Earth

Therefore, such a concert hall shape affects perceived dynamic range even though rooms itself amplify all passages the same amount.

"Dynamic expression is an inseparable part of music. For this reason, a concert hall's ability to transmit the orchestra's played dynamics is one of the most important criteria of good acoustics. Our research is the first that explains how halls influence perception of dynamic expression," Dr. Jukka Pätynen says.

WASHINGTON D.C. Mar. 4, 2014 -- Animal flight behavior is an exciting frontier for engineers to both apply knowledge of aerodynamics and to learn from nature's solutions to operating in the air. Flying snakes are particularly intriguing to researchers because they lack wings or any other features that remotely resemble flight apparatus.

Before you envision flying snakes raining down from the sky, the ones involved in this study are small -- about 1 meter in length and the width of your thumb -- and live in the lowland tropical forests of Asia and Southeast Asia.

From the Statue of Liberty in New York to the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House -- sea-level rise not only affects settlement areas for large parts of the world population but also numerous sites of the UNESCO World Heritage. This is shown in a new study by Ben Marzeion from the University of Innsbruck and Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Some of the world's most recognisable and important landmarks could be lost to rising sea-levels if current global warming trends are maintained over the next two millennia.

This is according to a new study, published today, 5 March, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, that has calculated the temperature increases at which the 720 sites currently on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites would be impacted by subsequent sea-level rises.

The ice-free season across the Arctic is getting longer by five days per decade, according to new research from a team including Prof Julienne Stroeve (UCL Earth Sciences). New analysis of satellite data shows the Arctic Ocean absorbing ever more of the sun's energy in summer, leading to an ever later appearance of sea ice in the autumn. In some regions, autumn freeze-up is occurring up to 11 days per decade later than it used to.

A new twist on a very old physics technique could have a profound impact on one of the most buzzed-about aspects of nanoscience.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that their unique method of light-matter interaction analysis appears to be a good way of helping make better semiconductor nanowires.

As NOAA's GOES-East satellite sat in a fixed orbit in space it monitored and provided visible and infrared imagery of the major winter storm that hit the U.S. east coast on March 2 and 3. Now, that data has been compiled and made into a video at NASA.

The Earth's outer layer is made up of a series of moving, interacting plates whose motion at the surface generates earthquakes, creates volcanoes and builds mountains. Geoscientists have long sought to understand the plates' fundamental properties and the mechanisms that cause them to move and drift, and the questions have become the subjects of lively debate.

A study published online Feb. 27 by the journal Science is a significant step toward answering those questions.

ST. PAUL, Minn., March 4, 2014 – Higher temperatures, more heavy precipitation, and drought. It's all expected in the Central Hardwoods Region of southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and the Missouri Ozarks, according to a new report by the U.S. Forest Service, and partners that assesses the vulnerability of the region's forest ecosystems and its ability to adapt to a changing climate.

In collaboration with colleagues from Berlin and Madrid, researchers at the Department of Physics at the University of Basel have pulled up isolated molecular chains from a gold surface, using the tip of an atomic force microscope (AFM). The observed signal provides insight into the detachment force and binding energy of molecules. The results have been published in the renowned scientific journal PNAS.

Artificial photosynthesis, in which we emulate the process used by nature to capture energy from the sun and convert it into electrochemical energy, is expected to be a major asset in any sustainable energy portfolio for the future. Artificial photosynthesis offers the promise of producing liquid fuels that are renewable and can be used without exacerbating global climate change.

The research group of Professor Jairo Sinova at the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), in collaboration with researchers from Prague, Cambridge, and Nottingham, have predicted and discovered a new physical phenomenon that allows to manipulate the state of a magnet by electric signals. Current technologies for writing, storing, and reading information are either charge-based or spin-based. Semiconductor flash or random access memories are prime examples among the large variety of charge-based devices.

The surface of the sea takes up nitrogen oxides that build up in polluted air at night, new measurements on the coast of southern California have shown. The ocean removes about 15 percent of these chemicals overnight along the coast, a team of atmospheric chemists reports in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 3.

There have been great expectations regarding the production of a drug to block the enzyme LTA4 hydrolase, which plays a key role in the body's inflammatory response. However, in clinical trials, such molecules have proven to be only moderately effective. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have successfully refined their understanding of why previous substances have been less effective – and in so doing have produced a molecule that gets around the problem.

Researchers from Denmark demonstrate in a study that the large grazers and browsers of the past created a mosaic of varied landscapes consisting of closed and semi-closed forests and parkland. The study will be published on Monday 3 March 2014 in the renowned journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).

Dung beetles recount the nature of the past