Earth

Global climate change is anticipated to bring more extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves that could impact human health in the coming decades. An analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated that the city of Chicago could experience between 166 and 2,217 excess deaths per year attributable to heat waves using three different climate change scenarios for the final decades of the 21st century. The study was published May 1 edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The cactus, stalwart of the desert, has quite a story to tell about the evolution of plant communities found the world over.

Jülich/Aachen, 3 May 2011 - Optical data carriers such as DVDs, Blu-rays and CD-RWs store data in layers of so-called "phase change materials". In the future, these materials will enable the development of fast, non-volatile and energy-saving main memories. A prerequisite for this is a low thermal conductivity. Phase change materials display a surprisingly low thermal conductivity even in the crystalline state.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A matchbook-sized atomic clock 100 times smaller than its commercial predecessors has been created by a team of researchers at Symmetricom Inc. Draper Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories. The portable Chip Scale Atomic Clock (CSAC) — only about 1.5 inches on a side and less than a half-inch in depth — also requires 100 times less power than its predecessors.

MIAMI – May 3, 2011 – An international team of scientists report on the first observatory experiment to study the dynamic microbial life of an ever-changing environment inside Earth's crust. University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor Keir Becker contributed the deep-sea technology required to make long-term scientific observations of life beneath the seafloor.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The production of wind energy in the U.S. over the next 30-50 years will be largely unaffected by upward changes in global temperature, say a pair of Indiana University Bloomington scientists who analyzed output from several regional climate models to assess future wind patterns in America's lower 48 states.

Their report -- the first analysis of long-term stability of wind over the U.S. -- appears in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition.

A data memory can hardly be any smaller: researchers working with Gerhard Rempe at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching have stored quantum information in a single atom. The researchers wrote the quantum state of single photons, i.e. particles of light, into a rubidium atom and read it out again after a certain storage time. This technique can be used in principle to design powerful quantum computers and to network them with each other across large distances.

Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke are more likely to need intensive care and intubation when hospitalized with influenza, according to new research by the University of Rochester Medical Center presented today at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Denver. The children also had longer hospital stays.

Kansas City, MO – May 2, 2011 – A new study found that the recommended blood test may not be enough to catch type 2 diabetes in overweight children, missing more than two-thirds of children at high-risk for the condition. Researchers from Children's Mercy Hospital and Clinics found that performing two tests – both the recommended hemoglobin A1C test and an oral glucose tolerance test – could dramatically reduce the risk of delayed diagnosis in overweight children. The findings were presented Saturday at the Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting in Denver.

In one of his songs Bob Dylan asks "How many years can a mountain exist before it is washed to the sea?", and thus poses an intriguing geological question for which an accurate answer is not easily provided. Mountain ranges are in a constant interplay between climatically controlled weathering processes on the one hand and the tectonic forces that cause folding and thrusting and thus thickening of the Earth's crust on the other hand.

Exposure to the chemical bisphenol A during early pregnancy may be associated with wheezing in children, according to a Penn State College of Medicine researcher.

Bisphenol A, or BPA is a chemical found in many consumer products, including plastic water bottles and food containers. It is present in more than 90 percent of the U.S. population, suggesting widespread exposure. Experimental research suggests that prenatal BPA exposure causes asthma in mice, but no data exists for humans.

Researchers from the MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, China, have expanded the range of monomer pairs used in their established metal-free click polymerization of aroylacetylene–azides to propiolate–azides. They efficiently prepared functional poly(aroxycarbonyltriazole) compounds with aggregation-induced emission characteristics. This study was reported in Volume 54 (Number 4, 2011) of SCIENCE CHINA Chemistry, owing to its significant scientific value.

DENVER – Parents who give young children prescription painkillers should take extra care to make sure they give just the right amount. What they may be surprised to learn, however, is that the dose given to them by the pharmacy could be too high, according to research to be presented Saturday, April 30, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver.

Today the University of Chicago's Flash Center for Computational Science will release a major new version of supercomputer code, called FLASH 4-alpha. Based on previous software for simulating exploding stars, this is the first version of the FLASH code that has extensive capabilities for simulating high-energy density physics experiments.

The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) applauds the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia's decision to dismiss District Court Judge Royce Lamberth's ruling against the use of public funds for embryonic stem cell research.