Chemists created a nonpermanent adhesive from a natural chemical reaction that can be used in the biomedical field. This discovery may benefit tissue repair or drug delivery. The scientific journal Angewandte Chemie recently published this collaborative work between LSU and University of Sheffield researchers.
Earth
Boulder, Colo., USA - The impact of an asteroid at the end of the Cretaceous caused mass extinctions in the oceans, as well as killing the dinosaurs on land. The carbon isotope difference between surface and seabed organisms (foraminifera) also collapsed due to these extinctions, suggesting that organic matter from surface waters did not reach the seafloor for up to 3 million years. However, seafloor organisms, which are dependent on food from surface waters, did not die off, suggesting some food must have reached the seabed.
A study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health looked at the associations between firearm-related laws and firearm homicides, suicides, and unintentional injuries and deaths. The paper is the first to explore the evidence from around the world on gun laws and gun violence to determine whether gun restrictions help reduce gun deaths.
A dynamic process that cools the coastal ocean and can weaken hurricanes was discovered as Hurricane Irene made landfall in New Jersey, according to a Rutgers University-led study published today.
The study's findings could help reduce the uncertainty in hurricane intensity forecasts for hurricanes and typhoons that cross coastal ocean waters before striking populated shorelines.
Hurricane track forecasts have steadily improved over the last two decades, but improvements in hurricane intensity forecasts have lagged.
WASHINGTON, DC -- Humans have triggered the last 16 record-breaking hot years experienced on Earth (up to 2014), with our impact on the global climate going as far back as 1937, a new study finds.
The study suggests that without human-induced climate change, recent hot summers and years would not have occurred. The researchers also found that this effect has been masked until recently in many areas of the world by the wide use of industrial aerosols, which have a cooling effect on temperatures.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Geochemists at Indiana University and Virginia Tech have developed and demonstrated a technique for assessing the validity of a principle that has long been important in thermodynamics and chemical kinetics but has proven resistant to experimental verification.
Called the principle of detailed balance, the concept is widely used in models to ensure the long-term safety of environmental projects such as storage sites for nuclear waste and for carbon dioxide.
When cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, their high-energy primary particles generate an 'air shower' of secondary particles. These cascades of particles provide information on the physical properties of the primary particles, the origin of which has been studied by astrophysicists for generations. Measurements of LOFAR (Low Frequency Array), the biggest radio telescope worldwide, provide new findings on the mass and potential sources of the particles, as is now published in the journal Nature. KIT is one of the project partners. DOI: 10.1038/nature16976
Policy-makers have been charged with taking appropriate measures against the looming threat of climate change. But the success of these measures requires acceptance and support on the part of the public. With this in mind, politicians and climate scientists are looking for ways to make the subject, and the costly political measures associated with it, more tangible and easier for the general public to understand.
Global warming will increase rainfall in some of the world's driest areas over land, with not only the wet getting wetter but the dry getting wetter as well.
New research published today in Nature Climate Change has revealed that in the Earth's dry regions, global warming will bring an overall increase in rainfall and in extreme precipitation events that could lead to flash flooding becoming a more regular event.
Dr. Jodie Rummer from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University (JCU) and her co-authors studied epaulette shark embryos as they were developing. "Overall, there were no differences between growth and survival in sharks reared under current day conditions versus those reared under ocean acidification conditions predicted for the year 2100," Dr. Rummer said.
A study led by the University of Tennessee and the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could soon pay dividends in the development of materials with energy-related applications.
Three UT researchers--Maik Lang, assistant professor of nuclear engineering; Haidong Zhou, assistant professor of physics; and Jacob Shamblin, a graduate research assistant in nuclear engineering and physics--studied an important class of complex metal oxides.
WASHINGTON, D.C., March 7, 2016 -- A team of physicists from the University of California, San Diego and The University of Manchester is creating tailor-made materials for cutting-edge research and perhaps a new generation of optoelectronic devices. The materials make it easier for the researchers to manipulate excitons, which are pairs of an electron and an electron hole bound to each other by an electrostatic force.
A novel technique known as in-situ plasma processing is helping scientists get more neutrons and better data for their experiments at the Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
"Plasma cleaning is a well-known technique in electrostatics," said ORNL's Research Accelerator Division Director Kevin Jones, "but it has not been applied before to superconducting cavities, and there are some interesting tricks that you have to develop and apply in order to make it all work."
Each week, up to three million US employees go to work sick, with roughly half of these incidents due to a lack of paid leave coverage. The findings come from an analysis of information from the 2011 Leave Supplement of the American Time Use Survey.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Arundo donax, a giant reed that grows in the Mediterranean climate zones of the world, isn't like other prolific warm-weather grasses, researchers report. This grass, which can grow annually to 6 meters (nearly 20 feet) in height, uses a type of photosynthesis that is more common to crop plants like soybeans, rice and peanuts.
The new findings are published in Scientific Reports, a Nature publishing group journal.