Earth

Physicists have long regarded plasma turbulence as unruly behavior that can limit the performance of fusion experiments. But new findings by researchers associated with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University indicate that turbulent swirls of plasma could benefit one of the two major branches of such research.

The surface of a solid often melts into a thin layer of liquid even below its melting point. Such surface premelting is prevalent in all classes of solids; for instance, two pieces of ice can fuse below 0°C because the premelted surface water becomes embedded inside the bulk at the contact point and thus freeze. Premelting facilitates crystal growth and is critical in metallurgy, geology, and meteorology such as glacier movement, frost heave, snowflake growth and skating.

Snapping shrimps, the loudest invertebrate in the ocean, may be silenced under increasing ocean acidification, a University of Adelaide study has found.

Published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the researchers report that under forecast levels of CO2 predicted to be found in oceans by the end of the century, the sound of snapping shrimps would be reduced substantially.

A group of scientists from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and from the Moscow State University has developed a fundamentally new type of memory cell based on superconductors - this type of memory will be able to work hundreds of times faster than the types of memory devices commonly used today, according to an article published in the journal Applied Physics Letters.

When we talk about climate change today, we have to look at what the climate was previously like in order to recognise the natural variations and to be able to distinguish them from the human-induced changes. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have analysed the natural climate variations over the last 12,000 years, during which we have had a warm interglacial period and they have looked back 5 million years to see the major features of the Earth's climate. The research shows that not only is the weather chaotic, but the Earth's climate is chaotic and can be difficult to predict.

Physicists have long regarded plasma turbulence as unruly behavior that can limit the performance of fusion experiments. But new findings by researchers associated with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University indicate that turbulent swirls of plasma could benefit one of the two major branches of such research.

The research published in the journal Nature: Scientific Reports surveyed the 'scars' created by mooring chains in the bays around one of Western Australia's iconic tourist destinations.

Dr Oscar Serrano led the research with Professor Paul Lavery and Professor Pere Masque from the Edith Cowan University (ECU) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB and Department of Physics UAB), and said the movement of the chains scraped seagrass off the seafloor.

WASHINGTON, March 15, 2016 -- You're sitting in your favorite restaurant when a waiter walks by with a hot plate of your favorite food, and your mouth starts to water. But why? What causes drooling in the first place, and why do we only sometimes salivate? This week, 2015 ACS Chemistry Champions contest winner Hadi Fares explains the chemical mechanisms behind dinnertime drooling. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/lWdR87Qnb3g.

In the furry animal world, it's the boys approaching adulthood who tend to start to wander to seek their fortune. Which usually means a mate. Girls tend to stay closer to the home range.

But giant pandas, once again, buck a mammal trend.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 15, 2016--Permafrost covers a considerable part of the Arctic. Hundreds of meters deep in many places and frozen for millennia, it's been thawing in recent decades, releasing greenhouse gases. New research reveals that similarly ancient ice wedges that form the prevalent honeycomb pattern across the tundra appear to be melting rapidly across the Arctic.

Washington, D.C., March 15, 2016 -- On an intuitive level, you'd expect a shark's skin to reduce drag. After all, the purpose of sharkskin-inspired riblets -- the micro-grooved structures found in aircraft wings, wind turbine blades and Olympic-class swimsuits -- is to do just that. Sharkskin's ability to reduce hydrodynamic drag, however, has been academically contested for the past 30 years.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 15, 2016 - In 2004 British national Dhiren Barot was arrested for conspiring to commit a public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, among other charges. Authorities claimed that Barot had researched the production of "dirty bombs," and planned to detonate them in New York City, Washington DC, and other cities. A dirty bomb combines conventional explosives with radioactive material.

Like carbon dioxide, methane is one of the most important greenhouse gases. After a period of stagnation around 2000, atmospheric methane concentrations started to rise again in 2007. So far, the causes have been unknown. According to the recent study of climate scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), at least 40% of this increase result from the growing production of oil and natural gas in the northern hemisphere. The results are now published in the "Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics" journal. (DOI:10.5194/acp-16-3227-2016)

With new technology getting smaller and smaller, requiring lower power, University of Cincinnati physics research points to new robust electronic technologies using quantum nanowire structures.

The semiconductor nanowires may lead to advances in sensitive electronic technology including heat detecting optical infrared sensors and biomedical testing, all of which can fit inside small electrical devices.

Post-doctoral researchers, Karim Essafi, Owen Benton and Ludovic Jaubert in the Theory of Quantum Matter Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) are on a quest to find out as much as they can about unusual states of matter called spin liquids and if these spin liquids could generate advances in the field of physics. The results could lead to the development of quantum computing, which require an exploration of new materials to become a reality.