http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers studying carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas and a key driver of global climate change, now have a new tool at their disposal: daily global measurements of carbon dioxide in a key part of our atmosphere. The data are courtesy of the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft. http://www.physorg.com/news180119502.html Space & Earth Tue, 15 Dec 2009 17:40:02 EST news180119502 (PhysOrg.com) -- The most detailed seismic images yet published of the plumbing that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano shows a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims that there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup. http://www.physorg.com/news179994313.html Space & Earth Mon, 14 Dec 2009 07:10:32 EST news179994313 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of researchers from eight institutions led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has solved a software and hardware problem that had perplexed scientists studying atmospheric aerosols for climate research. Not only did they fix the problem, but the instrument now performs better than it did when it was new. http://www.physorg.com/news179521919.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:00:03 EST news179521919 The STPSat-1, built for the Department of Defense (DoD) Space Test Program (STP) and operated by the DoD STP for the first year then transitioned to NRL for the last 16 months, was decommissioned on October 7th after completing almost 2 ½ years of successful on-orbit operation. The satellite's two payloads, both designed and built by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), provided unique measurements of middle atmospheric hydroxyl, polar mesospheric clouds and the low latitude ionosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news179002593.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:00:02 EST news179002593 (PhysOrg.com) -- Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are testing the soybean model GLYCIM to improve its performance under a range of conditions around the world. In the process, they`ve been able to pinpoint the best agronomic practices for maximizing soybean production in Thailand. http://www.physorg.com/news175868214.html Biology Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:38:04 EST news175868214 Using satellite radar data and GPS measurements, Chinese researchers have explained the exceptional geological events leading to the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake that killed nearly 90 000 people in China's Sichuan Province. http://www.physorg.com/news174821357.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:20:02 EST news174821357 (PhysOrg.com) -- At 7:30 a.m. EDT on October 9, a two-ton rocket body will slam into a crater near the moon's south pole. By studying the resulting plume of gas and dust, scientists hope this grand experiment will confirm the presence of ice in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles. http://www.physorg.com/news174237313.html Space & Earth Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:15:57 EST news174237313 (PhysOrg.com) -- How do we discover new things? For scientists, observation and measurement are the main ways to extract information from Nature. Based on observations, scientists build models that, in turn, are used to make predictions about the future or the past. To the extent that the predictions are successful, scientists conclude that their models capture Nature`s organization. However, Nature does not reveal secrets easily - there is no way for observers to learn everything about a process, so some information always remains hidden from view; other kinds of information are present, but difficult to extract. In a recent study, researchers have investigated how to measure the degree of hidden information in a process (its `crypticity`) and, along the way, solved several puzzles involved in extracting, storing, and communicating information. http://www.physorg.com/news171800572.html Physics Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:23:36 EST news171800572 Tiny particles are pivotal to climate change, public health, and nanotechnology. A significant fraction of these particles are aspherical, yet scientists must routinely assume the particles are spherical to interpret many measurements of particle properties. To determine the true shape of particles, experts at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Imre Consulting devised SPLAT II, a single particle mass spectrometer that provides extremely precise particle measurements. http://www.physorg.com/news171641601.html Physics Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:20:01 EST news171641601 (PhysOrg.com) -- Global temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are rising. Ice sheets in many areas of the world are retreating. Yet there`s something peculiar going on in the oceans around Antarctica: even as global air and ocean temperatures march upward, the extent of the sea ice around the southern continent isn`t decreasing. In fact, it's increasing. http://www.physorg.com/news171129293.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:10:06 EST news171129293 (PhysOrg.com) -- The thinning of a gigantic glacier in Antarctica is accelerating, scientists warned today. http://www.physorg.com/news169471914.html Space & Earth Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:00:01 EST news169471914 (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study published this week takes scientists a step further in their quest to understand how Antarctica's vast glaciers will contribute to future sea-level rise. Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and University of Durham describe how a new 3-d map created from radar measurements reveals features in the landscape beneath a vast river of ice, ten times wider than the Rhine, in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. http://www.physorg.com/news167315664.html Space & Earth Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:50:02 EST news167315664 (PhysOrg.com) -- Bacterial diseases are usually detected by first enriching samples, then separating, identifying, and counting the bacteria. This type of procedure usually takes at least two days after arrival of the sample in the laboratory. Tests that work faster, in the field, and without complex sample preparation, whilst being precise and error-free, are thus high on the wish list. http://www.physorg.com/news167289726.html Chemistry Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:22:48 EST news167289726 From the motion sensor to the computer chip - in many products of daily life components are used whose functioning is based on smallest structures of the size of thousandths - or even millionths - of millimetres. These micro and nano structures must be manufactured and assembled with the highest precision so that in the end, the overall system will function smoothly. http://www.physorg.com/news166093649.html Nanotechnology Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:08:07 EST news166093649 Two weeks after the rains begin, an elephant family named "the Royals" usually switches to a grass diet to bulk up for pregnancy and birth. But when they wandered off their African reserve one rainy season, cattle grazed the grass so short that elephants couldn't eat it, according to a University of Utah study. http://www.physorg.com/news158861986.html Biology Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:21:21 EST news158861986 (PhysOrg.com) -- Saturn's largest moon, Titan, may have a subterranean ocean of hydrocarbons and some topsy-turvy topography in which the summits of its mountains lie lower than its average surface elevation, according to new research. http://www.physorg.com/news158234875.html Space & Earth Mon, 06 Apr 2009 11:08:19 EST news158234875 Researchers in Japan have turned to mathematics to build a computerized 3D model of the female trunk that could help lingerie and other clothes designers make more sensuous, comfortable, and better fitting product ranges. http://www.physorg.com/news156096749.html Technology Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:13:00 EST news156096749 A University of Maryland-led team has compiled the first decades-long database of aerosol measurements over land, making possible new research into how air pollution changes affect climate change. http://www.physorg.com/news156087278.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:35:09 EST news156087278 (PhysOrg.com) -- Local realism is something we live with every day, even if we don`t realize it. The principle of local realism combines two assumptions: locality and realism. Locality says that distant objects cannot directly and instantaneously influence each other (since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light). Realism says that the things we measure and sense are indeed really there apart from our measurements, and it`s not just our measurements that make them exist. http://www.physorg.com/news155382024.html Physics Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:40:56 EST news155382024 A new map of the Earth`s gravitational force based on satellite measurements makes it much less resource intensive to find new oil deposits. The map will be particularly useful as the ice melts in the oil-rich Arctic regions. Ole Baltazar, senior scientist at the National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark (DTU Space), headed the development of the map. http://www.physorg.com/news154965701.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:02:11 EST news154965701 (PhysOrg.com) -- The day that robot playmates help children with autism learn the social skills that they naturally lack has come a step closer with the development of a system that allows a robot to monitor a child's emotional state. http://www.physorg.com/news154119076.html Electronics Tue, 17 Feb 2009 18:52:00 EST news154119076 Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet. The observations enabled astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to generate realistic images of the planet by feeding the data into computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news152371245.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:21:19 EST news152371245 Drifting of the large tectonic plates and the superimposed continents is not only powered by the heat-driven convection processes in the Earth's mantle, but rather retroacts on this internal driving processes. In doing so, the continents function as a thermal blanket, which leads to an accumulation of heat underneath, and which in turn can cause the break-up of the super-continents. http://www.physorg.com/news151842800.html Space & Earth Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:33:46 EST news151842800 As skiers across the world pay close attention to the state of the snow on the slopes, there are a different group of scientific snow-watchers looking closely at a South Pole snowfield this January. http://www.physorg.com/news151074864.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:14:24 EST news151074864 (PhysOrg.com) -- Fasten your seat belts -- we're faster, heavier, and more likely to collide than we thought. Astronomers making high-precision measurements of the Milky Way say our home Galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously understood. http://www.physorg.com/news150384799.html Space & Earth Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:33:19 EST news150384799 (PhysOrg.com) -- The idea of a white Christmas may seem magical for many of us, but spare a thought for a team of scientists forgoing the festive season to take part in a novel campaign being carried out in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth to support ESA's CryoSat mission. http://www.physorg.com/news149168651.html Space & Earth Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:44:11 EST news149168651 Most atmospheric models predict that the rate of transport of air from the troposphere to the above lying stratosphere should be increasing due to climate change. Surprisingly, Dr. Andreas Engel together with an international group of researchers has now found that this does not seem to be happening. On the contrary, it seems that the air air masses are moving more slowly than predicted. This could also imply that recovery of the ozone layer may be somewhat slower than predicted by state-of-the-art atmospheric climate models. http://www.physorg.com/news148562793.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:26:33 EST news148562793 Sometimes seconds count. If a furious, tornado-spitting thunderstorm was bearing down on your home town, a few moments might make all the difference in the world. http://www.physorg.com/news135864376.html Space & Earth Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:06:16 EST news135864376