Earth

Scientists from Cardiff University have found that Britain's urban rivers are the cleanest they've been in over two decades.

The 21-year study of over 2300 rivers measured the presence of clean-river invertebrates - a yardstick for river health – which during the days of heavy industry and poor sewage treatment had declined considerably, but now appear to be making a comeback.

University of Adelaide physics researchers have produced the world's most sensitive thermometer – three times more precise than the best thermometers in existence.

Published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the researchers from the University's Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) report they have been able to measure temperature with a precision of 30 billionths of a degree.

Writing in Nature Physics, a large international team led by Dr Artem Mishchenko and Sir Andre Geim from The University of Manchester shows that the electronic properties of graphene change dramatically if graphene is placed on top of boron nitride, also known as 'white graphite'.

PITTSBURGH—University of Pittsburgh researchers have become the first to detect a fundamental particle of light-matter interaction in metals, the exciton. The team will publish its work online June 1 in Nature Physics.

Mankind has used reflection of light from a metal mirror on a daily basis for millennia, but the quantum mechanical magic behind this familiar phenomenon is only now being uncovered.

Astrophysicists have established that cosmic turbulence could have amplified magnetic fields to the strengths observed in interstellar space.

"Magnetic fields are ubiquitous in the universe," said Don Lamb, the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. "We're pretty sure that the fields didn't exist at the beginning, at the Big Bang. So there's this fundamental question: how did magnetic fields arise?"

Forget about positioning giant mirrors in space to reduce the amount of sunlight being trapped in the earth's atmosphere or seeding clouds to reduce the amount of light entering earth's atmosphere. Those approaches to climate engineering aren't likely to be effective or practical in slowing global warming.

By May 29 at 23:15 UTC (5:45 p.m. EDT), the circulation was barely identifiable on GOES-West satellite imagery as the post-tropical cyclone moved east toward mainland Mexico.

On May 30, the remnant low pressure area formerly known as Amanda was located near 17.0 north latitude and 109 west longitude. The minimum central pressure of the remnant low was near 1008 millibars. The NHC noted "Although this low is currently Embedded within a broad area of deep moisture...upper level drier air is starting to approach from the northwest."

Imperfections in the regular atomic arrangements in crystals determine many of the properties of a material, and their diffusion is behind many microstructural changes in solids. However, imaging non-repeating atomic arrangements is difficult in conventional materials. Now, researchers at the University of Vienna have directly imaged the diffusion of a butterfly-shaped atomic defect in graphene, the recently discovered two-dimensional wonder material, over long image sequences. The results are published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications.

Everything we know nowadays about novel materials and the underlying processes in them we also know thanks to studies at contemporary synchrotron facilities like BESSY II. Here, relativistic electrons in a storage ring are employed to generate very brilliant and partly coherent light pulses from the THz to the X-ray regime in undulators and other devices. However, most of the techniques used at synchrotrons are very "photon hungry" and demand brighter and brighter light pulses to conduct innovative experiments.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As population grows, society needs more — more energy, more food, more paper, more housing, more of nearly everything. Meeting those needs can lead to changes in how land is used.

Native grasslands, forests and wetlands may be converted into croplands, tree plantations, residential areas and commercial developments. Those conversions can, in turn, diminish the health of natural ecosystems and their ability to provide an array of valuable services, such as clean air and water, wildlife and opportunities for recreation, to name a few.

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Being ignored at work is worse for physical and mental well-being than harassment or bullying, says a new study from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.

Researchers found that while most consider ostracism less harmful than bullying, feeling excluded is significantly more likely to lead job dissatisfaction, quitting and health problems.

Danylo Zherebetskyy and his colleagues at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found unexpected traces of water in semiconducting nanocrystals.

Alexandria, Va. – In the American Geosciences Institute's newest Status of the Geoscience Workforce Report, released May 2014, jobs requiring training in the geosciences continue to be lucrative and in-demand. Even with increased enrollment and graduation from geoscience programs, the data still project a shortage of around 135,000 geoscientists needed in the workforce by the end of the decade.

A study into how organic molecules in the atmosphere affect cloud formation has found that a main component of biodiesel, methyl oleate, reacts with ozone surprisingly fast. This process may counterbalance the growth of water droplets resulting from emissions, which would in turn inhibit cloud formation and therefore affect the water cycle in a highly complex way.