Earth

Increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, severe storms, and heat waves have focused the attention of climate scientists on the connections between greenhouse warming and extreme weather. Because of the potential threat to U.S. national security, a new study was conducted to explore the forces driving extreme weather events and their impacts over the next decade, specifically with regard to their implications for national security planning.

EUGENE, Ore. (Feb. 11, 2013) -- A study of the Umpqua River basin in the Oregon Coast Range helps explain natural processes behind the width of valleys and provides potentially useful details for river restoration efforts designed to improve habitats for coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch).

Researchers from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO), in collaboration with the CSIC and Macquarie University in Australia, have developed a new technique, similar to the MRI but with a much higher resolution and sensitivity, which has the ability to scan individual cells. In an article published in Nature Nanotech, and highlighted by Nature, ICFO Prof. Romain Quidant explains how this was accomplished using artificial atoms, diamond nanoparticles doped with nitrogen impurity, to probe very weak magnetic fields such as those generated in some biological molecules.

Washington, DC—A team of scientists, led by researchers at Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology, has determined that the recent widespread die-off of Colorado trembling aspen trees is a direct result of decreased precipitation exacerbated by high summer temperatures. The die-off, triggered by the drought from 2000-2003, is estimated to have affected up to 17% of Colorado aspen forests. In 2002, the drought subjected the trees to the most extreme growing season water stress of the past century.

Explosive cyclones, which have rapidly intensifying winds and heavy rain, can seriously threaten life and property.

These "meteorological bombs" are difficult to forecast, in part because scientists need a better understanding of the physical mechanisms by which they form.

In particular, the large-scale circulation conditions that may contribute to explosive cyclone formation are not well understood.

Black and Pezza analyzed broad-environment energetics in creating a global climatology of explosive cyclones.

Matter wave interferometry has a long standing tradition at the University of Vienna, where the first quantum interference of large molecules has already been observed in 1999. Nowadays scientists are hunting down evidence for the quantum mechanical behavior of increasingly complex constituents of matter. This is done in experiments in which the flying of each particle seems to obtain information about distinct places in space, which are inaccessible according to classical physics.

Synchronised laser flashes for quantum interferometry

When talking about lightning, appearances of different lightning which occur along with thunderstorms will emerge in the minds of the people and these lightning occur in the troposphere. However, in addition to lightning in the troposphere, there are kinds of lightning discharges which occur above the thunderstorms. Up to now, lightning discharges above storms include sprite, elves (Emissions of Light and VLF perturbation due to EMP Sources, elves), Blue jet and Gigantic jet etc, and all of these discharges are totally named as Transient Luminous Events (TLEs).

California almond growers may not have enough honey bees to pollinate this year’s crop of 800,000 acres, says Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen of the UC Davis Department of Entomology. He attributes the difficulty to winter losses and less populous hives.

“We need 1.6 million colonies, or two colonies per acre, and California has only about 500,000 colonies that can be used for that purpose,” he said. “We need to bring in a million more colonies but due to the winter losses, we may not have enough bees.”

Albert Einstein called quantum entanglement—two particles in different locations, even on other sides of the universe, influencing each other—"spooky action at a distance."

Einstein made the comment while criticizing quantum mechanics as incomplete—the phenomenon of quantum entanglement seems to be at odds with Einstein's theory of relativity.

A proof-of-concept device that could pave the way for on-chip optical quantum networks has been created by a group of researchers from the US.

Presenting the device today, 8 February, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, it has been described as the "building block of future quantum networks."

ARGONNE, Ill. – Although scientists have been aware that magnetism and electricity are two sides of the same proverbial coin for almost 150 years, researchers are still trying to find new ways to use a material's electric behavior to influence its magnetic behavior, or vice versa.

Thanks to new research by an international team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, physicists have developed new methods for controlling magnetic order in a particular class of materials known as "magnetoelectrics."

The demise of the dinosaurs is the world's ultimate whodunit. Was it a comet or asteroid impact? Volcanic eruptions? Climate change?

In an attempt to resolve the issue, scientists at the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC), the University of California, Berkeley, and universities in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have now determined the most precise dates yet for the dinosaur extinction 66 million years ago and for the well-known impact that occurred around the same time.

The 11 March 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake (Mw9.0) produced the largest slip ever recorded in an earthquake, over 50 meters. Such huge fault movement on the shallow portion of the megathrust boundary came as a surprise to seismologists because this portion of the subduction zone was not thought to be accumulating stress prior to the earthquake. In a recently published study, scientists from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) shed light on the stress state on the fault that controls the very large slip.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (February 7, 2013) – Using the geometric and material properties of a unique nanostructure, Boston College researchers have uncovered a novel photonic effect where surface plasmons interact with light to form "plasmonic halos" of selectable output color. The findings appear in the journal Nano Letters.

HOUSTON -- (Feb. 6, 2013) -- A new Rice University-led study finds the real estate mantra "location, location, location" may also explain one of Earth's enduring climate mysteries. The study suggests that Earth's repeated flip-flopping between greenhouse and icehouse states over the past 500 million years may have been driven by the episodic flare-up of volcanoes at key locations where enormous amounts of carbon dioxide are poised for release into the atmosphere.