BOZEMAN, Mont. -- New research from Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies has revealed how dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Deinonychus used their famous killer claws, leading to a new hypothesis on the evolution of flight in birds.
MSU researchers Denver W. Fowler, Elizabeth A. Freedman, John B. Scannella and Robert E. Kambic describe how comparing modern birds of prey helped develop a new behavior model for sickle-clawed carnivorous dinosaurs like Velociraptor.
DURHAM, N.C. – A repository developed by Duke University engineers that they call a "materials genome" will allow scientists to stop using trail-and-error methods for combining electricity-producing materials called "thermoelectrics."
Thermoelectric materials produce electricity by taking advantage of temperature differences on opposite sides of a material. They are currently being used in deep space satellites and camp coolers. But until now, scientists have not had a rational basis for combining different elements to produce these energy-producing materials.
A stroll on the beach can mean sinking your toes into smooth sand or walking firm-footed on a surface that appears almost solid. While both properties are commonplace, exactly what it is that makes granular materials change from a flowing state to a "jammed," or solid, state?Whether it's sand on a beach or rice grains in a hopper, being able to predict the behavior of granular matter can help engineers and manufacturers of a wide range of products.
MIAMI—December 14, 2011 – The science behind counting fish in the ocean to measure their abundance has never been simple. A new scientific paper in Nature Climate Change shows that expanding 'ocean dead zones' (areas of low oxygen) driven in part by climate change makes that science even more complex.
MISSISSIPPI STATE, MISSISSIPPI—Authors of a recent study examined an ongoing debate in the discipline of landscape architecture: exactly how much plant knowledge is required for professionals in the field? Robert Brzuszek, Richard Harkess, and Eric Stortz evaluated the attitudes and perceptions of practicing landscape architects in the southeastern United States with regards to the importance of horticultural knowledge. The survey results were published in HortTechnology.
CLEVELAND – Molecules that are twisted are ubiquitous in nature, and have important consequences in biology, chemistry, physics and medicine. Some molecules have unique and technologically useful optical properties; the medicinal properties of drugs depend on the direction of the twist; and within us – think of the double helix – twisted DNA can interact with different proteins.
This twisting is called chirality and researchers at Case Western Reserve University have found they can use a macroscopic brute force to impose and induce a twist in an otherwise non-chiral molecule.
Scientists have found that the distinctive glossiness of the buttercup flower (Ranunculus repens), which children like to shine under the chin to test whether their friends like butter, is related to its unique anatomical structure. Their findings were published today, 14 December, in the Royal Society journal Interface.
The Holy Grail of high-energy physics — the predicted but elusive Higgs boson — is almost within reach, and the Brandeis high-energy physics group, along with other particle physicists around the world collaborating on making the finding, is almost giddy with excitement.
PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers have set a new world record for data transfer, helping to usher in the next generation of high-speed network technology. At the SuperComputing 2011 (SC11) conference in Seattle during mid-November, the international team transferred data in opposite directions at a combined rate of 186 gigabits per second (Gbps) in a wide-area network circuit. The rate is equivalent to moving two million gigabytes per day, fast enough to transfer nearly 100,000 full Blu-ray disks—each with a complete movie and all the extras—in a day.
New York University physicists are part of a research team that has narrowed the search for the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle that is a building block of the universe. In an announcement made today in Geneva, scientists said they have found signs of its existence and narrowed the regions where the elusive particle could be.
"If these first hints evolve into a conclusive observation of the Higgs boson, it will be a triumph of human intellect and ingenuity," said NYU physicist Kyle Cranmer, one of the project's researchers.
Today's announcement from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN points to promising signs for the existence of the Higgs boson. Weizmann Institute scientists have been prominent participants in ATLAS, one of the two experiments to produce results in the search for this elementary particle. Prof. Giora Mikenberg was the ATLAS Muon Project leader for many years and now heads the Israeli LHC team. Prof. Ehud Duchovni heads the Weizmann Atlas group as well as a small group looking for SUSY signals. Prof Eilam Gross is currently the ATLAS Higgs physics group convener.
A team of scientists have made it easier to study atomic or subatomic-scale properties of the building blocks of matter (which also include protons, neutrons and electrons) known as fermions by slowing down the movement of a large quantity of gaseous atoms at ultra-low temperature. This is according to a study recently published in EPJ D¹ as part of a cold quantum matter special issue, by researchers from the Paris-based École Normale Supérieure and the Non-Linear Institute at Nice Sophia-Antipolis University in France.
NEW YORK (December 13, 2011) – The Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a southern elephant seal for an astonishing 18,000 miles – the equivalent of New York to Sydney and back again.
WCS tracked the male seal from December, 2010, to November, 2011. The animal – nicknamed Jackson – was tagged on the beach in Admiralty Sound in Tierra del Fuego in southern Chile. WCS conservationists fitted Jackson with a small satellite transmitter that recorded his exact location when he surfaced to breathe.
DURHAM, N.C. – Increased salinity and concentrations of trace elements in one West Virginia watershed have been tied directly to multiple surface coal mines upstream by a detailed new survey of stream chemistry. The Duke University team that conducted the study said it provides new evidence of the cumulative effects multiple mountaintop mining permits can have in a river network.
"Whereas others in the same plots, you wouldn't know they were in the heat. They had lots of flowers and lots of good growth. There was really a big difference between these two extremes which was just wonderful for us," Byrne said.
Many of the plants that handled the heat well were from lines Byrne has been breeding for four rose generations, or about 10 years.
"We know they are black spot tolerant, and were hoping they were heat tolerant," he said. "So now we have some lines that have both traits at high levels which is good."