Earth

After three years of exhaustive analysis led by a University of Alberta researcher, the list of known compounds in human blood has exploded from just a handful to more than 4,000.

"Right now a medical doctor analyzing the blood of an ailing patient looks at something like 10 to 20 chemicals," said U of A biochemist David Wishart. "We've identified 4,229 blood chemicals that doctors can potentially look at to diagnose and treat health problems."

A group of researchers have studied the history of drought in the Pacific Northwest during the last 6,000 years, a time that spans the mid-Holocene geological epoch to the present. The goal of the research was to improve the understanding of drought history because the instrumental record of drought only goes back a few hundred years and at relatively few locations.

An article by Stevens Institute of Technology researchers featured as the cover page of Applied Physics Letters Volume 98, Issue 7 represents a step forward in techniques for the arrangement of nanowires.

Disasters such as floods, tsunamis, and earthquakes often result in the spread of diseases like gastroenteritis, giardiasis and even cholera because of an immediate shortage of clean drinking water. Now, chemistry researchers at McGill University have taken a key step towards making a cheap, portable, paper-based filter coated with silver nanoparticles to be used in these emergency settings.

Experimental physicists have put a lot of effort in isolating sensitive measurements from the disruptive influences of the environment. In an international first, Austrian quantum physicists have realized a toolbox of elementary building blocks for an open-system quantum simulator, where a controlled coupling to an environment is used in a beneficial way. This offers novel prospects for studying the behavior of highly complex quantum systems. The researchers have published their work in the scientific journal Nature.

New Haven, Ct. - No matter their size or shape, explosive volcanoes produce tremors at similar frequencies for minutes, days or weeks before they erupt. In the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Nature, researchers at Yale University and the University of British Columbia (UBC) describe a model that explains this strange phenomenon – and may help forecast deadly eruptions.

University of British Columbia geophysicists are offering a new explanation for seismic tremors accompanying volcanic eruptions that could advance forecasting of explosive eruptions such as recent events at Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, Chaiten Volcano in Chile, and Mount St. Helens in Washington State.

All explosive volcanic eruptions are preceded and accompanied by tremors that last from hours to weeks, and a remarkably consistent range of tremor frequencies has been observed by scientists before and during volcanic eruptions around the world.

AMES, Iowa – A research team led by Edward Yu of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory has identified and described two parts of the three-part system that pumps toxins from bacteria and allows them to resist antibiotics.

The discoveries are published in the Feb. 24 issue of the journal Nature.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The terribly destructive earthquake that just hit Christchurch, New Zealand, was only a moderate 6.3 magnitude, but had certain characteristics that offer an important lesson to cities up and down the West Coast of North America that face similar risks, experts say.

The New Zealand earthquake killed dozens – and some fear the death toll may rise to the hundreds – and was an aftershock of the much more powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake that struck that nation last September near the same area, but caused no deaths.

WASHINGTON--Studies by a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist and cooperators have confirmed what many pollen-sensitive people already suspected: In some parts of North America, ragweed season now lasts longer and ends later.

Tiny metal nanoparticles are used as catalysts in many reactions, from refining chemicals to producing polymers and biofuels. How well these nanoparticles perform as catalysts for these reactions depend on which of their crystal faces are exposed.

But previous attempts to design these nanoparticles by changing their shape have failed because the structures are unstable and will revert back to their equilibrium shape.

In chemical terms, nanoparticles have different properties from their «big brothers and sisters»: they have a large surface area in relation to their tiny mass and at the same time a small number of atoms. This can produce quantum effects that lead to altered material properties. Ceramics made of nanomaterials can suddenly become bendy, for instance, or a gold nugget is gold-coloured while a nanosliver of it is reddish.

New method developed

OAK RIDGE, Tenn, Feb. 22, 2011 -- A theoretical technique developed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is bringing supercomputer simulations and experimental results closer together by identifying common "fingerprints."

ORNL's Jeremy Smith collaborated on devising a method -- dynamical fingerprints -- that reconciles the different signals between experiments and computer simulations to strengthen analyses of molecules in motion. The research will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A University of Missouri researcher believes there could be a new drug compound that could kill breast cancer cells. The compound might also help with controlling cholesterol.

PITTSBURGH—University of Pittsburgh-led researchers extracted a 6,000-year climate record from a Washington lake that shows that the famously rain-soaked American Pacific Northwest could not only be in for longer dry seasons, but also is unlikely to see a period as wet as the 20th century any time soon.