Geologists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have located a huge chunk of Earth's lithosphere that went missing 15 million years ago.
By finding the massive block of errant rock beneath Tibet, the researchers are helping solve a long-standing mystery, and clarifying how continents behave when they collide.
The Tibetan Plateau and adjacent Himalayan Mountains were created by the movements of vast tectonic plates that make up Earth's outermost layer of rocks, the lithosphere. About 55 million years ago, the Indian plate crashed into the Eurasian plate, forcing the land to slowly buckle and rise. Containing nearly one-tenth the area of the continental U.S., and averaging 16,000 feet in elevation, the Tibetan Plateau is the world's largest and highest plateau.
Science & Technology
DNA tests carried out on two British men have shed light on a mystery surrounding the ancestry of Thomas Jefferson, America's third president. In the 1990s, DNA was taken from male relatives of Jefferson to see if he fathered a son with one of his slaves. They found the president had a rare genetic signature found mainly in the Middle East and Africa, calling into question his claim of Welsh ancestry. But this DNA type has now been found in two Britons with the Jefferson surname.
The final design for a "doomsday" vault that will house seeds from all known varieties of food crops has been unveiled by the Norwegian government.
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| ©statsbygg |
| Artist's impression of the entrance to the vault |
A fleeting pulse of light has been captured and then made to reappear in a different location by US physicists.
The quantum sleight of hand exploits the properties of super-cooled matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.
The emerging pulse was slightly weaker than the high-speed beam that entered the experimental setup, but was identical in all other respects.
The work, published in the journal Nature, could one day lead to advances in computing and optical communication.
The quantum sleight of hand exploits the properties of super-cooled matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate.
The emerging pulse was slightly weaker than the high-speed beam that entered the experimental setup, but was identical in all other respects.
The work, published in the journal Nature, could one day lead to advances in computing and optical communication.
The study, reported this week in The Journal of Neuroscience, provides the first direct evidence that humans, like rats, moths and butterflies, secrete a scent that affects the physiology of the opposite sex.
"This is the first time anyone has demonstrated that a change in women's hormonal levels is induced by sniffing an identified compound of male sweat," as opposed to applying a chemical to the upper lip, said study leader Claire Wyart, a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley.
"This is the first time anyone has demonstrated that a change in women's hormonal levels is induced by sniffing an identified compound of male sweat," as opposed to applying a chemical to the upper lip, said study leader Claire Wyart, a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley.
Lunar colonists could be in for a nasty shock - literally. A team of US scientists has found that the Moon's surface can become charged with up to several thousand volts of static electricity1.
This charging could release sparks that disable electronic equipment - including monitors, space buggies or even the front door of a Moon base. And it could cause dust clouds that clogs up instruments. What's worse, it can be caused by bad weather in space: just when astronauts need their equipment to give them warning and allow them to shelter from the radiation.
This charging could release sparks that disable electronic equipment - including monitors, space buggies or even the front door of a Moon base. And it could cause dust clouds that clogs up instruments. What's worse, it can be caused by bad weather in space: just when astronauts need their equipment to give them warning and allow them to shelter from the radiation.
US military engineers are looking to bats for inspiration.
Video footage of bats in flight has revealed extreme aerodynamic flexibility of the creature's wings. Bats' wings are made of highly jointed skeletons and elastic membranes, which allow them to generate and manipulate lift in unusual ways.
For their study, researchers Kenneth Breuer and Sharon Swartz at Brown University in Providence, US, used high -speed video cameras to record the 3D wing and body movements of flying lesser short-nosed fruit bats, Cynopterus brachyotis.
Video footage of bats in flight has revealed extreme aerodynamic flexibility of the creature's wings. Bats' wings are made of highly jointed skeletons and elastic membranes, which allow them to generate and manipulate lift in unusual ways.
For their study, researchers Kenneth Breuer and Sharon Swartz at Brown University in Providence, US, used high -speed video cameras to record the 3D wing and body movements of flying lesser short-nosed fruit bats, Cynopterus brachyotis.
It appears that the skin, the largest organ in our body, is a kind of zoo and some of the inhabitants are quite novel, according to a new study. Researchers found evidence for 182 species of bacteria in skin samples. Eight percent were unknown species that had never before been described.
It is the first study to identify the composition of bacterial populations on the skin using a powerful molecular method. Not only were the bacteria more diverse than previously estimated, but some of them had not been found before, says Martin J. Blaser, M.D., Frederick King Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology at NYU School of Medicine, one of the authors of the study.
It is the first study to identify the composition of bacterial populations on the skin using a powerful molecular method. Not only were the bacteria more diverse than previously estimated, but some of them had not been found before, says Martin J. Blaser, M.D., Frederick King Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine and Professor of Microbiology at NYU School of Medicine, one of the authors of the study.
Humans learn how to deliberately and carefully reach for things while still in the womb, says an Italian team of scientists.
While it is generally believed babies only show planned reaching behaviour at 3 or 4 months old, the researchers think they may start before they are born.
Psychologist Dr Stefania Zoia of the Institute of Child Health IRCCS Burlo Garofolo in Trieste presented her team's research at the 8th Motor Control and Human Skill Conference in Australia last week.
While it is generally believed babies only show planned reaching behaviour at 3 or 4 months old, the researchers think they may start before they are born.
Psychologist Dr Stefania Zoia of the Institute of Child Health IRCCS Burlo Garofolo in Trieste presented her team's research at the 8th Motor Control and Human Skill Conference in Australia last week.
Researchers in Cuba are using an infrared sensor to study the collective behaviour of ants and hope to apply their findings to engineering problems.
Using simple optical components to quantify the behaviour of ants could help scientists tackle problems such as traffic management say researchers at the University of Havana in Cuba. (Review of Scientific Instruments 77 126102)
"Ants show a highly nonlinear, collective behaviour that somehow produces an overall intelligence out of individual simplicity," Ernesto Altshuler from Havana's Complex Systems and Superconductivity Laboratory told optics.org. "We want to quantify and understand the process of self organization that produces this overall intelligence. Many authors believe that ant behaviour may teach us robust algorithms to be used in engineering."
Altshuler and colleagues use an infrared LED, a mirror and a phototransistor. Both the LED and the phototransistor have a peak emission/sensitivity around 850 nm.
Using simple optical components to quantify the behaviour of ants could help scientists tackle problems such as traffic management say researchers at the University of Havana in Cuba. (Review of Scientific Instruments 77 126102)
"Ants show a highly nonlinear, collective behaviour that somehow produces an overall intelligence out of individual simplicity," Ernesto Altshuler from Havana's Complex Systems and Superconductivity Laboratory told optics.org. "We want to quantify and understand the process of self organization that produces this overall intelligence. Many authors believe that ant behaviour may teach us robust algorithms to be used in engineering."
Altshuler and colleagues use an infrared LED, a mirror and a phototransistor. Both the LED and the phototransistor have a peak emission/sensitivity around 850 nm.
Comment: Hmmm, wonder how many NeoCon vaults there are out there... (and who keeps that sidewalk clear of snow and ice in the North Pole?)