Earth

TORONTO -- Today TRIUMF, a Canadian laboratory for nuclear and particle physics that works in partnership with York University and University of Toronto, announced a new breakthrough in understanding neutrinos -- nature's most elusive particles.

HOUSTON – (July 19, 2013) – A discovery facilitated by Rice University's contribution to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will impact scientists' search for dark matter in the universe.

During heat waves -- when ozone production rises -- plants' ozone absorption is curtailed, leaving more pollution in the air, and costing an estimated 460 lives in the UK in the hot summer of 2006.

Vegetation plays a crucial role in reducing air pollution, but new research by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York shows that they may not protect us when we need it most: during extreme heat, when ozone formation from traffic fumes, industrial processes and other sources is at its worst.

The supply of dissolved iron to oceans around continental shelves has been found to be more variable by region than previously believed – with implications for future climate prediction.

Iron is key to the removal of carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere as it promotes the growth of microscopic marine plants (phytoplankton), which mop up the greenhouse gas and lock it away in the ocean.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 19, 2013 – Many U.S. universities have no women at all among their physics faculty, and when people talk about gender equity in physics, this fact is often cited as evidence of a hiring bias. But a new analysis by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Statistical Research Center challenges this argument, finding that the existence of all-male departments is not necessarily evidence of a hiring bias.

If you squeeze a normal object in all directions, it shrinks in all directions. But a few strange materials will actually grow in one dimension when compressed. A team of chemists has now discovered a structure that takes this property to a new level, expanding more dramatically under pressure than any other known material. The finding could lead to new kinds of pressure sensors and artificial muscles.

Catalysts are everywhere. They make chemical reactions that normally occur at extremely high temperatures and pressures possible within factories, cars and the comparatively balmy conditions within the human body. Developing better catalysts, however, is mainly a hit-or-miss process.

Now, a study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Trieste and Brookhaven National Laboratory has shown a way to precisely design the active elements of a certain class of catalysts, showing which parameters are most critical for improving performance.

Concentric hexagons of graphene grown in a furnace at Rice University represent the first time anyone has synthesized graphene nanoribbons on metal from the bottom up -- atom by atom.

As seen under a microscope, the layers brought onions to mind, said Rice chemist James Tour, until a colleague suggested flat graphene could never be like an onion.

"So I said, 'OK, these are onion rings,'" Tour quipped.

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Fewer women are getting married and they're waiting longer to tie the knot when they do decide to walk down the aisle. That's according to a new Family Profile from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University.

According to "Marriage: More than a Century of Change," the U.S. marriage rate is 31.1, the lowest it's been in over a century. That equals roughly 31 marriages per 1,000 married women. Compare that to 1920, when the marriage rate was a staggering 92.3.

MAYWOOD, Il. - A study led by a Loyola University Medical Center ENT physician provides a case study of a simple action that can reduce healthcare costs without compromising care.

Matthew Kircher, MD, and colleagues examined one of the costs associated with surgery to remove a type of cyst, called a cholesteatoma, from the middle ear. Otologists routinely send specimens to the pathology lab, but the study found this doesn't appear to be necessary.

Registration is now open for the Mushrooms and Health Summit held at the Mayflower Renaissance hotel in Washington D.C. on September 9-10, 2013. The meeting is of interest to scientists, writers and researchers looking to learn and discuss the unique and comprehensive examination of the global research that links mushrooms to today's and future health issues.

A world-class scientific event

Evaporation is so common that everybody thinks it's a well understood phenomenon. Appearances can be, however, deceptive. Recently, a new, earlier not predicted mechanism of evaporation was discovered. Experiments and simulations performed at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Physics of the PAS not only confirm its existence, but also indicate that it plays the crucial role in evaporation process in the nanoscale.

Boulder, Colo., USA – Eight new studies posted 26 June and 16 July add to Geosphere's cache of solid research on the nature and structure of North America. Locations studied: Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado; the northern Cascade Mountains, Washington; the Sierra Nevada batholith; the New Jersey shelf; the Appalachian Basin of northwestern Alabama; the Sierra Nevada microplate (Walker Lane rift); and the West Tahoe-Dollar Point fault. A ninth study covers erosion and crustal deformation in central Taiwan.

Polarisability determines the force with which an inhomogeneous external electric field acts on the ions of an ion beam. However, it can be quite tricky to obtain accurate values for this force. Now, two German theoretical chemists, Volker Koch from Bielefeld University and Dirk Andrae from the Free University Berlin, have devised formulas providing the polarisability of atomic ions as a function of their total charge number.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- It's widely thought that the Earth arose from violent origins: Some 4.5 billion years ago, a maelstrom of gas and dust circled in a massive disc around the sun, gathering in rocky clumps to form asteroids. These asteroids, gaining momentum, whirled around a fledgling solar system, repeatedly smashing into each other to create larger bodies of rubble — the largest of which eventually cooled to form the planets.