COLUMBUS, Ohio – Last year's $2 billion shutdown of European airspace following a volcanic eruption in Iceland alerted everyone to the danger that ash clouds can pose to aircraft engines.
Now, researchers have discovered that a new class of ceramic coatings could offer jet engines special protection against volcanic ash damage in the future.
A newly discovered magnetic phenomenon could accelerate data storage by several orders of magnitude.
With a constantly growing flood of information, we are being inundated with increasing quantities of data, which we in turn want to process faster than ever. Oddly, the physical limit to the recording speed of magnetic storage media has remained largely unresearched. In experiments performed on the particle accelerator BESSY II of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Dutch researchers have now achieved ultrafast magnetic reversal and discovered a surprising phenomenon.
PHILADELPHIA—A widely-available yet expensive radiotherapy technique used to treat prostate cancer patients after surgery has promising benefits—higher dose and less damage to the rectum and bladder—compared to a less precise technique, Thomas Jefferson University researchers document for the first time in a new study published in Practical Radiation Oncology.
Cambridge, Mass. – April 12, 2011 – A new discovery about the dynamic impact of individual energetic particles into a solid surface improves our ability to predict surface stability or instability of materials under irradiation over time.
The finding may lead to the design of improved structural materials for nuclear fission and fusion power plants, which must withstand constant irradiation over decades. It may also accelerate the advent of fusion power, which does not produce radioactivity.
ROCKVILLE, Maryland, April 12, 2011 – Neuralstem, Inc. (NYSE Amex: CUR) announced that Eva Feldman, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator of the Phase I safety trial of Neuralstem's human spinal cord stem cells (HSSC's) in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), and unpaid Neuralstem consultant, presented interim safety data on the first nine patients. Dr.
Reactive nitrogen compounds from agriculture, transport, and industry lead to increased emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) from forests in Europe. Nitrous oxide emission from forest soils is at least twice as high as estimated so far by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is one of the key messages of the first study on nitrogen in Europe (European Nitrogen Assessment, ENA) that is presented this week at the International Conference "Nitrogen and Global Change 2011" in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Long-distance, high speed communications depend on lasers. But when information is transmitted down fiber optic cables, it's critical that the signal be clear enough to be decoded at the other end. Two factors are important in this respect: the color of the light, otherwise known as the wavelength, and the orientation of the light wave, known as polarization. A team from EPFL and the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) has developed a technique that improves control over these two parameters.
Climate change is likely to make plants more vulnerable to infectious disease, which will threaten crop yield and impact on the price and availability of food. Dr Adrian Newton, presenting his work at the Society for General Microbiology's Spring Conference in Harrogate, explains how exploiting diversity in crops is the best option to improve food security in a changing climate.
A major new study finds that nitrogen pollution is costing each person in Europe around £130 - £650 (€150 – €740 Euros) a year. The first European Nitrogen Assessment (ENA) is launched at a conference today in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The study, carried out by 200 experts from 21 countries and 89 organizations, estimates that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen across Europe is £60 - £280 billion (€70 -320 billion), more than double the extra income gained from using nitrogen fertilizers in European agriculture.
SALT LAKE CITY, April 11, 2011 – University of Utah geophysicists made the first large-scale picture of the electrical conductivity of the gigantic underground plume of hot and partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. The image suggests the plume is even bigger than it appears in earlier images made with earthquake waves.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - The University of Maryland Solar Decathlon Team has unveiled its entry in the U.S. Department of Energy competition - a high-tech structure they call WaterShed, because it integrates a unique array of sustainable features designed to protect and make the most of the Chesapeake Bay.
In a new study performed in humans, researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet have determined the age of atherosclerotic plaques by taking advantage of Carbon-14 (14C) residues in the atmosphere, prevailing after the extensive atomic bomb tests in the 50ties and 60ties. The findings, published in the scientific online journal PLoS ONE, suggest that in most people plaque formation occurs during a relatively short and late time period in life of 3-5 years.
This tip sheet highlights presentations at the upcoming international meeting of SSA, which is an international scientific society devoted to the advancement of seismology and its applications in understanding and mitigating earthquake hazards and in imaging the structure of the Earth.
These summaries reflect submitted abstracts and the actual presentations will include additional data and analysis. We are available to assist you should need to contact speakers at the annual meeting, located at the Marriott Downtown Memphis.
By studying fossilized mollusks from some 3.5 million years ago, UCLA geoscientists and colleagues have been able to construct an ancient climate record that holds clues about the long-term effects of Earth's current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global climate change.
Searching for magnetic fields produced by plants may sound as wacky as trying to prove the existence of telekinesis or extrasensory perception, but physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, are seriously looking for biomagnetism in plants using some of the most sensitive magnetic detectors available.