Earth

The eighteenth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific Ocean hurricane season formed early on the first day of November and is expected to become a tropical storm. NASA's TRMM satellite observed moderate rainfall in the storm and NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured a look at the cloud extent.

In an example of the challenges water-strapped Western cities will face in a warming world, new research shows that every degree Fahrenheit of warming in the Salt Lake City region could mean a 1.8 to 6.5 percent drop in the annual flow of streams that provide water to the city.

WASHINGTON, D.C. Nov. 1, 2013 -- Most people know about ultrasound through its role in prenatal imaging: those grainy, grey outlines of junior constructed from reflected sound waves. A new technology called an "acoustic diode," envisioned by researchers in China's Nanjing University, may dramatically improve future ultrasound images by changing the way sound waves are transmitted.

In a new synthesis of past work, researchers found that women consistently score lower than men on common assessments of conceptual understanding of physics. However, when examining the factors that may account for these differences (such as student background and test-taking strategies), no clear pattern emerged. Thus, despite previous claims that the causes of this gender gap have been pinpointed, the problem remains unsolved and poorly understood. This has critical importance for science education reform.

For the past eight years, two French researchers have been bouncing droplets around a vibrating oil bath and observing their unique behaviour. What sounds like a high-school experiment has in fact provided the first ever evidence that the strange features of the quantum world can be reproduced on a macroscopic scale.

Now, many researchers are asking if the oil-bath experiments can provide insights into quantum mechanics and more specifically why particles can behave as waves and waves can behave as particles.

Los Angeles, CA (October 31, 2013) While popular media often depicts highly-involved parents negatively as "helicopter parents" or "tiger moms, how does placing one's children at the center of family life really affect parental well-being? New research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science finds that parents who prioritize their children's well-being over their own are not only happier, but also derive more meaning in life from their child-rearing responsibilities.

As drylands of the world become even drier, water will not be the only resource in short supply. Levels of nutrients in the soil will likely be affected, and their imbalance could affect the lives of one-fifth of the world's population.

That includes people living in Arizona, who may be in for a dustier future.

New York, NY—October 31, 2013—Columbia Engineering researchers have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to electrically contact an atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material only along its one-dimensional (1D) edge, rather than contacting it from the top, which has been the conventional approach.

Some climate change skeptics have pointed out that global atmospheric temperatures have been stable, or even declined slightly, over the past decade. They claim it's a sign that global warming has either ceased, slowed down or is not caused by human activity.

So, where did all that heat that we're supposedly producing go?

Dr. Cory Dean, assistant professor of physics at The City College of New York, is the lead author of a paper published today in the journal Science that demonstrates it is possible for an atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material to have electrical contact along its one-dimensional (1D) edge. The contact architecture offers a new assembly technique for layered materials that prevents contamination at interfaces.

BOULDER—Although a significant build-up in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would alter worldwide precipitation patterns, a widely discussed technological approach to reduce future global warming would also interfere with rainfall and snowfall, new research shows.

The international study, led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that global warming caused by a massive increase in greenhouse gases would spur a nearly 7 percent average increase in precipitation compared to preindustrial conditions.

BBSRC-funded researchers at the University of Manchester's Institute of Biotechnology have used the power of off-the-shelf computer gaming technology to capture previously unobservable atomic movements. The research is helping to chart one of nature's most complex entities known as "glycomes" - the entire complement of carbohydrates within a cell.

This novel solution provides a new understanding of these vital biomolecules which play a role in everything from neuronal development, inflammation and cell structure, to disease pathology and blood clotting.

Results from the first run of the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment operating a mile underground in the Black Hills of South Dakota, have proven the detector's sensitivity and ruled out some possible candidates for a dark matter particle.

Initial results from 85 days worth of accumulated data were announced today, Oct. 30 at a seminar today at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead, S.D.

SAN FRANCISCO, October 30, 2013 -- Earthquake early warning systems may provide the public with crucial seconds to prepare for severe shaking. For California, a new study suggests upgrading current technology and relocating some seismic stations would improve the warning time, particularly in areas poorly served by the existing network – south of San Francisco Bay Area to north Los Angeles and north of the San Francisco Bay Area.

A new PLOS Collection featuring research on the complex evolutionary cascade theory that made the unique gigantism of sauropod dinosaurs possible launched on October 30th. This Collection features new research articles that have published in the open access journal PLOS ONE.