The experimental and numerical study of the behaviour of polymers in concentrated solutions is a line of research that is still highly active. In the past, it enabled us to understand why materials like rubber have certain elastic properties. A distinctive feature of these systems is that the long "chained" molecules composing them tend to penetrate each other and interweave at their ends forming very durable bonds that make them always return to their initial conformation whenever they are "stretched".
Earth
Researchers from Princeton University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have confirmed that during the last ice age iron fertilization caused plankton to thrive in a region of the Southern Ocean.
The study published in Science confirms a longstanding hypothesis that wind-borne dust carried iron to the region of the globe north of Antarctica, driving plankton growth and eventually leading to the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The MIS 3 glacial advances in the Nyainqentanglha and possible linkage to the North Atlantic cooling
Chronologies of glacial advances during the last glacial period are not contemporaneous throughout the Tibetan Plateau. Professor YI Chaolu and his research group from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, dated glacial boulders on moraines from the last glacial period in the Nyainqentanglha Mountains, Tibet. They suggested that glacial advances that occurred during a relatively warm period (MIS 3) between two cold stages of the last glacial episode in the Nyainqentanglha may correlate with millennial-scale climate change (Heinrich) events.
Nobody has seen them yet; particles that are smaller than the Higgs particle. However theories predict their existence, and now the most important of these theories have been critically tested. The result: The existence of the yet unseen particles is now more likely than ever.
"I gave them a very critical review", says Thomas Ryttov, particle physicist and associate professor at the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics Phenomenology (CP ³ - Origins), University of Southern Denmark.
EUGENE, Ore. -- (March 20, 2014) -- University of Oregon physicists using a supercomputer and mathematically rich formulas have captured fundamental insights about what happens when objects moving freely jam to a standstill.
From super-lubricants, to solar cells, to the fledgling technology of valleytronics, there is much to be excited about with the discovery of a unique new two-dimensional semiconductor, rhenium disulfide, by researchers at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry. Rhenium disulfide, unlike molybdenum disulfide and other dichalcogenides, behaves electronically as if it were a 2D monolayer even as a 3D bulk material. This not only opens the door to 2D electronic applications with a 3D material, it also makes it possible to study 2D physics with easy-to-make 3D crystals.
Physicists are one step closer to developing the world's first room-temperature superconductor thanks to a new theory from the University of Waterloo, Harvard and Perimeter Institute.
The theory explains the transition phase to superconductivity, or "pseudogap" phase, which is one of the last obstacles to developing the next generation of superconductors and one of the major unsolved problems of theoretical condensed matter physics.
Their work was published in this week's issue of the prestigious journal Science.
Tropical Cyclone Mike didn't even last a day in the Southern Pacific Ocean as NOAA's GOES-West satellite revealed the storm dissipating just 24 hours after it was born.
The Joint Typhoon Warning Center's second update on Tropical Cyclone Mike was its last. At 2100 UTC/5 p.m. EDT Mike was located near 24.3 south latitude and 157.9 west, about 618 nautical miles/711.1 miles/ 1,145 km southwest of Papeete, Tahiti. Maximum sustained winds were near 35 knots/40 mph/62 kph at that time.
NOAA's GOES-West satellite caught the birth of Tropical Storm Mike in the Southern Pacific Ocean on March 19. Mike's formation has generated warnings for the Southern Cook Islands.
Connecting extreme weather to climate change distracts from the need to protect society from high-impact weather events which will continue to happen irrespective of human-induced climate change, say experts.
Writing in the journal Weather, Climate and Society, the University of Manchester researchers argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions, while crucial to reducing humanity's longer-term impact on the planet, will not eliminate violent storms, tornadoes or flooding and the damage they cause.
252 million years ago the largest extinction event occurred at the end of the Permian age. It wiped out almost 90 percent of all life in water. So far researchers had assumed that the ecosystems gradually recovered from this catastrophe over a long stretch of eight to nine million years and that large predators at the uppermost end of the food chain were the last to reappear. A Swiss-American team of palaeontologists headed by Torsten Scheyer and Carlo Romano from the University of Zurich demonstrate in their new study that the food nets during the Early Triassic did not recover in stages.
An international team of scientists investigating the electronic properties of ultra-thin films of new materials – topological insulators (TIs) - has demonstrated a new method to tune their unique properties using strain.
Scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have discovered a potential way to make graphene – a single layer of carbon atoms with great promise for future electronics – superconducting, a state in which it would carry electricity with 100 percent efficiency.
Heat waves could significantly reduce crop yields and threaten global food supply if climate change is not tackled and reversed.
This is according to a new study led by researchers at the University of East Anglia and published today, 20 March, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, which has, for the first time, estimated the global effects of extreme temperatures and elevated levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on the production of maize, wheat and soybean.
A group of deaf adults using American Sign Language in a healthy lifestyle program successfully lost weight, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology & Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity & Metabolism Scientific Sessions 2014.
In the first randomized trial of lifestyle modification or weight reduction with deaf people using American Sign Language (ASL), participants had moderate improvements in their weight and level of physical activity after a 16-week program.