Earth

For most people, frustration is a condition to be avoided. But for scientists studying certain "frustrated" ensembles of interacting components – that is, those which cannot settle into a state that minimizes each interaction – it may be the key to understanding a host of puzzling phenomena that affect systems from neural networks and social structures to protein folding and magnetism.

If tectonic plate collisions cause volcanic eruptions, as every fifth grader knows, why do some volcanoes erupt far from a plate boundary?

A study in Nature suggests that volcanoes and mountains in the Mediterranean can grow from the pressure of the semi-liquid mantle pushing on Earth's crust from below.

"The rise and subsidence of different points of the earth is not restricted to the exact locations of the plate boundary. You can get tectonic activity away from a plate boundary," said study co-author Thorsten Becker of the University of Southern California.

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OAK RIDGE, Tenn., June 1, 2010 -- Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the University of Tennessee (UT) and six collaborating universities have performed an unprecedented nuclear reaction experiment that explores the unique properties of the "doubly magic" radioactive isotope of 132Sn, or tin-132.

New York City is establishing itself as a global leader in forming a proactive response to climate change, reveals a new report detailing the city's plans to adapt to the challenges and opportunities the changing climate presents. The plans, revealed in the first report of the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC) and published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, outline the measures the city will take to proactively respond to climate change in a way that will provide both long-term environmental, and short-term economic, benefits to the city.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Sea level has not been as high as the distinctive ridges that run down the length of Florida for millions of years. Yet recently deposited marine fossils abound in the ridges' sands.

Now, a University of Florida geologist may have helped crack that mystery.

Materials Design (www.materialsdesign.com) announces a joint presentation with University of Texas at Dallas, KAUST, and Texas Instruments at the 2010 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits on June 17th in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The presentation will describe the results of a close collaboration including experiment and atomistic simulation, and illustrates the power of this complementarity in guiding the development of materials and processes for microelectronic applications.