(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON D.C., August 4, 2015 -- The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today, the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community.
You are invited to read, share, blog about, link to, or otherwise enjoy:
1) IS PHYSICS RESEARCH ANOTHER CASUALTY OF UKRAINIAN CONFLICT?
David Kramer of Physics Today discusses the negative impact that the conflict in eastern Ukraine has had on physicists and students forced to relocate from their homes and universities.
"More than 25 universities and research institutes with physical sciences programs have been forced to relocate from the separatist-controlled areas of the Donbass, an eastern region that includes the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk...
Some 12,000 scientists from the Donbass were uprooted by the conflict, according to Ukrainian Physical Society president Maksym Strikha, who recently became the country's deputy minister for education and science."
MORE: http://bit.ly/1gHlJd5
2) A SATELLITE VIEW OF THE TRAGEDY IN KATHMANDU
This issue's Back Scatter is an InSAR look at the Nepal earthquake that killed more than 8800 people last April. The interferogram, calculated by University of California, San Diego's David Sandwell, reveals that Earth's surface had a peak rise of more than 1 meter outside Kathmandu and a drop of 0.8 meters to the north.
"The magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Nepal some 80 km northwest of the country's capital, Kathmandu, on 25 April 2015 was the largest to hit the region in 80 years. The temblor was shallow--only 15 km--and the slip region extended for an estimated 120 km east-southeast along the boundary where the Indian tectonic plate is subducting under the Eurasian plate. Including aftershocks, one of which was magnitude 7.3, the event killed more than 8,800 people and injured more than 20,000."
MORE: http://bit.ly/1KO39fV
3) HEAVY ELEMENTS PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF THE PERIODIC TABLE
In this feature, scientific leader of the Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions Yuri Oganessian and Oak Ridge National Laboratory senior researcher Krzysztof Rykaczewski discuss recent experimental efforts to synthesize elements far heavier than uranium and their impact on the periodic table and the Segrè chart of nuclides.
"The overarching questions are far from trivial. Where is the end of the periodic table? What is the heaviest nucleus? How do properties evolve for extreme numbers of protons, neutrons, and electrons?"
MORE: http://bit.ly/1KO3hvU
4) MASSIVE UNDERTAKING TO FINISH BEHEMOTH TELESCOPES
Physics Today's Toni Feder reports on the obstacles facing construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope, and European Extremely Large Telescope, three gigantic optical-IR telescopes that will be used to study black holes, dark energy, and other astrophysical phenomena and to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.
"Each project faces its own technical, financial, and social hurdles; in particular, the GMT still has half a billion dollars to raise, and some native Hawaiians strongly oppose the building of the TMT on a mountain they hold sacred. But to first order, says Jochen Liske, acting program scientist for the E-ELT, 'The challenge for all three projects is getting things right and producing a telescope that works.' They all aim to have first light in the early to mid 2020s."
MORE: http://bit.ly/1M2WGwo
5) READING DNA AND BIOSENSING WITH NANOPORES
In this feature, University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Murugappan Muthukumar, Delft University of Technology postdoctoral researcher Calin Plesa, and Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft director Cees Dekker discuss how a 70-year-old idea for measuring blood cells has evolved into a powerful, versatile tool for studying DNA, proteins, and other biomolecules.
" Conventional sequencing methods use a shotgun approach whereby a long strand is fragmented into small pieces -- each perhaps 100 base pairs or so in length. Those strands are then independently analyzed, either by a combination of gel electrophoresis and chemical analysis or by fluorescence techniques. Nanopore sequencing, by contrast, can potentially offer very long read length, high speed, and low cost; it is label-free; and it can be done at the single-molecule level."
MORE: http://bit.ly/1SZTJgi
6) STABILIZING QUANTUM CASCADE LASERS FOR THE MID-IR
For interrogating molecular vibrations in the mid-infrared, physicists often turn to quantum cascade lasers, which regrettably exhibit short-term frequency fluctuations of tens to thousands of kilohertz. To remedy this, a team of researchers at the Laser Physics Laboratory in Paris has developed a method of stabilizing a mid-IR QCL laser by locking it to an ultrastable near-IR laser across town. Physics Today's Johanna Miller reports.
"Do chiral molecules and their mirror images vibrate at exactly the same frequencies? Or, as theorists have suggested, does the electroweak interaction's known nonconservation of parity introduce a slight difference? A team of researchers at the Laser Physics Laboratory in Paris is engaged in a long-term project to answer that question."
MORE: http://bit.ly/1JK8lzQ
INFORMATION:
ABOUT PHYSICS TODAY
Physics Today is the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics, and it includes a mix of in-depth feature articles, news coverage and analysis, and fresh perspectives on scientific advances and ground-breaking research. See: http://www.physicstoday.org
ABOUT AIP
The American Institute of Physics is an organization of 10 physical science societies, representing more than 120,000 scientists, engineers, and educators. AIP delivers valuable services and expertise in education and student programs, science communications, government relations, career services for science and engineering professionals, statistical research in physics employment and education, industrial outreach and the history of physics and allied fields. AIP is home to the Society of Physics Students and the Niels Bohr Library and Archives, and it owns AIP Publishing LLC, a scholarly publisher in the physical and related sciences. More information: http://www.aip.org
More than 2 percent of all emergency department visits are now related to nontraumatic dental conditions, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University, the University of California-San Francisco, Truven Health Analytics and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Although the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act has made millions of low-income and rural Americans eligible for health insurance, many states don't provide dental coverage for adults under their Medicaid programs. Paying for dental insurance on the individual market ...
This news release is available in French. In summertime, bats are a common feature in the night sky, swooping around backyards to gobble up mosquitos. Bats also help with crops: they act as a natural pesticide by feeding on harmful insects.
But these winged mammals are now under threat. As agricultural intensification expands across the world, the conversion of their natural habitats has caused a dramatic decline in population. North American bats are also plagued with white-nose syndrome, an emerging infectious disease that's decimating their numbers.
"Many bat ...
The nonmedical use of prescription opioids (POs) has become an area of increasing public health concern in the United States and rates of use are particularly high among young adults. In the past decade, an emerging "epidemic" of nonmedical PO use has been reported. Among young adults, self-reported use is 11% and overdose deaths involving POs now exceed deaths involving heroin and cocaine combined. Sexual violence is also a serious problem in the United States receiving increased national attention, and the relationship between substance use and sexual violence is well ...
Irvine, Calif., Aug. 4, 2015 - Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, near the San Andreas Fault, granite boulders that should have been toppled by earthquakes long ago resolutely remain. In exploring why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California's San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes.
In a study to be published online Aug. 5 in Seismological Research Letters, Lisa Grant Ludwig, associate professor of public health at ...
SAN FRANCISCO-- Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, granite boulders that should have been toppled long ago by earthquakes are maintaining a stubborn if precarious balance. In puzzling out why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California's San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes.
In their study published online August 5 in Seismological Research Letters (SRL), Lisa Grant Ludwig of University of California, Irvine and colleagues ...
While cognitive abilities naturally diminish as part of the normal aging process, it may be possible to take a bite out of this expected decline.
Eating a group of specific foods known as the MIND diet may slow cognitive decline among aging adults, even when the person is not at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center. This finding is in addition to a previous study by the research team that found that the MIND diet may reduce a person's risk in developing Alzheimer's disease.
The recent study shows that older ...
Los Angeles, CA (August 4, 2015) The Journal of Endovascular Therapy (JEVT), official publication of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF ENDOVASCULAR SPECIALISTS (ISES), announces that is it today publishing the latest update of the Inter-Society Consensus for the Management of Peripheral Arterial Disease (TASC II),1 an internationally recognized set of guidelines for the management of patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD). JEVT is a SAGE journal.
Originally published in 2000, the TASC document represents the collaboration of international vascular specialties involved ...
Washington, DC - August 4, 2015 - The pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes grows on refrigerated smoked salmon by way of different metabolic pathways from those it uses when growing on laboratory media. The research could lead to reduced incidences of food-borne illness and death, said principal investigator Teresa Bergholz, PhD. The research appears July 24 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.
In the study, the investigators showed that L. monocytogenes grows on cold smoked salmon by using different metabolic pathways ...
Our nation's veterans continue to suffer emotional and psychological effects of war--some for decades. And while there has been greater attention directed recently toward post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more veterans are seeking help, current psychotherapy treatments are less than optimal, according to a new narrative review published in the August 4, 2015 issue of JAMA.
In a review of medical literature over a 35-year period, researchers from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury -- a program in the Department ...
AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 4, 2015) - Physicians should improve the way they discuss firearm safety with patients by showing more respect for the viewpoints of gun owners, according to an article by a University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty member published in the Aug. 4 issue of JAMA.
Marian "Emmy" Betz, MD, MPH, associate professor of emergency medicine, and Garen J. Wintemute, MD, MPH, professor of emergency medicine at the University of California Davis, write that physician counseling about gun safety is a key component of preventing firearm injury and death. ...
