Using electrons more like photons could provide the foundation for a new type of electronic device that would capitalize on the ability of graphene to carry electrons with almost no resistance even at room temperature – a property known as ballistic transport.
Earth
From matching wings on butterflies to the repeating six-point pattern of snowflakes, symmetries echo through nature, even down to the smallest building blocks of matter. Since the discovery of quarks, the building blocks of protons and neutrons, physicists have been exploiting those symmetries to study quarks' intrinsic properties and to uncover what those properties can reveal about the physical laws that govern them.
Natural resource managers, policymakers and their advisers, and scientists have similar ideas about which research questions could, if answered, most increase the effectiveness of US natural resource management policies. A survey of over 600 members of those professional groups revealed how they ranked the importance of 40 management-relevant research questions identified in earlier work.
Water supply is the most pressing environmental issue facing the United States according to a survey of policy makers and scientists revealed in a new publication in BioScience by researchers at the University of York and the University of California, Davis.
The release of volatile organic compounds from Earth's forests and smoke from wildfires 3 million years ago had a far greater impact on global warming than ancient atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, a new Yale study finds.
The research provides evidence that dynamic atmospheric chemistry played an important role in past warm climates, underscoring the complexity of climate change and the relevance of natural components, according to the authors. They do not address or dispute the significant role in climate change of human-generated CO2 emissions.
Tape, self-adhesive labels, Post-it notes and masking tape all contain soft adhesives. This makes them easy to remove—a process referred to as debonding. French scientists have studied how soft adhesives work in the hope of facilitating the design of more efficient adhesives. Francois Tanguy, a researcher at ESPCI ParisTech, the School of Industrial Physics and Chemistry, in Paris, France, and colleagues have, for the first time, performed a precise analysis of the material deformation and structure during the course of debonding for several model adhesives.
By sandwiching a biological molecule between sheets of graphene, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have obtained atomic-level images of the molecule in its natural watery environment.
The results are published online in advance of print in the journal Advanced Materials.
The molecule, ferritin, is a highly conserved protein that regulates the levels of iron in animals and plants. Ferritin can sequester excess iron, which can be toxic, and release it when it is needed.
A graphene water balloon may soon open up new vistas for scientists seeking to understand health and disease at the most fundamental level.
Electron microscopes already provide amazingly clear images of samples just a few nanometers across. But if you want a good look at living tissue, look again.
Climate researchers at the University of East Anglia have made the world's temperature records available via Google Earth.
The Climatic Research Unit Temperature Version 4 (CRUTEM4) land-surface air temperature dataset is one of the most widely used records of the climate system.
The new Google Earth format allows users to scroll around the world, zoom in on 6,000 weather stations, and view monthly, seasonal and annual temperature data more easily than ever before.
The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B), and Paleoceanography.
In this release:
1. Canada's subarctic lakes could face widespread desiccation
2. Seafloor sites could stably store centuries' worth of carbon emissions
3. Detection of supershear rupture in 2013 Craig, Alaska, earthquake
4. Acoustic emissions unveil internal motion in granular materials
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Look out, super glue and paint thinner. Thanks to new dynamic materials developed at the University of Illinois, removable paint and self-healing plastics soon could be household products.
U. of I. materials science and engineering professor Jianjun Cheng, graduate student Hanze Ying and postdoctoral researcher Yanfeng Zhang published their work in the journal Nature Communications.
Washington, D.C.—New research shows that a remarkable defect in synthetic diamond produced by chemical vapor deposition allows researchers to measure, witness, and potentially manipulate electrons in a manner that could lead to new "quantum technology" for information processing. The study is published in the January 31, 2014, issue of Physical Review Letters.
From Egyptian mummies to Ötzi the Iceman, human remains are a common, if macabre, feature of museum exhibits. Writing in Clinical Anatomy, Dr. Philippe Charlier explores the argument that curators have an ethical obligation to return these bodies to their native communities for burial.
University of Adelaide researchers have identified a key step for the future prevention of liver failure resulting from taking too much of the everyday painkiller paracetamol (also known as acetaminophen).
Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study pinpoints a target for new treatments to prevent the potentially lethal consequences of paracetamol overdose.
The number of annual excess deaths caused by hot weather in England and Wales is projected to surge by 257% by the middle of the century, as a result of climate change and population growth, concludes research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
The elderly (75+) will be most at risk, particularly in the South and the Midlands, the findings suggest.