ROME (10 December 2010)—The Global Crop Diversity Trust today announced a major global search to systematically find, gather, catalogue, use, and save the wild relatives of wheat, rice, beans, potato, barley, lentils, chickpea, and other essential food crops, in order to help protect global food supplies against the imminent threat of climate change, and strengthen future food security.
Earth
DURHAM, N.C. – Using lasers to contain some ultra-chilled atoms, a team of scientists has measured the viscosity or stickiness of a gas often considered to be the sixth state of matter. The measurements verify that this gas can be used as a "scale model" of exotic matter, such as super-high temperature superconductors, the nuclear matter of neutron stars, and even the state of matter created microseconds after the Big Bang.
The results may also allow experimental tests of string theory in the future.
COLUMBUS, OHIO – Physicists at Ohio State University have discovered that tiny defects inside a computer chip can be used to tune the properties of key atoms in the chip.
The technique, which they describe in the journal Science, involves rearranging the holes left by missing atoms to tune the properties of dopants – the chemical impurities that give the semiconductors in computer chips their special properties.
Brussels, 9 December 2010 - Europe needs new particle accelerators and major upgrades to existing facilities over the next ten years to stay at the forefront of nuclear physics, according to the European Science Foundation (ESF), which launches its 'Long Range Plan 2010' for nuclear physics today.
Researchers from Queen Mary, University of London, the University of Fribourg and the Paul Scherrer Institut (Villigen, Switzerland) have shown that a magnetically polarised current can be manipulated by electric fields.
Published this week in the journal Nature Materials, this important discovery opens up the prospect of simultaneously processing and storing data on electrons held in the molecular structure of computer chips - combining computer memory and processing power on the same chip.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – One of the world's foremost experts on climate change is warning that if humans don't moderate their use of fossil fuels, there is a real possibility that we will face the environmental, societal and economic consequences of climate change faster than we can adapt to them.
Lonnie Thompson, distinguished university professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, posed that possibility in a just-released special climate-change edition of the journal The Behavior Analyst.
GREENBELT, Md. -- A new NASA computer modeling effort has found that additional growth of plants and trees in a world with doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels would create a new negative feedback – a cooling effect – in the Earth's climate system that could work to reduce future global warming.
EAST LANSING, Mich. --- While Asian carp, gypsy moths and zebra mussels hog invasive-species headlines, many invisible invaders are altering ecosystems and flourishing outside of the limelight.
A study by Elena Litchman, Michigan State University associate professor of ecology, sheds light on why invasive microbial invaders shouldn't be overlooked or underestimated.
INDIANAPOLIS – A grant from the D. J. Angus-Scientech Educational Foundation has made it possible for a student from a suburban Indianapolis high school to co-author, along with his mentor and two other scientists, a theoretical physics study in a top tier peer-reviewed scientific journal, a paper which has been selected for rapid communication due to its importance to the field.
The UK has the capacity to develop new green industries for capturing harmful carbon dioxide emissions from industry and storing them deep underground, but more investment is needed to further develop the relevant technologies and infrastructure, say scientists in new research published today.
URBANA – University of Illinois scientists have learned to mask the bitterness of ginseng, a common ingredient of energy drinks.
"Consumers like to see ginseng on a product's ingredient list because studies show that it improves memory, enhances libido and sexual performance, boosts immunity, and alleviates diabetes. But the very compounds that make ginseng good for you also make it taste bitter," said Soo-Yeun Lee, a U of I associate professor of food science and human nutrition.
A brand-new bacterial species has been found aboard the RMS Titanic, which is contributing to its deterioration. The discovery reveals a potential new microbial threat to the exterior of ships and underwater metal structures such as oil rigs.
A team led by scientists at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre have measured the air-sea exchange of carbon dioxide in the open ocean at higher wind speed then anyone else has ever managed. Their findings are important for understanding how interactions between the oceans and the atmosphere influence climate.