group of Prof. Irit Sagi from the Israeli Weizmann Institute have been able to observe and prove the retardation of the water's dynamism "live" for the first time in close.

Once the engulfing — endocytosis — begins, there is no turning back. Within minutes, the cell senses it can't fully engulf the nanostructure and essentially dials 911. "At this stage, it's too late," Gao said. "It's in trouble and calls for help, triggering an immune response that can cause repeated inflammation."