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This town has been on fire for 50 years (video)
2015-07-07
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, July 7, 2015 - In 1962, an underground fire started in the coal-mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Fifty-three years later, that fire still burns. In this week's episode of Reactions, we explain the history and science behind the Centralia mine fire. Does anyone still live there? How could the fire keep burning for so long, and why hasn't it been extinguished? From a chemical standpoint, what is fire, anyway? It's all answered in our latest video: https://youtu.be/fsgqy5FYP2c.
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Aspirin may delay growth of asbestos-related cancer
2015-07-07
HONOLULU - Aspirin may inhibit the growth of mesothelioma, an aggressive and deadly asbestos-related cancer, University of Hawai'i Cancer Center researchers have found.
The finding could eventually give doctors and patients a potential new tool to fight against this devastating disease, which kills about 3,200 people a year nationwide, and advance knowledge of how to fight other cancers.
The study published in Cell Death and Disease showed that aspirin slows down the growth of mesothelioma by blocking the carcinogenic effects of the inflammatory molecule, High-Mobility ...
Engineers give invisibility cloaks a slimmer design
2015-07-07
Researchers have developed a new design for a cloaking device that overcomes some of the limitations of existing "invisibility cloaks." In a new study, electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have designed a cloaking device that is both thin and does not alter the brightness of light around a hidden object. The technology behind this cloak will have more applications than invisibility, such as concentrating solar energy and increasing signal speed in optical communications.
"Invisibility may seem like magic at first, but its underlying concepts ...
Optical 'dog's nose' may hold key to breath analysis
2015-07-07
University of Adelaide researchers are developing a laser system for fast, non-invasive, onsite breath analysis for disease, potentially enabling screening for a range of diseases including diabetes, infections and various cancers in the future.
The researchers have developed an instrument they equate to an "optical dog's nose" which uses a special laser to measure the molecular content of a sample of gas.
"Rather than sniffing out a variety of smells as a dog would, the laser system uses light to "sense" the range of molecules that are present in the sample," says ...
New research: Rubber expansion threatens biodiversity and livelihoods
2015-07-07
KUNMING, 7 July 2015 - Increasing amounts of environmentally valuable and protected land are being cleared for rubber plantations that are economically unsustainable, new research suggests. More widespread monitoring is vital to design policy that protects livelihoods and environments.
The research was recently published in Global Environmental Change and constitutes a joint effort by scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) East and Central Asia office, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, the University of Singapore and the ...
A cool way to form 2-D conducting polymers using ice
2015-07-07
A piece of deep frozen ice and electronic gadgets may seem to have little connection (except that they are both 'cool' to have on you), but ice could now play a role in opening a new era in the electronic industry where conducting polymers, simply put plastics with electrical properties, are in great demand for practical applications.
Chemists at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea, have discovered an innovative method to form two-dimensional polyaniline (PANI) nanosheets using ice as a hard template. The product, called PANI-ICE, is reported ...
Superconductor could be realized in a broken Lorenz invariant theory
2015-07-07
Today theoretical physicists are facing the difficulty that General Relativity is not (pertubatively) renormalizable, and find that it is very hard to construct the quantum theory of gravity with LI. A possible solution is to break the LI in the ultraviolet (UV) region, so that the theory is renormalizable and unitary. However, the invariance should be recovered in the infrared (IR), so that all of the gravitational experiments in the IR can be satisfied. According to this idea, Horava proposed a Horava-Lifshitz (HL) gravity without LI [P. Horava, Phys. Rev. D 79 (2009) ...
New perturbative method of solving the gravitational N-body problem in general relativity
2015-07-07
Recent experiments have successfully tested Einstein's general theory of relativity in a variety of ways and to remarkable precision. These experiments included spacecraft Doppler tracking, planetary radar ranging, lunar and satellite laser ranging, as well as a number of dedicated gravitational experiments in space and many ground based efforts. How can computational models keep up with the ever improving accuracy of these missions?
Finding a solution to the Einstein's gravitational field equations in the case of an unperturbed one-body problem is quite a simple task. ...
An improved age for Earth's latest magnetic field reversal using radiometric dating
2015-07-07
This news release is available in Japanese.
The Earth's magnetic field periodically reverses such that the north magnetic pole becomes the south magnetic pole. The latest reversal is called by geologists the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary (MBB), and occurred approximately 780,000 years ago. The MBB is extremely important for calibrating the ages of rocks and the timing of events that occurred in the geological past; however, the exact age of this event has been imprecise because of uncertainties in the dating methods that have been used.
A team of researchers based in ...
Mitochondrial metagenomics: How '-omics' is saving wild bees
2015-07-07
July 6, 2015, Shenzhen, China-- Mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) database demonstrated its great value on detecting wild bees in UK farms via mitochondrial metagenomics pipeline, a new approach developed by scientists from the China National Genebank (CNGB), BGI-Shenzhen.
The study published today in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution shows that, with mitogenome references, collecting wild bees, extracting their mixed DNA, and directly reading the DNA of the resultant 'bee soup' could finally make large-scale bee monitoring programmes feasible. This new research ...
Energiewende in the Alps: Switzerland's transition away from nuclear
2015-07-07
Chicago (July 7, 2015)- Switzerland has a long history of trying to be as self-sufficient and energy independent as possible. Although its energy supply system has served it well in the past, the country is now looking to turn away from its reliance on nuclear power and seeks to compensate for the energy lost from hydropower as a result of climate change. In the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, Dominic Notter of Empa discusses how the country aims to address this transition, finding a new supply mix that combines energy conservation, ...