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Evidence: Snowball Earth was iced to the equatorEvidence: Snowball Earth was iced to the equator

Ancient tropical rocks that now reside in the remote northern reaches of Canada tell the tale: about 716.5 million years ago the Earth lay bound in a layer of ice that limited life to eukaryotes. Strangely, this glaciation—history’s most extensive at 5 million years, say researchers at NSF and Harvard—occurred at about the same time that animals appear in the fossil record.

Physicist's idea puts women in control at CERN

Physicist's idea puts women in control at CERN

Today, at the world’s largest supercollider, all of the control rooms will be staffed by women. A brainstorm of Indiana Univ.'s Pauline Gagnon, the event is part of a larger observation of International Women’s Day and a celebration of the accomplishments of women in the highly technical field of high-energy physics.

Researchers create new antimatter

Researchers create new antimatter

A worldwide team of researchers have for the first time created a particle that is believed to have been in existence immediately after the creation of the universe. The full antinucleus—an antiproton, antineutron, and anti-Lambda particle—is the first to contain an anti-strange quark and represents the first nucleus to drop below the plane in the 3-D Periodic Table of Elements.

Physicist writes a better formula to predict baseball success

Physicist writes a better formula to predict baseball success

An Iowa State Univ. physicist, studies the mysteries of the neutrino, the elementary particle that usually passes right through ordinary matter such as baseballs and home-run sluggers.

Intentional environmental variations increase result validity in mouse testing

Intentional environmental variations increase result validity in mouse testing

For decades, the traditional practice in animal testing has been standardization, but a study involving Purdue Univ. has shown that adding as few as two controlled environmental variables to preclinical mice tests can greatly reduce costly false positives, the number of animals needed for testing and the cost of pharmaceutical trials.

Nature gives clues to a way to break down a common greenhouse gas

A recent discovery in understanding how to chemically break down the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into a useful form opens the doors for scientists to wonder what organism is out there—or could be created—to accomplish the task.

Cotton threads: As good as a metal wire to conduct electricity?

A Cornell Univ. team has developed cotton threads that can conduct electric current as well as a metal wire can, yet remain light and comfortable enough to give a whole new meaning to multi-use garments.

Crucial time for Boeing as 787 flights ramp up

Crucial time for Boeing as 787 flights ramp up

Even as EADS pulled out of the bidding process for the U.S. Air Force’s $35 billion contract for aerial refueling planes, the defense contractor Boeing is facing a busy time in it’s commercial business: the second Boeing 787 Dreamliner landed yesterday in Victorville, Calif., marking the first flight-test operations outside Washington state.

Comment on "On the Crooks fluctuation theorem and the Jarzynski equality" [J. Chem. Phys. 129, 091101 (2008)].

It has recently been argued that a self-consistency condition involving the Jarzynski equality (JE) and the Crooks fluctuation theorem (CFT) is violated for a simple Brownian process [L. Y. Chen, J. Chem. Phys.129, 091101 (2008)]. This note adopts the definitions in the...

Once a seafarers' scourge, the gribble could be biofuel hero

Once a seafarers' scourge, the gribble could be biofuel hero

Tiny marine isopods called gribbles were for centuries the bane of sailors, whose vessels were quickly devoured. Even today, piers and docks are rapidly gnawed away, and researchers have now been attracted to the enzymes in their gut, which can convert wood into sugars without the help of microbes.

Earthquake engineers send second recon team

Earthquake engineers send second recon team

It’s been a busy time for seismologists, but massive earthquakes also provides work for experts in civil engineering, urban planning, architecture, geography, and social support. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute had just published its team report of the magnitude 7.0 quake in Haiti when the Chilean city of Concepción was moved 10 feet to the west by the most recent 8.8 magnitude earthquake.

Alternative energy crops in space

Alternative energy crops in space

What if space held the key to producing alternative energy crops on Earth? That's what researchers are hoping to find in a new experiment on the International Space Station. The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter.

Next wave of microelectronic biomedical devices

Next wave of microelectronic biomedical devices

A team of  engineers from MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL) are working on tiny, low-power chips that could diagnose heart problems, monitor patients with Parkinson’s disease or predict seizures in epileptic patients.

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Lunar tires, space MRSA, and resonating microfluidics

Lunar tires, space MRSA, and resonating microfluidics

I typically attend the annual Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy each year in pursuit of specific coverage. This year, I sought out candidates for coverage in a vacuum technology article, and pulled together some instruments for a spectroscopy guide. But as busy as that kept me, it wasn’t all mass spectrometers and vacuum pumps on the show floor.  

A clean energy America…is it coming or not?

A clean energy America…is it coming or not?

Almost a year ago, the buzz during the downturn was that the economic stimulus will help boost jobs in a sort of national improvement program reminiscent of the 1930s. Our coal would be phased out. Our grids would get smart. Our cars would get hybridized.

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New JEOL TEM quickly breaks into picoscale territory

 Just three weeks after its installation at the Univ. of Texas San Antonio campus, the latest transmission electron microscope from JEOL delivered data on silicon samples that resolved down to 78 picometers, a level that enables atom-by-atom chemical mapping.

Rapidly deployable shelter to improve disaster response, battlefield support

Today, developers of a new federal disaster response technology demonstrated how the Rapid Deployment Shelter System (RDSS) will shape the future of emergency preparedness and disaster relief. The compact, highly portable rigid wall shelter is easily transportable to domestic and global disaster sites, and may be deployed by one person in less than two minutes with the push of a button.

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Airflow in subways could spread contaminants

As part of a Homeland Security study on the spread of airborne contaminants released in subway systems, Berkeley Lab researchers are measuring the flow of gas throughout tunnels and cars. Subways created significant airflow as they move through tunnels, which could raise risk in the event of a terrorist attack or spill.

Physicists make new discovery in quantum mechanics

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in quantum mechanics using a superconducting electrical circuit. The researchers showed that they could detect the quantum correlations in the results of measurements of entangled quantum bits, using a superconducting electrical circuit. The correlations are stronger than can be obtained using classical (non-quantum mechanical) physics, and according to the physicists, this illustrates that the oddities of quantum mechanics clearly extend to macroscopic systems.

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