Earth

It has been 100 years since the discovery of superconductivity, a state achieved when mercury was cooled, with the help of liquid helium, to nearly the coldest temperature achievable to form a superfluid that provides no resistance to electrons as they flow through it.

ST. PAUL, MN—Five years after the launch of a global effort to protect the world's most important food crop from variants of Ug99, a new and deadly form of wheat rust, scientists say they are close to producing super varieties of wheat that will resist the potent pathogen, while boosting yields by as much as 15 percent.

MADISON – In chemistry, so-called aromatic molecules compose a large and versatile family of chemical compounds that are the stuff of pharmaceuticals, electronic materials and consumer products ranging from sunscreen to plastic soda bottles.

Writing in the current online issue (June 9) of the journal Science, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry Professor Shannon Stahl reports a new, environmentally friendly way to make substituted aromatic molecules that can be customized for different industrial needs.

Athens, Ga. – New research just published in the journal Science by a team of chemists at the University of Georgia and colleagues in Germany shows for the first time that a mechanism called tunneling control may drive chemical reactions in directions unexpected from traditional theories.

The finding has the potential to change how scientists understand and devise reactions in everything from materials science to biochemistry.

PHILADELPHIA -- Two University of Pennsylvania engineers have proposed the possibility of two-dimensional metamaterials. These one-atom- thick metamaterials could be achieved by controlling the conductivity of sheets of graphene, which is a single layer of carbon atoms.

Professor Nader Engheta and graduate student Ashkan Vakil, both of the Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, published their theoretical research in the journal Science.

Controlling water loss is an important ability for modern land plants as it helps them thrive in changing environments. New research from the University of Bristol, published today in the journal Current Biology, shows that water conserving innovations occurred very early in plants' evolutionary history.

The idea is simple, says Kevin Moeller, PhD, and yet it has huge implications. All we are recommending is using photovoltaic cells (clean energy) to power electrochemical reactions (clean chemistry). Moeller is the first to admit this isn't new science.

"But we hope to change the way people do this kind of chemistry by making a connection for them between two existing technologies," he says.

Bonn 8 June Evidence from benchmark sites across the tropics is proving that an integrated, multifunctional approach that allows for land-use sharing in agriculture, forests and other functions can achieve good results in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and raising food production levels. It provides more realistic solutions than the popular view on sparing land for forests through agricultural intensification.

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have built what is currently the strongest source of ultracold neutrons. Ultracold neutrons (UCNs) were first generated here five years ago. They are much slower than thermal neutrons and are characterized by the fact that they can be stored in special containers. This property makes them important tools for experiments to investigate why matter dominates over antimatter in our universe and how the lightest elements were created directly after the Big Bang.

RICHMOND, Va. (June 8, 2011) – A team of Virginia Commonwealth University scientists has discovered a new class of 'superatoms' – a stable cluster of atoms that can mimic different elements of the periodic table – with unusual magnetic characteristics.

The superatom contains magnetized magnesium atoms, an element traditionally considered as non-magnetic. The metallic character of magnesium along with infused magnetism may one day be used to create molecular electronic devices for the next generation of faster processors, larger memory storage and quantum computers.

Air and water meet over most of the earth's surface, but exactly where one ends and the other begins turns out to be a surprisingly subtle question.

A new study in Nature narrows the boundary to just one quarter of water molecules in the uppermost layer – those that happen to have one hydrogen atom in water and the other vibrating freely above.

Researchers from NOAA have discovered a potent and highly-debilitating toxin in the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, a first-of-its-kind chemical finding that is now prompting investigations of other marine mammals in the state.

The toxin, ciguatoxin, is produced by marine algae common on coral reefs, and accumulates in fish species that are consumed by humans. Ciguatera, the human disease caused by ciguatoxin, affects thousands of people every year worldwide and comes in the form of acute gastrointestinal and neurological illness with symptoms resembling chronic fatigue syndrome.

COLLEGE PARK, MD (June 8, 2011) -- When the current financial crisis hit, the failure of traditional economic doctrines to provide any sort of early warning shocked not only financial experts worldwide, but also governments and the general public, and we all began to question the effectiveness and validity of those doctrines.

A research team based in Israel decided to investigate what went awry, searching for order in an apparently random system. They report their findings in the American Institute of Physics' journal AIP Advances.

This week it was announced that a dark matter detector about 700 meters below the ground in a Minnesota mine has recorded a seasonal modulation in staggeringly faint electrical pulses. One possible reason: this could be the result of dark matter particles called WIMPs that envelope the Milky Way galaxy and collide with atoms in the detector's germanium crystal.

Birds and people both enjoy urban woodlands that have been cleared to just the right degree. This is the conclusion of scientists at the University of Gothenburg who have carried out large-scale field experiments in urban woodlands in south-western Sweden.

"Three out of four people want a mixture of open and untouched forest for rambling. At the same time, we can see that birds do well and continue to nest in woodlands where less than 50% has been cleared", says Erik Heyman of the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg.