Earth

The international scientific team reported the first ever observation of the atomic scale structure of Cooper-pairs in the superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x: a material belonging to the family of high-temperature (High-TC) superconductors bismuth strontium calcium copper oxide, or BSCCO. This detection is a breakthrough in the understanding of the ever elusive high-TC superconductivity phenomena.

Condensing fermions into one macroscopic quantum state

UPTON, NY-Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cornell University, and collaborators have produced the first direct evidence of a state of electronic matter first predicted by theorists in 1964. The discovery, described in a paper published online April 13, 2016, in Nature, may provide key insights into the workings of high-temperature superconductors.

In 1816, summer failed to make an appearance in central Europe and people were starving. Just a year earlier, the Tambora volcano had erupted in Indonesia, spewing huge amounts of ash and sulphur into the atmosphere. As these particles partly blocked sunlight, cooling the climate, it had a serious impact on the land and the people, even in Switzerland.

Since then, volcanologists have developed more precise ideas of why super-volcanoes such as Tambora are not only highly explosive but also why they release so much sulphur into the atmosphere.

A team of researchers at Princeton University has predicted the existence of a new state of matter in which current flows only through a set of surface channels that resemble an hourglass. These channels are created through the action of a newly theorized particle, dubbed the "hourglass fermion," which arises due to a special property of the material. The tuning of this property can sequentially create and destroy the hourglass fermions, suggesting a range of potential applications such as efficient transistor switching.

The most comprehensive analysis to date of a series of earthquakes that included a 4.8 magnitude event in East Texas in 2012 has found it plausible that the earthquakes were caused by wastewater injection. The findings also underscore the difficulty of conclusively tying specific earthquakes to human activity using currently available subsurface data.

An international group of researchers including Russian scientists from the Moscow State University has been studying the behaviour of the recently-discovered Fe4O5, iron oxide. The group has succeeded in describing its complex structure, and proposed an explanation for its very unusual properties. The article appeared in the current issue of the journal Nature Chemistry.

A team of scientists from the University of Exeter have created a new type of device that could be used to develop cost-effective gas sensors.

The pioneering team, which includes two second year Exeter undergraduates, have created a new type of device that emits light in the infrared part of the spectrum. Many important gases strongly absorb infrared light and this characteristic absorption can be used as a way of sensing them.

The laboratory of Hidenori Watanave in the Faculty of System Design at Tokyo Metropolitan University and Iwate Nippo Co., Ltd have put together a digital archive tracking the evacuation patterns of Great East Japan Earthquake victims between the time the earthquake struck and the time the tsunami made landfall.

It is exploring new possibilities in integrating digital technology with print media.

The western United States relies on mountain snow for its water supply. Water stored as snow in the mountains during winter replenishes groundwater and drives river runoff in spring, filling reservoirs for use later in summer. But how could a warming globe and a changing climate interrupt this process?

A research team confirms that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans. The group includes Sarah Green, a chemistry professor at Michigan Technological University.

"What's important is that this is not just one study--it's the consensus of multiple studies," Green says. This consistency across studies contrasts with the language used by climate change doubters. This perspective stems from, as the authors write, "conflating the opinions of non-experts with experts and assuming that lack of affirmation equals dissent."

The International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics' (Red Journal) May edition is a special issue focused entirely on particle therapy. It will feature papers showcasing the "best available evidence" on the value of particle therapy, as well as editorials and commentaries about its place in the radiation therapy (RT) arsenal.

Scientists around the world are being kept in suspense by the negligible mass of neutrinos, subatomic particles that could be matter and antimatter at the same time. Now, researchers from the University of Tokyo, in collaboration with a Spanish physicist, have used one of the world's most powerful computers to analyse a special decay of calcium-48, whose life, which lasts trillions of years, depends on the unknown mass of neutrinos. This advance will facilitate the detection of this rare decay in underground laboratories.

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 12, 2016 - If you go out after a rain, you may notice spider webs glistening with water droplets. The soggy webs resemble human-made meshes for fog collection: They both have thin fibers that collect water from droplets in the air.

Now researchers from Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea have developed a model to predict whether a falling droplet will stick to a thin fiber, and how much water residue will remain on the fiber. They discuss their findings in this week's Physics of Fluids, from AIP Publishing.

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2016 -- It's one of the most popular beverages in the world, and many of us rely on it to stay awake every day. But not every cup of coffee is created equal. From the bean to the brew, science can help you get the perfect cup. This week, Reactions goes on a quest for better coffee through chemistry. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/ml79faGQg_c.

Boulder, Colo., USA - Remote sensing techniques facilitate observations and monitoring of ground displacements. In particular, space-borne Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (DInSAR) allows accurate measurements of ground deformation by properly analyzing multi-temporal satellite acquisitions over the region of interest. However, limitations of DInSAR may arise when large and/or rapid surface deformation occurs, including those caused by active rifting.