Earth

New Rochelle, NY, November 24, 2015--A new study of five drinking water samples of different quality shows that ultrasonic humidifiers aerosolize and emit dissolved contaminants that can be inhaled, including minerals and metals. For an ultrasonic humidifier, 90% of the aerosols formed are in the respirable range, which may have negative effects on human health depending on the quality of the water source, as reported in the study published in Environmental Engineering Science.

Boulder, Colo., USA - Whether extreme river floods are becoming more frequent and/or severe in a warming world remains under debate, partly because instrumental measurements of river discharge are too restricted in length to detect shifts from natural variability. In this open access article for Geology, Daniel Schillereff and colleagues demonstrate for the first time the recovery in a systematic manner of flood frequency and magnitude data from temperate lakes that accumulate homogeneous (visually similar) sediments.

Physicists Mikhail Feigel'man (the head of MIPT's theoretical nanophysics laboratory) and Lev Ioffe have explained the unusual effect in a number of promising superconductor materials. Using a theory they developed previously, the scientists have linked superconducting carrier density with the quantum properties of a substance.

A remarkably detailed animation of the movement of the densest and coldest water in the world around Antarctica has been produced using data generated on Australia's most powerful supercomputer, Raijin.

Chief Investigator Dr Andy Hogg from the ANU hub of ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science worked with the National Computational Infrastructure's Vizlab team, using a high-resolution ocean model, to produce the animation.

So much data was used, that it took seven hours to process just one second of the animation.

Scientists drilling into the ocean floor have for the first time found out what happens when one tectonic plate first gets pushed under another.

The international expedition drilled into the Pacific ocean floor and found distinctive rocks formed when the Pacific tectonic plate changed direction and began to plunge under the Philippine Sea Plate about 50 million years ago.

There's plenty to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, aside from turkey, giblets and gravy. In this episode of Speaking of Chemistry, the hosts share the extraordinary chemistry behind some of the things they're grateful for this year, including a sustainable jet fuel, a molecule that helps us see better and a drug that changed one host's life.

source: American Chemical Society

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 23, 2015 - African-American students remain underrepresented in physical science and engineering disciplines, according to a new report from the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center (SRC).

The report shows that while the total number of bachelor's degrees obtained in the past decade by African-Americans has increased each year, this growth is not mirrored by increased representation in the physical sciences and engineering.

Researchers for the first time have attempted to measure all the material leaving and entering a mountain range over more than a million years and discovered that erosion caused by glaciation during ice ages can, in the right circumstances, wear down mountains faster than plate tectonics can build them.

Ground-breaking new research has shown that erosion caused by glaciation during ice ages can, in the right circumstances, wear down mountains faster than plate tectonics can build them.

The international study, including Dr Ian Bailey from the University of Exeter, has given a fascinating insight into how climate and tectonic forces influence mountain building over a prolonged period of time.

The intensity of Earth's geomagnetic field has been dropping for the past 200 years, at a rate that some scientists suspect may cause the field to bottom out in 2,000 years, temporarily leaving the planet unprotected against damaging charged particles from the sun. This drop in intensity is associated with periodic geomagnetic field reversals, in which the Earth's North and South magnetic poles flip polarity, and it could last for several thousand years before returning to a stable, shielding intensity.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers for the first time have attempted to measure all the material leaving and entering a mountain range over millions of years and discovered that glacial erosion can, under the right circumstances, wear down mountains faster than plate tectonics can build them.

A study of the St. Elias Mountains on the Alaskan coast by researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, University of Florida, Oregon State University and elsewhere found that erosion accelerated sharply about one million years ago.

Researchers have developed a process to remove contaminants from oil sands wastewater using only sunlight and nanoparticles that is more effective and inexpensive than conventional treatment methods.

The remnants of post-tropical cyclone Rick continued to linger in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on November 23. An animation of visible and infrared imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite showed the weakening of Tropical Storm Rick into a remnant low pressure area from Nov. 21 to Nov. 23 in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, far off-shore from western Mexico. NASA's RapidScat instrument spotted the remnant's strongest winds on its eastern side on Nov. 22.

A survey of young people by QUT researchers has found many lack the financial literacy to manage car loans, repay credit cards and navigate mobile phone deals.

The results have prompted the study's researchers to call on educators to do financial literacy workshops in schools before students leave and broaden skills in universities.

"A large proportion of respondents could not answer basic questions about inflation, budgeting and credit card interest," said Dr Chrisann Palm, from QUT Business School.

Miniaturization is the magic word when it comes to nanomagnetic devices intended for use in new types of electronic components. Scientists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have proposed the use of ion beams for their fabrication. An ultra-fine beam consisting of around 10 neon ions suffices to bring several hundred atoms of an iron-aluminum alloy into disarray and thereby generate a nanomagnet embedded directly in the material.