Earth

AUSTIN, Texas -- Accepting a job below one's skill level can be severely penalizing when applying for future employment because of the perception that someone who does this is less committed or less competent, according to new research from a sociologist at The University of Texas at Austin.

March 3, 2016 - The World Health Organization has identified antibiotic resistance as a serious threat to human health across the world. The Journal of Environmental Quality (JEQ) recently published a special section titled "Antibiotics in Agroecosystems" to address the science of this important topic.

Every cook knows that dissolving powder into a liquid, such as semolina in milk or polenta in water, often creates lumps. What they most likely don't know is that physicists spend a lot of time attempting to understand what happens in those lumps. In a review paper published in EPJ E, scientists from the École Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI), France, share their insights following ten years of research into the wetting of soluble polymer substrates by droplets of solvents like water.

03.03.2016: Geoscientists and natural disaster management experts are well aware of the risk prevailing in the megacity of Istanbul: The Istanbul metropolitan region faces a high probability for a large earthquake in the near future. The question is: how large can such an earthquake be?

Researchers at Aalto University, Institute of Physics Belgrade and the Saha Institute in Kolkata have used a computational model to prove that participants make a more favorable decision to participating in scientific conferences the more often they have previously participated in the conference. The likelihood to participate grows regardless of the qualities of the conference, like its location, size or specialization.

Adopting innovative technological solutions - currently in early research phase - instead of following a conservative technology development path could slash the direct greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions of aluminium production by 66% in 2050 and reduce the associated energy consumption by 21%, according to a JRC report. The reductions between 2010 and 2050 for primary aluminium production are even higher, amounting to 72% and 23% respectively.

Large numbers of California sea lion pups have flooded animal rescue centers in Southern California in the past few years. Now, as part of an ongoing investigation into the Unusual Mortality Event of California sea lions by a team of NOAA scientists and private partners, researchers may have an explanation.

Climate change could kill more than 500000 adults in 2050 worldwide due to changes in diets and bodyweight from reduced crop productivity, according to new estimates published in The Lancet. The research is the strongest evidence yet that climate change could have damaging consequences for food production and health worldwide.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Research led by Indiana University physicist Daria Zieminska has resulted in the first detection of a new form of elementary particle: the "four-flavored" tetraquark.

Zieminska, a senior scientist in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Physics, is a lead member of the team responsible for the particle's detection by the DZero Collaboration at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Laboratory, which announced the discovery Feb. 25.

NEWPORT, Ore. - For what may be the first time, scientists have eavesdropped on the deepest part of the world's oceans and instead of finding a sea of silence, they discovered a cacophony of sounds both natural and caused by humans.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego researchers published new findings on the role geological rock formations offshore of Japan played in producing the massive 2011 Tohoku-oki earthquake, one of only two magnitude 9 mega-earthquakes to occur in the last 50 years.

The study, published in the journal Nature, offers new information about the hazard potential of large earthquakes at subduction zones, where tectonic plates converge.

For what may be the first time, NOAA and partner scientists eavesdropped on the deepest part of the world's ocean and instead of finding a sea of silence, discovered a cacophony of sounds both natural and caused by humans.

For three weeks, a titanium-encased hydrophone recorded ambient noise from the ocean floor at a depth of more than 36,000 feet, or 7 miles, in the Challenger Deep trough in the Mariana Trench near Micronesia. Researchers from NOAA, Oregon State University, and the U.S. Coast Guard were surprised by how much they heard.

Theoretical chemists from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences have found how to synthesize the first binary compound of krypton and oxygen: a krypton oxide. It turns out that this exotic substance can be produced under extremely high pressure, and its production is quite within the capabilities of today's laboratories.

The unique properties of metamaterials have been used to cloak objects from light, and to hide them from vibration, pressure waves and heat. Now, a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher wants to add another use for metamaterials: creating a new directional separation technique that cloaks one compound while concentrating the other.

Organic photovoltaics bear great potential for large-scale, cost-effective solar power generation. One challenge to be surmounted is the poor ordering of the thin layers on top of the electrodes. Utilizing self-assembly on atomically flat, transparent substrates, a team of scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has engineered ordered monolayers of molecular networks with photovoltaic responses. The findings open up intriguing possibilities for the bottom-up fabrication of optoelectronic devices with molecular precision.