Earth

In the early 1940s, California fishermen hauled in a historic bounty of sardine at a time that set the backdrop for John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" novel. But by the end of the decade the nets came up empty and the fishery collapsed. Where did they all go? According to a new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the forces behind the sardine mystery are a dynamic and interconnected moving target.

New England is expected to experience a "moderate" red tide this spring and summer, report NOAA-funded scientists studying the toxic algae that cause blooms in the Gulf of Maine. The "red tide" is caused by an alga Alexandrium fundyense, which produces a toxin that can cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). Red tide typically occurs annually along some portions of the Gulf of Maine coast. This year's outlook is similar to the 2012 red tide which was also classified as "moderate."

In Robert A. Heinlein's science-fiction novel, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, one of the characters states that butterflies are just "…self-propelled flowers." While Heinlein's description of the insect's aerodynamic ability is quite poetic, it does little to scientifically explain it. Four Japanese researchers have done a bit better by developing sophisticated numerical simulations of a butterfly's forward flight.

A team of industrial and university researchers has shown that nanoparticles with sizes smaller than 10 nanometers – approximately the width of a cell membrane – can be successfully incorporated into scintillation devices capable of detecting and measuring a wide energy range of X-rays and gamma rays emitted by nuclear materials.

Rutile is used in ceramics and paints, but is particularly useful for finding out about the history of a rock.

Where mineral deposits are found, rutile is often also present. The new methods therefore bring opportunities for strategies to find other mineral deposits, such as gold.

Until now, rutile has been a relatively unknown mineral, despite not being rare. For example, rutile can be found on most sandy beaches around the world, including in Sweden.

Researchers at Aalto University, the University at Buffalo, and Texas A&M University have proven a link between customers' use of social media and higher revenue.

Now there is proof that customers who engage with a business through social media contribute more to the bottom line than customers who do not, said Ashish Kumar, assistant professor of marketing at Aalto University.

An international team of plasma physicists has used one of the world's most powerful lasers to create highly unusual plasma composed of hollow atoms.

The experimental work led by scientists from the University of York, UK and the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of Russian Academy of Sciences demonstrated that it is possible to remove the two most deeply bound electrons from atoms, emptying the inner most quantum shell and leading to a distinctive plasma state.

Two forthcoming EPJ D papers challenge established wisdom about the nature of vacuum. In one paper, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud, located in Orsay, France and his colleagues identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. As a result, the inherent characteristics of vacuum, like the speed of light, may not be a constant after all, but fluctuate. Meanwhile, in another study, Gerd Leuchs and Luis L.

Taking their inspiration from Nature, scientists at the University of New South Wales have developed a new method for carrying out chemical reduction – an industrial process used to produce fuels and chemicals that are vital for modern society.

Their catalyst-based approach has the big advantages that it uses cheap, replenishable reagents and it works well at room temperature and in air – so much so, it can even be carried out safely in a teacup.

Scientists at the Department of Physics of the University of Oulu have teamed up with scientists in France, Russia and Japan to propose a new experimental method for researching positively charged ions. The study, In the Finnish side carried out by postdoctoral researcher Saana-Maija Huttula and Professor Marko Huttula in Oulu, was published in Physical Review Letters on 12 March 2013. The study involved investigating the electronic structure of the argon ions using synchrotron radiation.

Each year, more than 35,000 patients in the United States are implanted with spinal cord stimulators to treat chronic pain. Unfortunately, up to half of such patients receive only very limited pain relief. To help more patients, scientists are developing a new device to deliver therapeutic stimulation in a more targeted way, reaching nerve fibers deep within the spinal cord.

Incorporating wind power into existing power grids is challenging because fluctuating wind speed and direction means turbines generate power inconsistently. Coupled with customers' varying power demand, many wind-farm managers end up wasting power-generation capacity and limiting the service life of turbines through active control – including fully stopping turbines – in order to avoid any possible damage to the power grid from spikes in supply.

Ultra-precision positioning is required for the success of many scientific applications, including manufacturing semiconductors, aligning optics and manipulating cells. One of the challenges of ultra-precise positioning is providing sufficient torque through small, precise angles. In a paper accepted for publication in the Review of Scientific Instruments, a journal of the American Institute of Physics, researchers describe a new rotary actuator that accurately delivers more torque than previous devices.

In a breakthrough that could one day yield important clues about the nature of matter itself, a team of Harvard scientists have succeeding in measuring the magnetic charge of single particles of matter and antimatter more accurately than ever before.

High within towering thunderclouds, a distinct form of intracloud lightning, known as "narrow bipolar pulse" discharges, can occur. Like other forms of lightning, narrow bipolar events (NBE) can be either negative or positive discharges.

These events are known for their high-powered, short-distance electrical discharges that produce strong emissions of very high frequency radio waves. Previous research has found that since NBEs take place at relatively high altitudes, it is possible to detect them remotely using satellites.