July 4, 2012 - Physicists on experiments at the Large Hadron Collider announced today that they have observed a new particle. Whether the particle has the properties of the predicted Higgs boson remains to be seen.
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University of Oklahoma high-energy physicists were among the 1,700 U.S. scientists from 89 American universities who collaborated on the international effort in the search for the Higgs boson. Results announced this week from CERN indicate discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson.
MELBOURNE, FLA.—Climate change drove coral reefs to a total ecosystem collapse lasting thousands of years, according to a paper published this week in Science. The paper shows how natural climatic shifts stopped reef growth in the eastern Pacific for 2,500 years. The reef shutdown, which began 4,000 years ago, corresponds to a period of dramatic swings in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
On this July 4th week, U.S. beachgoers are thronging their way to seaside resorts and parks to celebrate with holiday fireworks. But across the horizon and miles out to sea toward the north, the Atlantic Ocean's own spring and summer ritual unfolds. It entails the blooming of countless microscopic plants, or phytoplankton.
In what's known as the North Atlantic Bloom, an immense number of phytoplankton burst into existence, first "greening," then "whitening" the sea as one or more species take the place of others.
A University of Saskatchewan-led international research team has discovered that aerosols from relatively small volcanic eruptions can be boosted into the high atmosphere by weather systems such as monsoons, where they can affect global temperatures. The research appears in the July 6 issue of the journal Science.
NOAA's GOES-13 satellite, which watches the movement of weather systems in the eastern half of the U.S., captured the expansion and movement of the derecho from its birthplace in Illinois. The satellite data was compiled and animated by the NASA GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
A study carried out by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland indicates that extreme weather conditions cost EU transport system at least €15 billion a year. Currently, the greatest costs incurred are from road accidents, with the associated material damage and psychological suffering. However, costs arising from accidents are expected to decrease in volume, though time-related costs attributable to delays are projected to increase. In part, this is due to climate change, whose impact on extreme weather phenomena was addressed in the study, and because of consequent costs.
When evaluating the historic contributions made by different countries to the greenhouse gases found in Earth's atmosphere, researchers generally go back no further than the year 1840, because that is when the Industrial Age was large enough to matter. New research from Carnegie's Julia Pongratz and Ken Caldeira says that carbon dioxide contributions from the pre-industrial era are still having an impact on our climate today.
A climate model accounting for the carbon dioxide (CO2) released into our atmosphere before the industrial revolution has been used to show the detrimental effect of carbon emissions on global temperature in the long-term.
In a study published today, 4 July, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science have shown that pre-industrial emissions from land use changes are responsible for about nine per cent of the increase in today's global mean temperature since that era.
The Sustainable Consumption Institute research claims food which families now take for granted, such as meat and fresh vegetables, could become too expensive for many if global temperatures rise in line with the current trends and reach 4°C within the lifetime of many people.
Even if families continue to take steps to lower their carbon emissions from energy use, global farming emissions will continue to rise because of our growing appetite for energy-intensive foods and a rising demand to meet just basic living standards across the world.
In this week's PLoS Medicine, David Osrin of the UCL Institute of Child Health, UK and colleagues report findings from a cluster-randomized trial conducted in Mumbai slums that aimed to evaluate whether facilitator-supported women's groups could improve perinatal outcomes.
A newly published article in Physical Review Letters eliminates one of the top unsolved theoretical problems in chemical physics as ranked by the National Research Council in 1995. Scientists now can more accurately predict the dynamic behavior of electrons in atoms and molecules in chemical reactions that govern a wide range of phenomena, including the fuel efficiency of combustion engines and the depletion of the atmospheric ozone.
In an international scientific breakthrough, a Griffith University research team has been able to photograph the shadow of a single atom for the first time.
"We have reached the extreme limit of microscopy; you can not see anything smaller than an atom using visible light," Professor Dave Kielpinski of Griffith University's Centre for Quantum Dynamics in Brisbane, Australia.
"We wanted to investigate how few atoms are required to cast a shadow and we proved it takes just one," Kielpinski said.
WASHINGTON, July 3, 2012 — From the hiss of the fuse to the boom and burst of colors, an American Chemical Society (ACS) video, available again this year, explains the science behind the exciting sights and sounds of Fourth of July fireworks. The video is available at www.BytesizeScience.com.