Earth

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- At the smallest scales, magnetism may not work quite the way scientists expected, according to a recent paper in Physical Review Letters by Rafał Oszwałdowski and Igor Žutić of the University at Buffalo and Andre Petukhov of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.

The three physicists have proposed that it would be possible to create a quantum dot -- a kind of nanoparticle -- that is magnetic under surprising circumstances.

Dennis Chesters of the NASA GOES Project noted of the animation, "The Chilean caldera still emits a steady stream of ash, three weeks after the initial eruption. Fortunately, the volume is much less, and the cold winter wind from the south carries it up the coast out over the Pacific, instead of over the Andes into Argentina."

A new database of plants' traits will help scientists around the world learn more about how climate change is affecting ecosystems.

The availability of plant trait data in the unified global database promises to support a paradigm shift in Earth system sciences.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (June 29, 2011) – American artist Jackson Pollock's paintings often clashed with the rules of the art world. But they couldn't defy the laws of physics, according to a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Boston College and Harvard who give quantitative form to Pollock's methods and genius in the latest edition of the journal Physics Today.

Scientists who pioneered a revolutionary 3-D microscope technique are now describing an extension of that technology into a new dimension that promises sweeping applications in medicine, biological research, and development of new electronic devices. Their reports on so-called 4-D scanning ultrafast electron microscopy, and a related technique, appear in two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

An emerging field of science termed "isoscapes" is making it possible to pinpoint the geographical origins of illegal drugs, trafficked endangered animals, dismembered human body parts at crime scenes, and even pricey scotch whiskey and cheese, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the American Chemical Society's weekly newsmagazine.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – One-third of immigrant children and more than 70 percent of foreign-born, nonelderly adults living in New Jersey five years or less lack health coverage, a Rutgers statewide survey finds.

The report, "Health, Coverage and Access to Care of New Jersey Immigrants," by the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy (CSHP), also concludes immigrants face significant access-to-care barriers and their lack of health insurance is a much larger problem than for New Jerseyans born in the United States.

Honolulu, HI – Small scale convection at the base of the Pacific plate has been simulated in a model of mantle plume dynamics, enabling reasearchers to explain the complex set of observations at the Hawaiian hotspot, according to a new study posted online in the June 26th edition of Nature Geoscience. "A range of observations cannot be explained by the classical version of the mantle plume concept," says Maxim Ballmer, Post Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Geology and Geophysics in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at UHM.

At a recent Kavli Futures Symposium, 19 experts from a diverse range of fields discussed the promise of using the lab to understand and exploit the evolution of organisms -- progress that may one day lead to new vaccines or other biotechnology products.

For Hollywood celebrities, the term "splitsville" usually means "check your prenup." For scientists wanting to mass-produce high quality nanoribbons from boron nitride nanotubes, "splitsville" could mean "happily ever after."

A new, cost-effective process for colouring titanium can be used in manufacturing products from sporting equipment to colour-coded nuclear waste containers.

"The new method uses an electrochemical solution to produce coloured titanium, improving on an older, time-consuming and expensive method where heat was used to develop a coloured layer," says Gregory Jerkiewicz, a professor in the Department of Chemistry.

PULLMAN, Wash.—Some baseball superstitions are accepted as cold, hard truth. But in the world of physics, the most accepted verities are subject to experimentation.

A corked bat hits the ball further? Not in Lloyd Smith's lab.

Baseballs today are livelier than in the past? See above.

Storing balls in a humidor can curb home run production? We'll grant you that one, but only because Smith has fired the balls through a cannon and measured their bounciness as they hit a bat.

An EPA study published online Monday in Environmental Health Perspectives finds that the 2008 peat bog wildfires in NC led to an increase in emergency room visits for respiratory and cardiovascular effects.

The study found a 37 percent increase in ER visits for people with symptoms of heart failure during a three day period of dense smoke exposure and the following five days.

Other findings include a 65 percent increase in visits for asthma, 73 percent increase in visits for COPD and 59 percent increase in visits for pneumonia and bronchitis.

"There's a longstanding debate about how rapidly glaciation progressed in Antarctica," said Sophie Warny, a Louisiana State University geologist who specializes in palynology (the study of fossilized pollen and spores) and led the palynological reconstruction. "We found that the fossil record was unambiguous; glacial expansion in the Antarctic Peninsula was a long, gradual process that was influenced by atmospheric, tectonic and oceanographic changes."

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Physicists working at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of Konstanz in Germany have developed a breakthrough in the use of diamond in quantum physics, marking an important step toward quantum computing. The results are reported in this week's online edition of Nature Physics.

The physicists were able to coax the fragile quantum information contained within a single electron in diamond to move into an adjacent single nitrogen nucleus, and then back again using on-chip wiring.