Earth

Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered surprising changes in electrical resistivity in iron-based superconductors. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, offer further evidence that magnetism and superconductivity are closely related in this class of novel superconductors.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have reported* the first observation of the "spin Hall effect" in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a cloud of ultracold atoms acting as a single quantum object. As one consequence, they made the atoms, which spin like a child's top, skew to one side or the other, by an amount dependent on the spin direction. Besides offering new insight into the quantum mechanical world, they say the phenomenon is a step toward applications in "atomtronics"—the use of ultracold atoms as circuit components.

Tiny bubbles of water found in quartz grains in Australia may hold the key to understanding what caused the Earth's first ice age, say scientists.

The Anglo-French study, published in the journal Nature, analysed the amount of ancient atmospheric argon gas (Ar) isotopes dissolved in the bubbles and found levels were very different to those in the air we breathe today.

Today's nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technologies, like quantum information processing and nuclear spintronic technologies, are based on an intrinsic quantum property of electrons and atomic nuclei called "spin." Electrons and nuclei can act like tiny bar magnets with a spin that is assigned a directional state of either "up" or "down." NMR/MRI signals depend upon a majority of nuclear spins being polarized to point in one direction. The greater the polarization, the stronger the signal. Researchers with the U.S.

A Georgia State University researcher is the first to show that the Clean Air Act of 1970 caused a rebound in rainfall for a U.S. city.

Jeremy Diem, an associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, analyzed summer rainfall data from nine weather stations in the Atlanta metropolitan area from 1948 to 2009. He discovered that precipitation increased markedly in the late 1970s as pollution decreased following passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970.

Diem also noted that pollution in the 1950s and 1960s caused rainfall to drop in the Atlanta area.

Bubbles in a champagne glass may add a festive fizz to the drink, but microscopic bubbles that form in a material called metallic glass can signal serious trouble. In this normally high-strength material, bubbles may indicate that a brittle breakdown is in progress.

That's why Johns Hopkins researchers used computer simulations to study how these bubbles form and expand when a piece of metallic glass is pulled outward by negative pressure, such as the suction produced by a vacuum. Their findings were published recently in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Some 40 million years before rock and roll singer Jim Morrison's lyrics earned him the moniker "the Lizard King," an actual king lizard roamed the hot tropical forests of Southeast Asia, competing with mammals for food and other resources.

A team of U.S. paleontologists, led by Jason Head of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, describes fossils of the giant lizard from Myanmar this week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Their analysis shows that it is one of the biggest known lizards ever to have lived on land.

A team of researchers including members of the University of Chicago's Institute for Molecular Engineering highlight the power of emerging quantum technologies in two recent papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). These technologies exploit quantum mechanics, the physics that dominates the atomic world, to perform disparate tasks such as nanoscale temperature measurement and processing quantum information with lasers.

What do swimmers like trout, eels and sandfish lizards have in common? According to a new study, the similar timing patterns that these animals use to contract their muscles and produce undulatory swimming motions can be explained using a simple model. Scientists have now applied the new model to understand the connection between the electrical signals and body movement in the sandfish.

A new analysis led by the U.S. Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station encourages resource managers to consider a broadened view of forests as consumers of water.

A shift in thinking toward reducing the risk of water stress to vegetation can help forests maintain their resilience and health in a changing climate, according to a paper published online in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

ST. LOUIS -- The time between pregnancies is a golden window for obese women to lose weight, a Saint Louis University study finds.

The research, led by Arun Jain, M.D., visiting scholar in SLU's department of obstetrics, gynecology and women's health, also found that obese women should be counseled not to gain excessive weight during pregnancy.

Washington, D.C.—Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. The way it responds under extreme pressures and temperatures is crucial to our understanding of matter and the nature of hydrogen-rich planets.

New work from Carnegie scientists using intense infrared radiation shines new light on this fundamental material at extreme pressures and reveals the details of a surprising new form of solid hydrogen.

It is obvious from the data of the KASCADE-Grande experiment at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) that the so-called "knee" of the cosmic rays, a bend in the energy spectrum at high energies, is located at different energies for light and heavy particles. As regards light particles, the scientists have now found that the energy spectrum flattens again beyond the knee and forms a type of "ankle". This structure indicates that cosmic radiation particles with energies beyond the knee are accelerated in galaxies other than the Milky Way.

In a bid to save £10 million a year the British Treasury is replacing copper–nickel five and ten pence coins with new nickel-plated steel versions. However, while no UK health assessment has taken place, scientists in Sweden have analyzed the allergy risk after the Swedish state bank announced it will reduce traces of nickel in Swedish coinage.

New Zealand's geologic hazards agency reported this week an ongoing, "silent" earthquake that began in January is still going strong. Though it is releasing the energy equivalent of a 7.0 earthquake, New Zealanders can't feel it because its energy is being released over a long period of time, therefore slow, rather than a few short seconds.