Earth

The conversion of forests into cropland worldwide has triggered an atmospheric change that, while seldom considered in climate models, has had a net cooling effect on global temperatures, according to a new Yale study.

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Alexandria, Va. — Earth's largest active volcano, Mauna Loa on Hawaii's Big Island, is taking a nap. And after 30 years, no one is sure when the sleeping giant will awaken. Scientists say it's likely to erupt again within the next couple of decades and, when it does, it will be spectacular — and potentially dangerous.

Climate change is expected to bring increased temperatures and longer droughts—conditions that will make forests more susceptible to fires.

By 2090, the area burned by forest fires in the European Union could increase by 200% because of climate change, according to a new study published in the journal Regional Environmental Change. However, preventive fires could keep that increase to below 50%, the study shows. Improved firefighting response could provide additional protection against forest fires.

Using an "electric prism", scientists have found a new way of separating water molecules that differ only in their nuclear spin states and, under normal conditions, do not part ways. Since water is such a fundamental molecule in the universe, the recent study may impact a multitude of research areas ranging from biology to astrophysics. The research team from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) – a collaboration of DESY, the Max Planck Society and Universität Hamburg – reported its results in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

Researchers have developed a light detector that could revolutionise chemical sensing and night vision technology.

In the latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology, the team of researchers at Monash University, the University of Maryland in the US, and the US Naval Research Laboratory, have created the light detector based on graphene – a single sheet of interconnected carbon atoms.

A new route to making graphene has been discovered that could make the 21st century's wonder material easier to ramp up to industrial scale. Graphene -- a tightly bound single layer of carbon atoms with super strength and the ability to conduct heat and electricity better than any other known material -- has potential industrial uses that include flexible electronic displays, high-speed computing, stronger wind-turbine blades, and more-efficient solar cells, to name just a few under development.

Over 100 years since the Nobel Prize-winning father and son team Sir William and Sir Lawrence Bragg pioneered the use of X-rays to determine crystal structure, University of Adelaide researchers have made significant new advances in the field.

Published in the journal Nature Chemistry today, Associate Professors Christian Doonan and Christopher Sumby and their team in the School of Chemistry and Physics, have developed a new material for examining structures using X-rays without first having to crystallise the substance.

New research at the University of Maryland could lead to a generation of light detectors that can see below the surface of bodies, walls, and other objects. Using the special properties of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon that is only one atom thick, a prototype detector is able to see an extraordinarily broad band of wavelengths. Included in this range is a band of light wavelengths that have exciting potential applications but are notoriously difficult to detect: terahertz waves, which are invisible to the human eye.

Working with a team of scientists from the Technical University of Munich (TU Munich), Brandeis University, and Leiden University in the Netherlands, M. Cristina Marchetti and Mark Bowick, professors in the Soft Matter Program in the Syracuse University College of Arts and Sciences, have engineered and studied "active vesicles." These purely synthetic, molecularly thin sacs are capable of transforming energy, injected at the microscopic level, into organized, self-sustained motion.

Their findings are the subject of a cover-story in the Sept. 5 issue of Science magazine.

Researchers from the University of Houston and Trinity University have for the first time provided direct evidence of a water-mediated reaction mechanism for the catalytic oxidation of carbon monoxide.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study of three ice cores from Greenland documents the warming of the large ice sheet at the end of the last ice age – resolving a long-standing paradox over when that warming occurred.

One of the common perceptions about the climate is that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, solar radiation and temperature follow each other – the more solar radiation and the more carbon dioxide, the hotter the temperature. This correlation is also seen in the Greenland ice cores that are drilled through the approximately three kilometer thick ice sheet. But during a period of several thousand years up until the last ice age ended approximately 12,000 years ago, this pattern did not fit and this was a mystery to researchers.

It's possible that the mechanism the fish use to control water with such precision might also find application in human-built nozzles, he adds, noting that adjustable jets are big business in many industries, including medicine.

"The biggest problem is how to modify the abrasive properties of a jet," Schuster says. "Usually this is done by modulating the release pressure or by varying the abrasives added to the jet. We are not aware of someone actually using a dynamically adjustable valve."

LAWRENCE — Astrophysicists believe that about 80 percent of the substance of our universe is made up of mysterious "dark matter" that can't be perceived by human senses or scientific instruments.

"Dark matter has not yet been detected in a lab. We infer about it from astronomical observations," said Mikhail Medvedev, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas, who has just published breakthrough research on dark matter that merited the cover of Physical Review Letters, the world's most prestigious journal of physics research.