The physical mechanism causing the unique, sharp bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain has been uncovered in a collaboration between the University of Sydney and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
Earth
Scientists have devised a way to build a "quantum metamaterial"--an engineered material with exotic properties not found in nature--using ultracold atoms trapped in an artificial crystal composed of light. The theoretical work represents a step toward manipulating atoms to transmit information, perform complex simulations or function as powerful sensors.
Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites - space dust - ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago.
Scientists at the Universities of Bristol and Newcastle have uncovered the secret of the 'Mona Lisa of chemical reactions' - in a bacterium that lives at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
It is hoped the discovery could lead to the development of new antibiotics and other medical treatments.
The team demonstrated how a detailed picture of the electronic states can be ascertained by systematically comparing all of the interactive electronic processes in a simple system of aqueous iron(II). The results have now been published in Scientific Reports, the open access journal from Nature Group publishing.
A researcher at the University of Colorado Denver has found that Neanderthals in Europe showed signs of nutritional stress during periods of extreme cold,suggesting climate change may have contributed to their demise around 40,000 years ago.
In the early 1900s, Ernest Rutherford shot alpha particles onto gold foils and concluded from their scattering properties that atoms contain their mass in a very small nucleus. A hundred years later, modern scientists took that concept to a new level, building the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland to smash protons into each other, which led to the discovery of the Higgs boson.
WASHINGTON, D.C., May 10, 2016 - If you've ever eaten food while upside down - and who hasn't indulged this chimpanzee daydream? - you can thank the successive wave-like motions of peristalsis for keeping the chewed bolus down and ferrying it into your stomach. In mechanical microdevices, this method of transport moves fluids without a separate pump- saving precious space in lab-on-a-chip and futuristic organ-on-a-chip devices - but this transport method is difficult to finely control.
Roses are red, violets are blue. Everybody knows that, but what makes them so? Although plant breeders were aware of some of the genes involved, there was as yet no quantitative study of how pigment turns a flower red, blue or yellow. Casper van der Kooi conducted just such a study, combining biology and physics.
The theoretical view of the structure of the atom nucleus is not carved in stone. Particularly, nuclear physics research could benefit from approaches found in other fields of physics. Reflections on these aspects were just released in a new type of rapid publications in the new Letters section of EPJ A, which provides a forum for the concise expression of more personal opinions on important scientific matters in the field. In a Letter to the EPJ A Editor, Pier Francesco Bortignon and Ricardo A.
MISSOULA - Climate change is melting glaciers, reducing sea-ice cover and increasing wildlife activity - with some of the most dramatic impacts occurring in the northern high latitudes.
New research by University of Montana affiliate scientist Adam Young and UM fire ecology Associate Professor Philip Higuera projects an increased probability of fires occurring in Alaskan boreal forest and tundra under a warmer, drier climate. Their work recently was published in the journal Ecography.
May 10, 2016, Chicago--Departing the workforce entirely and entering retirement at age 65 is no longer a reality for many older people in the United States, according to a recent survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The study finds that there are large numbers of older Americans who are currently, or who expect to be, working longer. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that they are continuing with the same employment circumstances indefinitely.
If biochemists had access to a quantum computer, they could perfectly simulate the properties of new molecules to develop novel drugs in ways that would take the fastest existing computers decades.
WASHINGTON, DC -- A new study provides insight into how the current El Niño, one of the strongest on record, formed in the Pacific Ocean. The new research finds easterly winds in the tropical Pacific Ocean stalled a potential El Niño in 2014 and left a swath of warm water in the central Pacific. The presence of that warm water stacked the deck for a monster El Niño to occur in 2015, according to the study's authors.
To the surprise of chemists, a new technique for taking snapshots of molecules with atomic precision is turning up chemicals they shouldn't be able to see.
Chemical reactions take place so rapidly - often within picoseconds, or a trillionth of a second - that chemists expect intermediate steps in the reaction to be too brief to observe. Only lasers firing in femtosecond bursts - like a strobe flashing every thousandth of a picosecond - can capture the fleeting molecular structures that reacting chemicals form on their way to a final product.