Earth

Shining lasers at superconductors can make them work at higher temperatures, suggests new findings from an international team of scientists including the University of Bath.

Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity without power loss and produce strong magnetic fields. They are used in medical scanners, super-fast electronic circuits and in Maglev trains which use superconducting magnets to make the train hover above the tracks, eliminating friction.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- A team of researchers, including one from the University of California, Riverside, has discovered that earthquake ruptures can jump much further than previously thought, a finding that could have severe implications on the Los Angeles area and other regions in the world.

The scientists found that an earthquake that initiates on one thrust fault can spread 10 times farther than previously thought to a second nearby thrust fault, vastly expanding the possible range of "earthquake doublets," or double earthquakes.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - At the rate humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere, the Earth may suffer irreparable damage that could last tens of thousands of years, according to a new analysis published this week.

Too much of the climate change policy debate has focused on observations of the past 150 years and their impact on global warming and sea level rise by the end of this century, the authors say. Instead, policy-makers and the public should also be considering the longer-term impacts of climate change.

UPTON, NY--Scientists at the U.S Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University have discovered a new way to generate very low-resistance electric current in a new class of materials. The discovery, which relies on the separation of right- and left-"handed" particles, points to a range of potential applications in energy, quantum computing, and medical imaging, and possibly even a new mechanism for inducing superconductivity--the ability of some materials to carry current with no energy loss.

The interaction of thermal energy from the environment with motional degrees of freedom is well known and often referred to as Brownian motion (also thermal motion). But in the case of polar molecules, the internal degrees of freedom - in particular the rotational quantum state - are also influenced by the thermal radiation. So far, the detection of the rotational state was only possible by destroying the molecule. However, a German research group has now demonstrated the first implementation of a non-destructive state detection technique for molecular ions.

MADISON, Wis. -- Climate change projections that look ahead one or two centuries show a rapid rise in temperature and sea level, but say little about the longer picture. Today (Feb. 8, 2016), a study published in Nature Climate Change looks at the next 10,000 years, and finds that the catastrophic impact of another three centuries of carbon pollution will persist millennia after the carbon dioxide releases cease.

A geologic event known as diking can cause strong earthquakes -- with a magnitude between 6 and 7, according to an international research team.

Diking can occur all over the world but most often occurs in areas where the Earth's tectonic plates are moving apart, such as Iceland, Hawaii and parts of Africa in the East African Rift System. As plates spread apart, magma from beneath the Earth's surface rises into the space, forming vertical magma intrusions, known as dikes. The dike pushes on the surrounding rocks, creating strain.

Climate change is most likely behind the extraordinary spread of a type of vesper bat across Europe over the last four decades. Kuhl's pipistrelle has extended its range by nearly 400 percent, says Leonardo Ancillotto, lead author of a study supervised by Danilo Russo of the University of Naples Federico II in Italy, in Springer's journal The Science of Nature. It is the first to record a range expansion for bats on such a continental scale.

A new study indicates that mothers who frequently sleep, or bed-share, with their infants consistently breastfeed for longer than mothers who do not bed-share. Also, pregnant women who expressed a strong motivation to breastfeed were more likely to bed-share frequently once their baby was born.

Severe weather moved through the southern U.S. on February 2 and 3, and NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite examined the violent thunderstorms.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Forty years of mountaintop coal mining have made parts of Central Appalachia 60 percent flatter than they were before excavation, says new research by Duke University.

The study, which compares pre- and post-mining topographic data in southern West Virginia, is the first to examine the regional impact of mountaintop mines on landscape topography and how the changes might influence water quality.

A group of scientists from Lomonosov Moscow State University studied histamine molecules in the gas phase using an electron beam. The study used both experiment and calculations. This work was published in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics journal (impact factor of 4.493) of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). Authors are employees of Division of Physical Chemistry (Chemistry Department of Lomonosov MSU), specializing in particular on the study of bioactive compounds and medicines.

It has no wheels or legs or anything to help itself along, and yet it is able to move and to move quite fast. In terms of mobility, the snake is a masterpiece of engineering, and it is no coincidence that it should be studied to uncover the physics underlying its locomotion.

An article by JRC scientists published today in Science, reveals that the biophysical effects of forest losses substantially affect the local climate by altering the average temperature and even more the maximum summer temperatures and the diurnal and annual variations. These effects are most obvious in arid zones, followed by temperate, tropical and boreal zones.

HANOVER, N.H. - Climate change may harm early-flowering plants not through plant-pollinator mismatch but through frost damage, a Dartmouth College-led study shows.

The findings appear in the journal Global Change Biology. A PDF is available on request.

Climate change has many ecological effects, such as altering flowering phenology, or the blooming time of wildflowers, across the world. Altering blooming time often affects plant reproduction and survival, but the mechanisms behind these changes are not well understood.