Earth

MADISON, Wis. - A typical bird's-eye view of the Midwest offers a patchwork landscape covered mostly by agriculture but mottled with forest, wetland, grassland, buildings and pavement. This pattern influences the quality and supply of the many natural benefits the landscape provides people, including freshwater.

A team of physicists led by Stephen Jardin of the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has discovered a mechanism that prevents the electrical current flowing through fusion plasma from repeatedly peaking and crashing. This behavior is known as a "sawtooth cycle" and can cause instabilities within the plasma's core. The results have been published online in Physical Review Letters. The research was supported by the DOE Office of Science.

A University of Oklahoma-led study links vast amounts of iron-rich dust deposits from the late Paleozoic period of 300 million years ago with implications for major ecosystem fertilization and a massive drawdown of atmospheric carbon. Understanding iron fertilization and other deep-time events may explain present and future climate change and aid scientists and policymakers when making decisions related to geoengineering the Earth.

A new symmetry operation developed by Penn State researchers has the potential to speed up the search for new advanced materials that range from tougher steels to new types of electronic, magnetic, and thermal materials. With further developments, this technique could also impact the field of computational materials design.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A team of Florida State University materials researchers has developed a new type of light-emitting diode, or LED, using an organic-inorganic hybrid that could lead to cheaper, brighter and mass produced lights and displays in the future.

Assistant Professor of Physics Hanwei Gao and Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering Biwu Ma are using a class of materials called organometal halide perovskites to build a highly functioning LED. They lay out their findings in the journal Advanced Materials.

Apparently, size doesn't always matter. An extensive study by an interdisciplinary research group suggests that the deformation properties of nanocrystals are not much different from those of the Earth's crust.

Inspired by the classic 'ball-in-a-cup' children's toy, researchers at the University of York have discovered an innovative method to make medicinally important molecules.

The molecules contain atoms arranged in large rings, known as macrocycles, whose importance in medicine has been known for decades. But translating this knowledge into the development of new medical treatments is a major challenge because macrocycles are notoriously difficult to make.

Scientists from the University of Basel in Switzerland have demonstrated for the first time how electrons are transported from a superconductor through a quantum dot into a metal with normal conductivity. This transport process through a quantum dot had already been calculated theoretically in the nineties, but scientists at the University of Basel have now succeeded in proving the theory with measurements. They report on their findings in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

Ottawa, ON (17 November 2015) - Using future climate change scenarios and water quality projections, experts found that sediment and the blue-green algae producing nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen are likely to increase in the Missisquoi Bay despite active efforts to reduce nutrient loads.

A new analysis of the jaw of Haramiyavia clemmenseni, one of the earliest known proto-mammals, clarifies the timeline of early mammalian evolution. Through high-resolution computer tomography, scientists from the University of Chicago, Harvard University and Brown University were able to examine the Haramiyavia type specimen in unprecedented detail.

When it comes to sediment in the High Sierra, size does matter, according to two University of Wyoming researchers.

For the past four summers, Cliff Riebe, a UW associate professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics, and Claire Lukens, a UW doctoral student majoring in geology, have studied sediment in Inyo Creek, in the High Sierra in California.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16, 2015 -- In a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), San Francisco State University Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences Leonard Sklar and colleagues show how two established geochemical techniques can be combined in a novel way to reveal both the altitude where river rocks were originally produced and the rate of erosion that led them to crumble into the river.

BINGHAMTON, NY - Ancient climates on Earth may have been more sensitive to carbon dioxide than was previously thought, according to new research from Binghamton University.

Groundwater: it's one of the planet's most exploited, most precious natural resources. It ranges in age from months to millions of years old. Around the world, there's increasing demand to know how much we have and how long before it's tapped out.

Pioneering new research by the University of Exeter could pave the way for miniaturised optical circuits and increased internet speeds, by helping accelerate the 'graphene revolution'.

Physicists from the University of Exeter in collaboration with the ICFO Institute in Barcelona have used a ground-breaking new technique to trap light at the surface of the wonder material graphene using only pulses of laser light.