Earth

From super-lubricants, to solar cells, to the fledgling technology of valleytronics, there is much to be excited about with the discovery of a unique new two-dimensional semiconductor, rhenium disulfide, by researchers at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry. Rhenium disulfide, unlike molybdenum disulfide and other dichalcogenides, behaves electronically as if it were a 2D monolayer even as a 3D bulk material. This not only opens the door to 2D electronic applications with a 3D material, it also makes it possible to study 2D physics with easy-to-make 3D crystals.

Physicists are one step closer to developing the world's first room-temperature superconductor thanks to a new theory from the University of Waterloo, Harvard and Perimeter Institute.

The theory explains the transition phase to superconductivity, or "pseudogap" phase, which is one of the last obstacles to developing the next generation of superconductors and one of the major unsolved problems of theoretical condensed matter physics.

Their work was published in this week's issue of the prestigious journal Science.

Tropical Cyclone Mike didn't even last a day in the Southern Pacific Ocean as NOAA's GOES-West satellite revealed the storm dissipating just 24 hours after it was born.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center's second update on Tropical Cyclone Mike was its last. At 2100 UTC/5 p.m. EDT Mike was located near 24.3 south latitude and 157.9 west, about 618 nautical miles/711.1 miles/ 1,145 km southwest of Papeete, Tahiti. Maximum sustained winds were near 35 knots/40 mph/62 kph at that time.

NOAA's GOES-West satellite caught the birth of Tropical Storm Mike in the Southern Pacific Ocean on March 19. Mike's formation has generated warnings for the Southern Cook Islands.

Connecting extreme weather to climate change distracts from the need to protect society from high-impact weather events which will continue to happen irrespective of human-induced climate change, say experts.

Writing in the journal Weather, Climate and Society, the University of Manchester researchers argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions, while crucial to reducing humanity's longer-term impact on the planet, will not eliminate violent storms, tornadoes or flooding and the damage they cause.

252 million years ago the largest extinction event occurred at the end of the Permian age. It wiped out almost 90 percent of all life in water. So far researchers had assumed that the ecosystems gradually recovered from this catastrophe over a long stretch of eight to nine million years and that large predators at the uppermost end of the food chain were the last to reappear. A Swiss-American team of palaeontologists headed by Torsten Scheyer and Carlo Romano from the University of Zurich demonstrate in their new study that the food nets during the Early Triassic did not recover in stages.

An international team of scientists investigating the electronic properties of ultra-thin films of new materials – topological insulators (TIs) - has demonstrated a new method to tune their unique properties using strain.

Scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have discovered a potential way to make graphene – a single layer of carbon atoms with great promise for future electronics – superconducting, a state in which it would carry electricity with 100 percent efficiency.

Heat waves could significantly reduce crop yields and threaten global food supply if climate change is not tackled and reversed.

This is according to a new study led by researchers at the University of East Anglia and published today, 20 March, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, which has, for the first time, estimated the global effects of extreme temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the production of maize, wheat and soybean.

A group of deaf adults using American Sign Language in a healthy lifestyle program successfully lost weight, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology & Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity & Metabolism Scientific Sessions 2014.

In the first randomized trial of lifestyle modification or weight reduction with deaf people using American Sign Language (ASL), participants had moderate improvements in their weight and level of physical activity after a 16-week program.

New research led by the University of Exeter suggests that rising global temperatures will increase the quantity of the key greenhouse gas methane emitted from freshwater ecosystems to the Earth's atmosphere – which could in turn lead to further warming.

Researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China have documented evidence suggesting that part of the reason that the Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars lies with a built-in atmospheric carbon dioxide regulator – the geologic cycles that churn up the planet's rocky surface.

Scientists working on the world's leading particle collider experiments have joined forces, combined their data and produced the first joint result from Fermilab's Tevatron and CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), past and current holders of the record for most powerful particle collider on Earth.

Scientists from the four experiments involved—ATLAS, CDF, CMS and DZero—announced their joint findings on the mass of the top quark on March 19, 2014 at the Rencontres de Moriond international physics conference in Italy.

Boulder, Colo., USA – Geosphere articles posted online 17 Mar. 2014 include additions to two series: "CRevolution 2: Origin and Evolution of the Colorado River System II" and "Origin and Evolution of the Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane." Other articles present new seismic data for the Slate Range of California, USA; the first detailed geologic map from the Likhu Khola region of east central Nepal; and a review of pre-21st century ideas about the origin of Grand Canyon.

NOAA's GOES-West satellite caught the birth of Tropical Storm Mike in the Southern Pacific Ocean on March 19. Mike's formation has generated warnings for the Southern Cook Islands.