EUREKA ALERT! - EARTH SCIENCE NEWS
March 14th
(DOE/Brookhaven National Laboratory) A team of scientists including researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have identified the causes of degradation in a cathode material for lithium-ion batteries, as well as possible remedies. Their findings, published on Mar. 7, 2019 in Advanced Functional Materials, could lead to the development of more affordable and better performing batteries for electric vehicles.
March 14th
(USDA Forest Service - Northern Research Station) A USDA Forest Service scientist and 29 co-authors completed one of the largest and longest examinations to trace unprocessed nitrate movement in forests. The team found that some nitrate occasionally moves too fast for biological uptake, resulting in 'unprocessed' nitrate bypassing the otherwise effective filter of forest biology.
March 14th
(Kazan Federal University) The subject of the prize, spectral noise logging, is a popular topic of research for many petroleum engineering centers. In particular, Russia has several of those.
March 14th
(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Tropical Cyclone Savannah continued to move in southerly direction in the Southern Indian Ocean, and move away from Indonesia. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of the storm. Savannah is no threat to land areas.
March 14th
(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite showed Tropical Cyclone continued to move in a westerly direction after making landfall in Mozambique.
March 14th
(TechLink) Navy scientists have invented a cheaper, lighter, environmentally friendly replacement for zinc anodes used in the millions around the world.
March 14th
(Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) An international study co-led by researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE) and Harvard University (USA) has developed a genetic map of the Iberian Peninsula covering the last 8,000 years.
March 14th
(National Institute for Materials Science, Japan) NIMS, the University of Tokyo, Niigata University and RIKEN jointly designed a multilayered metamaterial that realizes ultra-narrowband wavelength-selective thermal emission by combining the machine learning (Bayesian optimization) and thermal emission properties calculations (electromagnetic calculation). The joint team then experimentally fabricated the designed metamaterial and verified the performance. These results may facilitate the development of highly efficient energy devices.
March 14th
(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite revealed 03W that formed near the island of Yap in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean.
March 13th
(University of Texas at Austin) A breakthrough by engineers at The University of Texas at Austin offers new solution through solar-powered technology that absorbs moisture from the air and returns it as clean, usable water. This 'super-sponge' could be used in disaster situations, poverty-stricken areas and developing countries.
March 13th
(Geological Society of America) On March 25-27, 2019, geoscientists from the North-Central, South-Central, and Rocky Mountain regions of the US and beyond will convene in Manhattan, Kansas, to discuss new science, expand on existing science, and explore the unique geologic features of the region.
March 13th
(World Scientific) In a paper to be published in the forthcoming issue in NANO, researchers from the China University of Petroleum (East China) have summarized the recent advances in application of 2D nanomaterials on the electrode materials of lithium-ion batteries, owing to their compelling electrochemical and mechanical properties that make them good candidates as electrodes in lit-ion batteries for high capacity and long cycle life.
March 13th
(ETH Zurich) An international research project led by scientists from ETH Zurich has determined the amount of man-made CO2 emissions taken up by the ocean between 1994 and 2007.
March 13th
(University of Plymouth) Scientists at the University of Plymouth blended an entire smartphone to dust before conducting a chemical analysis of the dissolved results to demonstrate why we should all take a keener interest in what is contained within everyday electrical items.
March 13th
(University of Huddersfield) The University of Huddersfield's Archaeogenetics Research Group joins an international team to conduct the largest-ever study of ancient DNA from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) which suggests that the Iberian male lineages were almost completely replaced between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago by newcomers originating on the Russian steppe.
March 13th
(Weizmann Institute of Science) Antifreeze is life's means of surviving in cold winters: Natural antifreeze proteins help fish, insects, plants and even bacteria live through low temperatures that should turn their liquid parts to deadly shards of ice. Strangely enough, in very cold conditions, the same proteins can also promote the growth of ice crystals.
March 13th
(American Chemical Society) Just like certain animals here on Earth, there are endangered elements. For example, we're constantly losing helium, that's way too expensive to create in the laboratory and that's bad news for more than just your birthday party! This week on Reactions, we will explore innovations of the industrial era of Helium, how much we have left and see whether or not this element will go extinct: https://youtu.be/h0Vz_AmKCPw.
March 13th
(University of California - Santa Barbara) For the entire history of our species, humans have lived on a planet capped by a chunk of ice at each pole. But Earth has been ice-free for about 75 percent of the time since complex life first appeared. This variation in background climate, between partly glaciated and ice-free, has puzzled geologists for decades.
March 13th
(Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) ) In 2050, 80 percent of the electric power in Germany has to be based on renewable resources. To reach this goal, it is required to store electric power in the form of chemical energy carriers. Within the priority program 'Catalysts and Reactors under Dynamic Conditions for Energy Storage and Conversion' (SPP 2080, DynaKat) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), twelve big research consortia study how catalytic reaction systems behave under such conditions. The priority program is coordinated by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
March 13th
(University of Tennessee at Knoxville) A new study is using observations made by Henry David Thoreau -- 19th-century American naturalist, social reformer, and philosopher -- to explore the effects of climate change on tree leaf-out and, as a result, the emergence of spring wildflowers.
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