Tag Archives: dynamics

Klimaforschung mit HALO über dem brasilianischen Regenwald

By Guest PostOctober 11, 2014Scienceadam blumenthal, aerosol, arash nikoubashman, brasilien, cloud, coping, dlr, dynamics, feel the pain, gaspee affair, gaspee project, google vr technology, halo, klimaforschung, meinrat andreae, nudeltopologie, precipitation, rebound from failure, selin malkoc, tohoku oki earthquake

Gewitterwolken über dem Regenwald sind ein wichtiges Element im Klimasystem. Von Anfang September bis Anfang Oktober 2014 war das vom Deutschen Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) betriebene Forschungsflugzeug HALO in Manaus im Amazonasgebiet in Brasilien, um die Entstehung, Entwicklung und Eigenschaften von tropischen Wolken zu vermessen. Mit der Mission ACRIDICON (Aerosol, Cloud, Precipitation and Radiation Interactions and Dynamics of Convective Cloud Systems) wollen die Forscher die mikrophysikalischen Vorgänge in den Wolkentürmen genauer verstehen, die für ihre Klimawirkung bestimmend sind. Zudem untersuchen die Forscher, wie Spurenstoffe durch hochreichende Wolken nach oben transportiert werden und wie Brandrodungen die Wolkeneigenschaften und den Niederschlag beeinflussen. Die wissenschaftliche Leitung der Messflüge lag beim Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie (MPIC) und der Universität Leipzig. Insgesamt sind an der HALO-Flugkampagne 23 wissenschaftliche Institutionen beteiligt. Das Forschungsflugzeug HALO ist eine Gemeinschaftsinitiative deutscher Umwelt- und Klimaforschungseinrichtungen. (more…)

Scholars and scientists explore factors underlying serendipitous discoveries

By Guest PostJuly 3, 2014Sciencealexis licht, buckyballs, charles darwin, cosmic eruptions, donald levy, dylan gomes, dynamics, factors, fermilab, guillaume dupont nivet, himalayan mountains, lake erie, massive star system, megan kiminki, Milky Way, mine, Nanotechnology, natural selection, perfect yogi, rachel moon, radar, rick stevens, sensory mode, theory, tibetan uplift, vocal sacs, westerly winds, world wide web, yoga asanas, yogi miley cyrus

What do Velcro, Tang, penicillin, the structure of DNA and the World Wide Web have in common?

They all involved serendipitous discoveries—chance discoveries made by alert, curious scientists who were looking for other things when they happened across a fortuitous finding. Rather than ignoring their accidental discoveries, these curious, open-minded scientists harnessed their luck. “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” as Louis Pasteur put it. (more…)

Ultracold Big Bang experiment successfully simulates evolution of early universe

By Guest PostSeptember 1, 2013Scienceabsolute zero, andrei sakharov, background radiation, beginning of universe, big bang, black holes, chao lin kuo, chen lung hung, cheng chin, cmb, cobe, cosmic microwave, dynamics, early universe, evolution, excitations, galaxy formation, infant universe, initial conditions, john carlstrom, laboratory simulation, matter and radiation, michael turner, phenomenon, power of physics, russian physicist, sakharov acoustic oscillations, sakharov oscillations, simulation, sound wave excitations, stanford university, ultracold big bang, ultracold cesium atoms, university of chicago, vacuum chamber, wayne hu, wmap

Physicists have reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in a laboratory simulation of the Big Bang, using ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber at the University of Chicago.

“This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of structure in the early universe,” said Cheng Chin, professor in physics. Chin and his associates reported their feat in the Aug. 1 edition of Science Express, and it will appear soon in the print edition of Science. (more…)

Whirlpools on the Nanoscale Could Multiply Magnetic Memory

By Guest PostJune 22, 2013Scienceadvanced light source, als, als beamline, berkeley lab, billionths, brno university, czech republic, dynamics, electron spin, magnetic contrast, magnetic memory, magnetic states, magnetic vortices, meter, nanoscale, peter fischer, polarity, san diego, spin orientation, Technology, university of california, vojtech uhlir, whirlpools, xray optics

At the Advanced Light Source, Berkeley Lab scientists join an international team to control spin orientation in magnetic nanodisks

“We spent 15 percent of home energy on gadgets in 2009, and we’re buying more gadgets all the time,” says Peter Fischer of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Fischer lets you know right away that while it’s scientific curiosity that inspires his research at the Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS), he intends it to help solve pressing problems.

“What we’re working on now could make these gadgets perform hundreds of times better and also be a hundred times more energy efficient,” says Fischer, a staff scientist in the Materials Sciences Division. As a principal investigator at the Center for X-Ray Optics, he leads ALS beamline 6.1.2, where he specializes in studies of magnetism. (more…)

The Black Sea is a Goldmine of Ancient Genetic Data

By Guest PostMay 28, 2013Environmentalkenones, ancient genetic data, black sea, black sea sediment, brackish black sea, cercozoa, chris quince, dinoflagellates, dna techniques, dynamics, emiliania huxleyi, environmental changes, eustigmatophytes, fossil skeletons, freshwater, goldmine, haptophyte algae, Holocene, keith harris, lake environments, late glacial, liviu giosan, marco coolen, mariana filipova marinova, marine paleoecologist, mediterranean waters, microscope, organic walled dinocysts, past climate, plankton, precipitation, record, sedimentary genomic, strait of bosphorus, subatlantic climate, whoi, whoi geologist

New Study Reconstructs the Past Ocean ‘Paleome’

When Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) marine paleoecologist Marco Coolen was mining through vast amounts of genetic data from the Black Sea sediment record, he was amazed about the variety of past plankton species that left behind their genetic makeup (i.e., the plankton paleome).

The semi-isolated Black Sea is highly sensitive to climate driven environmental changes, and the underlying sediments represent high-resolution archives of past continental climate and concurrent hydrologic changes in the basin. The brackish Black Sea is currently receiving salty Mediterranean waters via the narrow Strait of Bosphorus as well as freshwater from rivers and via precipitation. (more…)

World’s Longest-Running Plant Monitoring Program Now Digitized

By Guest PostMay 10, 2013Nature, Sciencecarnegie institution, data set, desert laboratory, digital format, dynamics, forrest shreve, gis technology, gps, helen raichle, janice bowers, larry venable, long term data, map, national science foundation, photographs, plant monitoring program, plants on tumamoc, raymond m turner, rhythm, robert h webb, science of ecology, society, sonoran desert, susana rodriguez buritica, tucson, tumamoc hill, U.S. Geological Survey, ua, university of arizona, usgs, volney spalding, Washington

Data from the research plots on Tumamoc Hill reveal changes in the Sonoran Desert and have been important to key advances in the science of ecology.

Researchers at the University of Arizona’s Tumamoc Hill have digitized 106 years of growth data on individual plants, making the information available for study by people all over the world.

Knowing how plants respond to changing conditions over many decades provides new insights into how ecosystems behave. (more…)

NASA’s HyspIRI Sees the Forest for the Trees and More

By Guest PostApril 28, 2013Environment, Scienceairborne campaign, algal blooms, aviris, california, droughts, dryden aircraft, dynamics, ecosystems, environmental changes, er 2, forest, high altitude aircraft, hyperspectral infrared imager, hyspiri, imaging spectroscopy, methane emissions, NASA, operations facility, palmdale, petya campbell, quantitative assessments, robert green, season, simon hook, stephen ungar, surface of earth, surface phenomena, tree, volcanoes, wildfires

To Robert Green, light contains more than meets the eye: it contains fingerprints of materials that can be detected by sensors that capture the unique set of reflected wavelengths. Scientists have used the technique, called imaging spectroscopy, to learn about water on the moon, minerals on Mars and the composition of exoplanets. Green’s favorite place to apply the technique, however, is right here on the chemically rich Earth, which is just what he and colleagues achieved this spring during NASA’s Hyperspectral Infrared Imager (HyspIRI) airborne campaign.

“We have ideas about what makes up Earth’s ecosystems and how they function,” said Green, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is principal investigator of the campaign’s Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) instrument. “But a comprehensive understanding requires us to directly measure these things and how they change over landscapes and from season to season.” (more…)

Vortex Loops Could Untie Knotty Physics Problems

By Guest PostMarch 5, 2013Science3d printer, atmosphere, behavior culminates, charged gas, configuration, dustin kleckner, dynamics, elements, energy, exotic superfluids, failed catastrophically, fine scale twisting, high speed camera, hydrofoils, james franck institute, knot, knotted vortex loops, knottedness, lord kelvin, momentum, new york university, ordinary fluids, periodic table, physicist peter tait, physicists, physics subfields, plasma flows, plasma physics, reconnection, smoke ring, stable phenomena, turbulence, university of chicago, vortex knot, washington square park, weird behavior, william irvine

University of Chicago physicists have succeeded in creating a vortex knot—a feat akin to tying a smoke ring into a knot. Linked and knotted vortex loops have existed in theory for more than a century, but creating them in the laboratory had previously eluded scientists.

Vortex knots should, in principle, be persistent, stable phenomena. “The unexpected thing is that they’re not,” said Dustin Kleckner, a postdoctoral scientist at UChicago’s James Franck Institute. “They seem to break up in a particular way. They stretch themselves, which is a weird behavior.” (more…)