Institute of Physics Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Conference
University of Warwick, 4-7 April, 2004

Developments in predicting snow formation, snap-shot MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), organic semiconductor technology, high temperature superconductivity, and progress towards quantum computers are some of the topics being presented at a major conference organised by the Institute of Physics next month. The four-day conference, CMMP 2004, will take place from Sunday 4th

Masses of large ocean-going squid have inundated the shores of Southern Chile, alarming local fishermen who fear these carnivorous invaders could threaten fish stocks. Envisat has helped account for their otherwise mysterious arrival.

These jumbo flying squid – Dosidicus gigas is their Latin name – are some of the largest known squids on the planet: the ones here measure between 70 to 150 centimetres in length, although specimens have been known to reach more than three metres. Making their

New model directly links tiger numbers to amount of prey, study says

Scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and their collaborators from the US Geological Survey’s wildlife research center in Maryland have developed a model that shows a solid quantitative relationship between tiger numbers and the amount of prey available to these highly endangered big cats. Published in the latest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the mod

By examining the worker castes in colonies of the ant, Pheidole morrisi, researchers have found new evidence that ants alter the organization of their colonies in different environments. Researchers Andrew Yang and colleagues from Duke University compared populations of P. morrisi in Florida, North Carolina and New York, and uncovered evidence supporting the idea that some insects adapt to their environment by adjusting body size and the relative proportion of different castes within their population

100,000 tons of sludge is produced annually in the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) at waste water treatment plants (E.D.A.R). Under new legislation it will be obligatory to install these sewage water treatment plants in those urban areas of more than 3000 inhabitants, which in turn will mean, in the medium term, a considerable increase in the amount of sewage sludge generated.

The application of this sludge to forestry systems is being put forward as a solution to the ever-increasing pro

Greater investment in smallholder agriculture could offer a route out of the deepening poverty facing many African nations, a study by Imperial College London economists has concluded.

Reporting today in the journal Oxford Development Studies they outline five key policy themes that must be embraced by the international community if sub-Saharan Africa is to have any chance of meeting two of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals – halving both the number of people living on le

The harmful effects of chemical contaminants in food are of major health concern in Europe today. However, a lack of integration of interdisciplinary activities, such as basic research and risk assessment, severely hampers the efforts to reach European excellence in this area. The individual research projects are also small in scale and not well integrated into a coherent structure. To tackle the fragmentation problems and to achieve synergistic effects and full European research potential, the Europ

An international team of scientists has discovered new carbon-bearing particles, which they call “tar balls,” in air pollution over Hungary, the Indian Ocean, and southern Africa. Tar balls form in smoke from wood fires and agricultural and forest burning. Carbon-bearing particles like tar balls in the lower atmosphere are a concern, they say, because they may affect global climate change, as well as air quality.

The team, headed by Mihály Pósfai, an Earth and environmental science professo

Scientists at Oxford University have discovered that small-scale fluctuations, which are wide-spread in the atmosphere, may have a greater impact on weather systems than previously thought. The results, published in Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, may have important implications for accurate weather forecasting.

The fluctuations, known as inertia-gravity waves because they are sustained by a combination of inertial and gravitational forces, are prominent in the bottom 15 km of the atmosph

Scotland’s golf courses can look forward to a greener future thanks to a new initiative launched today by the University of Abertay Dundee.

Golf Solutions brings together environmental scientists, plant biotechnologists, microbiologists, computer specialists and other experts at Abertay to offer golf course managers new technologies for reducing the environmental impact of the game.

The initiative is the first of its kind in Scotland, and could help golf courses significantly reduc

North Carolina State University plant pathologist Jean Beagle Ristaino shocked the scientific world when she published a paper in the journal Nature that called into question the then-prevailing theories about the strain of pathogen – and its place of origin – that caused the Irish potato famine in the 1840s.

Using DNA fingerprinting analysis of 150-year-old leaves – evidence that had not previously been studied – Ristaino ruled out the longtime prime suspect behind the famine: the Ib haplot

NASA scientists have an explanation for one of the worst climatic events in the history of the United States, the “Dust Bowl” drought, which devastated the Great Plains and all but dried up an already depressed American economy in the 1930’s.

Siegfried Schubert of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues used a computer model developed with modern-era satellite data to look at the climate over the past 100 years. The study found cooler than normal tropical

A spectacle unseen for 16 years occurred in Patagonia this week: a natural dam of blue ice gave way to crushing lake waters trapped behind it, finally breaking apart.

Watching tourists applauded as a section of the 60-metre high Perito Moreno glacier collapsed and the waters of the dammed southern arm of Lago Argentino surged through it.
Since last October this section – known as Brazo Sur – had been blocked off from the rest of the lake by the glacier’s flowing ice tongue, which exte

An answer to the long-standing riddle of whether the Earth’s ice ages occurred simultaneously in both the Southern and Northern hemispheres is emerging from the glacial deposits found in the high desert east of the Andes.

Using a new technique to gauge the effects of cosmic rays on minerals found in boulders carried by South American glaciers thousands of years ago, a group of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has demonstrated that the Earth’s most recent ice ages were gl

A decades-old mathematical model is being inappropriately used in at least 26 nations to make potentially costly predictions about how shorelines will retreat in response to rising sea levels, two coastal scientists contended in the Friday, March 19, 2004, issue of the research journal Science.

“Models can be a hazard to society, and this is certainly an example of such,” wrote Orrin Pilkey of Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, and J. Andrew Cooper

Two teams of British scientists have produced the best evidence yet that our planet is experiencing a mass extinction. Two separate papers, published in Science 19 March and funded largely by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) highlight the serious concerns that have been growing among the world’s scientists for over ten years. John Lawton, chief executive of NERC and co-author of one of the papers said, ’Fossil records show five major extinctions. Current ext