EUGENE, Ore. -- The American West has seen a recent increase in large wildfires due to droughts, the build-up of combustible fuel, or biomass, in forests, a spread of fire-prone species and increased tree mortality from insects and heat.
In a paper appearing online Feb. 14 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a 12-member research team warns that these conditions may be "a perfect storm" for more fires.
COLLEGE PARK, Md. - Though cellphones are usually considered devices that connect people, they may make users less socially minded, finds a recent study from the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Marketing professors Anastasiya Pocheptsova and Rosellina Ferraro, with graduate student, Ajay T. Abraham, conducted a series of experiments on test groups of cellphone users. The findings appear in their working paper, "The Effect of Mobile Phone Use on Prosocial Behavior."
An interactive web tool has been developed to improve the accuracy and extent of global land use and forest cover information. The new 'Geo-Wiki' uses Google Earth and information provided by a global network of volunteers to fill in 'data gaps' and to verify existing land cover information. Developers this week have launched a Geo-Wiki competition to raise awareness of the tool and to encourage community involvement in environmental monitoring.
Dr William Parnell's team in the University's School of Mathematics have been working on the theory of invisibility cloaks which, until recently, have been merely the subject of science fiction.
In recent times, however, scientists have been getting close to achieving 'cloaking' in a variety of contexts. The work from the team at Manchester focuses on the theory of cloaking devices which could eventually help to protect buildings and structures from vibrations and natural disasters such as earthquakes.
Partners provide a vital source of positive emotional support for the vast majority of people in the UK. Nine out of ten people who were married or cohabiting talk to their partner about their worries, according to data from Understanding Society, the world's largest longitudinal household study of 40,000 UK households. Ninety four per cent of those surveyed rely on their partner for support when a problem crops up.
Seismic risk at the Fukushima nuclear plant increased after the magnitude 9 earthquake that hit Japan last March, scientists report. The new study, which uses data from over 6,000 earthquakes, shows the 11 March tremor caused a seismic fault close to the nuclear plant to reactivate. The results are now published in Solid Earth, an open-access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
The innermost secrets of champagne bubbles are about to be unveiled in the Springer journal EPJ ST. This fascinating work is the brainchild of Gérard Liger-Belair, a scientist tackling champagne bubbles from both a physics and a chemistry perspective. Based at the University of Reims, in the heart of the region that gave champagne its name, the author is appropriately affiliated with the 'effervescence team of the molecular and atmospheric spectrometry group' and the 'oenology and applied chemistry' laboratory.
PULLMAN, Wash.—The technology that Google uses to analyze trillions of Web pages is being brought to bear on the way molecules are shaped and organized.
Aurora Clark, an associate professor of chemistry at Washington State University, has adapted Google's PageRank software to create moleculaRnetworks, which scientists can use to determine molecular shapes and chemical reactions without the expense, logistics and occasional danger of lab experiments.
Boulder, CO, USA - New science published in GSA Bulletin includes evidence from Ellesmere Island that the end-Permian mass extinction may not have been a synchronous, global event; an understanding of how weak faults are formed by weak minerals; a study of the Mull Granite of northwest Scotland; and a proposed revision of 30-year-old model of geomorphic response to climate change based on observations from the hyperarid Nahal Yael watershed in the southern Negev Desert, Israel.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Individual atoms can make or break electronic properties in one of the world's smallest known conductors—quantum nanowires. Microscopic analysis at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory is delivering a rare glimpse into how the atomic structure of the conducting nanowires affects their electronic behavior.
The world's strongest neutron beam is produced by a scientific instrument at the research neutron source FRM II (Forschungs-Neutronenquelle Heinz Maier-Leibnitz) at the Technischen Universitaet Muenchen (TUM). But that is not all: During the long maintenance break in 2011, the instrument PGAA (Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis) was improved to give it the best ratio between usable neutrons and noisy background radiation worldwide. It is now possible to determine the elementary composition of even smallest samples in the milligram range.
Recent cuts to the scientific workforce of Environment Canada, a government agency responsible for meteorological services and environmental research, threaten scientific research related to the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere and pollution in the lower atmosphere, according to environmental scientists in the U.S. These reductions in personnel and projected budget cuts also threaten existing international agreements.
When it comes to choosing a place to hang out, big reef fish like coral trout, snappers and sweetlips have strong architectural preferences.
The choices big fish make on where to shelter could have a major influence on their ability to cope with climate change, say scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University.
Not surprisingly, victims of a natural disaster can experience stress and anxiety, but a new study indicates that it might also cause them to make more errors - some serious - in their daily lives. In their upcoming Human Factors article, "Earthquakes on the Mind: Implications of Disasters for Human Performance," researchers William S. Helton and James Head from the University of Canterbury explore how cognitive performance can decline after earthquakes and other natural disasters.