WASHINGTON-–A team of theoretical physicists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Boston College has identified cubic boron arsenide as a material with an extraordinarily high thermal conductivity and the potential to transfer heat more effectively from electronic devices than diamond, the best-known thermal conductor to date.
Earth
NOAA-supported scientists found a large Gulf of Mexico oxygen-free or hypoxic "dead" zone, but not as large as had been predicted. Measuring 5,840 square miles, an area the size of Connecticut, the 2013 Gulf dead zone indicates nutrients from the Mississippi River watershed are continuing to affect the nation's commercial and recreational marine resources in the Gulf.
Tuesday, July 29: Chile and Argentina may face critical water storage issues due to rain-bearing westerly winds over South America's Patagonian Ice-Field to moving south as a result of global warming.
A reconstruction of past changes in the North and Central Patagonian Ice-field, which plays a vital role in the hydrology of the region, has revealed the ice field had suddenly contracted around 15,000 years ago after a southerly migration of westerly winds.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass- In the early days of quantum physics, in an attempt to explain the wavelike behavior of quantum particles, the French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed what he called a "pilot wave" theory. According to de Broglie, moving particles — such as electrons, or the photons in a beam of light — are borne along on waves of some type, like driftwood on a tide.
CHESTNUT HILL, MA (July 29, 2013) – A new, computationally-inspired approach has led a team of Boston College chemists to re-conceptualize a highly valued catalytic process, dramatically increasing the efficiency of a chemical transformation that selectively produces chiral, or handed, molecules valued for medical and life sciences research, the team reports in the current online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry.
Albert Einstein's assertion that there's an ultimate speed limit – the speed of light – has withstood countless tests over the past 100 years, but that didn't stop University of California, Berkeley, postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from checking whether some particles break this law.
Fossils of the Precambrian Ediacara Biota hold the key to understanding the origin and evolution of early animal life on this planet. Abundant fossils of these soft-bodied organisms occur globally and span 40 million years.
These fossils have traditionally been loosely grouped into three associations interpreted to have temporal significance -- with certain fossils representing older rocks and others representative of younger times.
Earthquakes occur even in places where no deformation related to horizontal tectonic plate motion is expected.
Among the regions where no present-day horizontal deformation can be quantified to the level of accuracy of GPS measurements (i.e., 0.3 mm/yr), the Alps and the Pyrenees mountain ranges (Western Europe) or the New Madrid area (USA) can be cited.
In 2011 a powerful drought gripped East Africa. The failure of both the 2010 fall rains and the 2011 spring rains caused a drought that, stacked on an already unstable political climate, caused a famine that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Whenever an extreme weather event strikes a population—a drought, a hurricane, or a powerful flood—questions arise as to whether ongoing global climate change is complicit.
New research findings from the Centre for Permafrost (CENPERM) at the Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, University of Copenhagen, document that permafrost during thawing may result in a substantial release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and that the future water content in the soil is crucial to predict the effect of permafrost thawing. The findings may lead to more accurate climate models in the future.
Around 1,840 million years ago, a widespread transition to euxinia occurred along productive continental margins.
At certain depths in Earth's mantle, the increasing pressure causes minerals to undergo phase changes, transforming to different crystal structures. Seismic waves change speed at these discontinuities, so analyzing seismic waves gives scientists information about the structure of the mantle.
The Cryogenian Period (800-635 million years ago) represents a time of profound and interrelated global tectonic, climatic, and biologic changes, involving the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia, extreme glaciations, and a drastic turnover in the diversity and morphology of life on Earth.
Sea level lies at the intersection of Earth's solid, liquid, and gaseous components, and thus forms a fundamental boundary on our planet that affects both biology and geology.
Human society must adjust to changes in this boundary, which is now rising 2-3 mm per year. Although climatological factors such as seawater warming and glacial melting are major contributors to sea level rise, deformation of the solid earth also exerts an important, and often dominating, influence on sea level.
Recently, climate change, including global warming, has been a "hot" news item as many regions of the world have experienced increasingly intense weather patterns, such as powerful hurricanes and extended floods or droughts. Often the emphasis is on how such extreme weather impacts humans, from daily heat index warnings to regulating CO2 emissions.