Optical Boomerangs
P. Aleahmad et al.
Physical Review Letters (forthcoming)
P. Zheng et al.Physical Review Letters, 109, 193901 (2012)
Bending light around corners is usually done with mirrors, but now scientists have realized self-bending light beams that propagate along curved paths.
Analysis of 90 years of observational data has revealed that summer climates in regions across the globe are changing -- mostly, but not always, warming --according to a new study led by a scientist from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences headquartered at the University of Colorado Boulder.
"It is the first time that we show on a local scale that there are significant changes in summer temperatures," said lead author CIRES scientist Irina Mahlstein. "This result shows us that we are experiencing a new summer climate regime in some regions."
AUSTIN, Texas — The storage capacity of hard disk drives could increase by a factor of five thanks to processes developed by chemists and engineers at The University of Texas at Austin.
The researchers' technique, which relies on self-organizing substances known as block copolymers, was described this week in an article in Science. It's also being given a real-world test run in collaboration with HGST, one of the world's leading innovators in disk drives.
Erosion caused by flowing water does not only smooth out objects, but can also form distinct shapes with sharp points and edges, a team of researchers has found. Their findings, which appear in the latest edition of the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveal the unexpected ways that erosion can affect landscapes and artificial materials.
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/12/2012) —If you've eaten fish, gone for a boat ride or even taken a drink from the tap, you know clean water is a valuable commodity. But just how valuable? That's always been a tough question for policy makers to answer as they weigh the worth of clean water against societal needs that compromise it, such as the need to grow food or produce fossil fuels.
The role that new low carbon technologies can play in helping the UK meet its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving towards a green economy have been highlighted today with the publication of three in-depth reports into core areas of innovation.
LAGOS, Nigeria – Fifteen science academies of Africa issued a joint statement in Lagos, Nigeria, today calling on the African scientific community to intensify its study of the impact of climate change. Noting that Africa's contribution of scientific information to understanding climate change has been "meagre" to date, the statement calls for African researchers to step up their observation, modeling, and analyses of the effects of climate change on a regional scale, and to help plan interventions to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change on the continent.
Enjoying Spanish participation, an international group of researchers have analysed the most recent history of the Alhama de Murcia fault. They discovered that it has experienced six major earthquakes above 7 on the Richter scale. According to the scientists, this provides "convincing evidence" that the maximum earthquake magnitudes in the area are higher than originally thought.
Have you ever thought to use a clock to identify mineral deposits or concealed water resources within the Earth? An international team headed by astrophysicists Philippe Jetzer and Ruxandra Bondarescu from the University of Zurich is convinced that ultraprecise portable atomic clocks will make this a reality in the next decade. The scientists argue that these atomic clocks have already reached the necessary degree of precision to be useful for geophysical surveying. They say that such clocks will provide the most direct measurement of the geoid – the Earth's true physical form.
Researchers using the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have found a way to strip most of the electrons from xenon atoms, creating a "supercharged," strongly positive state at energies previously thought too low.
The findings, which defy expectations and theory, could help scientists deliberately induce the high levels of damage needed to study extreme states of matter or ward off damage in samples they're trying to image. The results were reported this week in Nature Photonics.
The first direct evidence that marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift have occurred over the last 20 years, in response to changing winds, is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience. Scientists from NERC's British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena California explain why, unlike the dramatic losses reported in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change.
The impact of climate change on many aspects of cultural life for people all over the world is not being sufficiently accounted for by scientists and policy-makers. University of Exeter-led research by an international team, published on 11th November in Nature Climate Change, shows that cultural factors are key to making climate change real to people and to motivating their responses.
The existence of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, particles that are almost massless and which travel at light speed from one side of the earth to the other, was confirmed more than 50 years ago. Scientists believe that they were created at the Big Bang and might hold the key to the nature of the universe.
But they are light particles that react weakly with matter and they change properties as they travel. This process – named neutrino oscillation – makes the particles highly elusive.
AMARILLO – An accurate estimation of nitrous oxide and methane emissions from beef cattle feedlots is an increasing concern given the current and potential future reporting requirements for greenhouse gas emissions.
Dr. Ken Casey, Texas A&M AgriLife Research air quality engineer in Amarillo, is working on an ongoing study to quantify the nitrous oxide and methane emission rates from pen surfaces at two commercial beef cattle feedlots in Texas.