What caused the worst mass extinction in Earths history 251 million years ago? An asteroid or comet colliding with Earth? A greenhouse effect? Volcanic eruptions in Siberia? Or an entirely different culprit? A Northwestern University chemical engineer believes the culprit may be an enormous explosion of methane (natural gas) erupting from the ocean depths.
In an article published in the September issue of Geology, Gregory Ryskin, associate professor of chemical engineering, suggests t
Global warming isn’t what it used to be.
“Some people will tell you that the planet has warmed in the past and that species always managed to adapt, so there’s no cause for alarm. Unfortunately that’s not the case,” said Johannes Foufopoulos, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment. Foufopoulos says new research illustrates major differences between global warming today and past natural climate fluctuations as they relate to spec
Finding that an abnormally active Bcl10 gene drives B cells to become cancerous suggests blocking the gene would be an effective treatment for MALT lymphoma
A gene that is crucial to the development and function of an entire family of immune cells is also key to understanding why one member of that family can become cancerous. Investigators at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital and the Blood Research Institute at the Blood Center of Southeastern Wisconsin, Milwaukee, reported
As scientists shrink materials down to the nanometer scale, creating nanodots, nanoparticles, nanorods and nanotubes a few tens of atoms across, theyve found weird and puzzling behaviors that have fired their imaginations and promised many unforeseen applications.
Now University of California, Berkeley, scientists have found another unusual effect that could have both good and bad implications for semiconductor devices once theyve been shrunk to the nanometer scale.
Th
A paper in this weeks journal Nature, building on radically new ecological theory by University of Georgia professor Stephen Hubbell, challenges half-century-old ideas about how natural plant and animal communities are put together.
The paper in Nature includes research by physicists Jayanth Banavar and Igor Volkov of Penn State University and Amos Maritan of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, along with Hubbell.
Conventional ecological theory s
In this world of increasing worries over dependence on foreign oil, environmental degradation and the vulnerability of power networks, many people are calling for greater use of clean energy alternatives such as solar power. It is encouraging therefore to note the completion of the world´s largest factory for solar panels, built by MSK, Japan´s leading specialist solar manufacturer.
Tokyo-based MSK Corporation has opened the doors to its new production facility located in Nagano, Japan.
…to control valley polarization in bulk materials. An international team of researchers reports in Nature a new method that achieves valley polarization in centrosymmetric bulk materials in a non-material-specific way…
Ultrafast laser spectroscopy allows the ascertainment of dynamics over extremely short time scales, making it a very useful tool in many scientific and industrial applications. A major disadvantage is the…
Thanks to ESA satellites, an international team including UNIGE researchers has detected a giant eruption coming from a magnetar, an extremely magnetic neutron star. While ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL was observing…
SpatialData is a freely accessible tool to unify and integrate data from different omics technologies accounting for spatial information, which can provide holistic insights into health and disease. Biological processes…
The magnetic sense of migratory birds is probably based on the protein cryptochrome 4, and a genetic study has now provided further support for this theory. A team of researchers…
Traditional non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries have a high energy density, but their safety is compromised due to the flammable organic electrolytes they utilize. Aqueous batteries use water as the solvent for…
Potential alternative to widely used contrast agent gadolinium. Some of the world’s greatest discoveries happened by accident. While the discovery of diamond dust’s potential as a future MRI contrast agent…
Scientists develop novel liquid metal alloy system to synthesize diamond under moderate conditions. Did you know that 99% of synthetic diamonds are currently produced using high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) methods?[2]…
Nebraska researcher Eric Markvicka gets NSF CAREER Award to pursue manufacture of novel materials for soft robotics and stretchable electronics. Engineers are increasingly eager to develop robots that mimic the…
Compact, low-power system opens doors for photon-efficient drone and satellite-based environmental monitoring and mapping. Researchers have developed a compact and lightweight single-photon airborne lidar system that can acquire high-resolution 3D…
…for enhanced microscopy analysis. Observing individual cells through microscopes can reveal a range of important cell biological phenomena that frequently play a role in human diseases, but the process of…
… a step towards the computing of the future. An international research team led by scientists from the CNRS1 has discovered that the magnetic nanobubbles2 known as skyrmions can be…