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Researchers stumble on colorful discovery

Modified metals that change colour in the presence of particular gases could warn consumers if packaged food has been exposed to air or if there's a carbon monoxide leak at home. This finding could potentially influence the production of both industrial and commercial air quality sensors.

"We initially found out by accident that modified rhodium reacts in a colourful way to different gases," says Cathleen Crudden, a professor in the Department of Chemistry. "That happy accident has become a driving force in our work with rhodium."

Fermilab experiment discovers a heavy relative of the neutron

Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced the observation of a new particle, the neutral Xi-sub-b. This particle contains three quarks: a strange quark, an up quark and a bottom quark (s-u-b). While its existence was predicted by the Standard Model, the observation of the neutral Xi-sub-b is significant because it strengthens our understanding of how quarks form matter. Fermilab physicist Pat Lukens, a member of the CDF collaboration, presented the discovery at Fermilab on Wednesday, July 20.

Discovery may overcome obstacle for quantum computing

Researchers have made a major advance in predicting and quashing environmental decoherence, a phenomenon that has proven to be one of the most formidable obstacles standing in the way of quantum computing.

The findings – based on theoretical work conducted at the University of British Columbia and confirmed by experiments at the University of California Santa Barbara – are published online in the July 20 issue of the journal Nature.

Benefit of PET in malignant melanoma is unclear

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For kids, it's more than just a game

A cohesive team environment, assessing one's own performance rather than comparing with others, and involvement in enjoyably challenging practices are the main conditions needed for children to have a positive developmental experience playing team sports.

80 percent of world climate data are not computerized

In order to gain a better knowledge of climate variations, such as those caused by global warming, and be able to tackle them, we need to understand what happened in the recent past. This is the conclusion of a research study led by the Rovira i Virgili University (URV), which shows that the scientific community today is only able to access and analyse 20% of the recorded climate information held. The remaining data are not accessible in digital format.

Bristol physicists break 150-year-old law

In 1853, two German physicists, Gustav Wiedemann and Rudolf Franz, studied the thermal conductivity (a measure of a system's ability to transfer heat) of a number of elemental metals and found that the ratio of the thermal to electrical conductivities was approximately the same for different metals at the same temperature.

The constants they are a changin': NIST posts latest adjustments to fundamental figures

The electromagnetic force has gotten a little stronger, gravity a little weaker, and the size of the smallest "quantum" of energy is now known a little better. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has posted* the latest internationally recommended values of the fundamental constants of nature.

How dairy farms contribute to greenhouse gas emissions

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have produced the first detailed data on how large-scale dairy facilities contribute to the emission of greenhouse gases. This research was conducted by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the ARS Northwest Irrigation and Soils Research Laboratory in Kimberly, Idaho.

ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and these studies support the USDA priority of responding to climate change.

Mothers with breastfeeding difficulties more likely to suffer postpartum depression

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Women who have breastfeeding difficulties in the first two weeks after giving birth are more likely to suffer postpartum depression two months later compared to women without such difficulties.

For that reason, women with breastfeeding difficulties should be screened for depressive symptoms, according to a new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Click chemistry with copper -- a biocompatible version

Biomolecular imaging can reveal a great deal of information about the inner workings of cells and one of the most attractive targets for imaging are glycans – sugars that are ubiquitous to living organisms and abundant on cell surfaces. Imaging a glycan requires that it be tagged or labeled. One of the best techniques for doing this is a technique called click chemistry. The original version of click chemistry could only be used on cells in vitro, not in living organisms, because the technique involved catalysis with copper, which is toxic at high micromolar concentrations.

Sinkholes: Great Lakes geologic sunken treasure

Alexandria, VA - Shipwreck enthusiasts find a bounty of nautical relics preserved in the chilly depths of the Great Lakes. But only within the last decade have explorers and scientists begun to reveal the secrets of a much different - and much more ancient - sunken treasure in Lake Huron: sinkholes.

World's forests' role in carbon storage immense, profound

Fairbanks, Alaska—Until now, scientists were uncertain about how much and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July 14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and 2007, the world's forests stored about 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year.

Rising oceans -- too late to turn the tide?

Thermal expansion of seawater contributed only slightly to rising sea levels compared to melting ice sheets during the Last Interglacial Period, a University of Arizona-led team of researchers has found.

The study combined paleoclimate records with computer simulations of atmosphere-ocean interactions and the team's co-authored paper is accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.

As the world's climate becomes warmer due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, sea levels are expected to rise by up to three feet by the end of this century.

Heated AFM tip allows direct fabrication of ferroelectric nanostructures on plastic

Using a technique known as thermochemical nanolithography (TCNL), researchers have developed a new way to fabricate nanometer-scale ferroelectric structures directly on flexible plastic substrates that would be unable to withstand the processing temperatures normally required to create such nanostructures.