While we prepare our hands-on coverage of LG and Google's latest Nexus handset, why not take a glance over our complete hands-on photo gallery? We've got a dozen or Nexus 5 photos waiting for you in the gallery after the break — enjoy!
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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 1-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Jade Boyd
jadeboyd@rice.edu
713-348-6778
Rice University
HOUSTON -- (Oct. 31, 2013) -- A Rice University-based team of geoscientists is going to great lengths -- from Earth's core to its atmosphere -- to get to the bottom of a long-standing mystery about the planet's climate.
"We want to know what controls long-term climate change on Earth, the oscillations between greenhouse and icehouse cycles that can last as long as tens of million years," said Cin-Ty Lee, professor of Earth science at Rice and the principal investigator (PI) on a new $4.3 million, five-year federal grant from the National Science Foundation's Frontiers in Earth-System Dynamics (FESD) Program.
"There are long periods where Earth is relatively cool, like today, where you have ice caps on the North and South poles, and there are also long periods where there are no ice caps," Lee said. "Earth's climate has oscillated between these two patterns for at least half a billion years. We want to understand what controls these oscillations, and we have people at universities across the country who are going to attack this problem from many angles."
For starters, Lee distinguished between the type of climate change that he and his co-investigators are studying and the anthropogenic climate change that often makes headlines.
"We're working on much longer timescales than what's involved in anthropogenic climate change," Lee said. "We're interested in explaining processes that cycle over tens of millions of years."
Lee described the research team as "a patchwork of free spirits" that includes bikers, birdwatchers and skateboarders who are drawn together by a common interest in studying the whole Earth dynamics of carbon exchange. The group has specialists in oceanography, petrology, geodynamics, biogeochemistry and other fields, and it includes more than a dozen faculty and students from the U.S., Europe and Asia. Rice co-PIs include Rajdeep Dasgupta, Gerald Dickens and Adrian Lenardic.
The team will focus on how carbon moves between Earth's external and internal systems. On the external side, carbon is known to cycle between oceans, atmosphere, biosphere and soils on timescales ranging from a few days to a few hundred thousand years. On million-year to billion-year timescales, carbon in these external reservoirs interacts with reservoirs inside Earth, ranging from crustal carbon stored in ancient sediments preserved on the continents to carbon deep in Earth's mantle.
"Because of these differences in timescales, carbon cycling at Earth's surface is typically modeled independently from deep-Earth cycling," Lee said. "We need to bring the two together if we are to understand long-term greenhouse-icehouse cycling."
From the fossil record, scientists know that atmospheric carbon dioxide plays a vital role in determining Earth's surface temperatures. Many studies have focused on how carbon moves between the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere. Lee said the FESD team will examine how carbon is removed from the surface and cycled back into the deep Earth, and it will also examine how volcanic eruptions bring carbon from the deep Earth to the surface. In addition, the team will examine the role that volcanic activity and plate tectonics may play in periodically releasing enormous volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. One of several hypotheses that will be tested is whether Earth's subduction zones may at times be dominated by continental arcs, and if so, whether the passage of magmas through ancient carbonates stored in the continental upper plate can amplify the volcanic flux of carbon.
"Long-term climate variability is intimately linked to whole-Earth carbon cycling," Lee said. "Our task is to build up a clearer picture of how the inputs and outputs change through time."
In addition to the Rice team, the project's primary investigators include Jaime Barnes of the University of Texas at Austin, Jade Star Lackey of Pomona College, Michael Tice of Texas A&M University and Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii. Research affiliates include Steve Bergman of Shell, Mark Jellinek of the University of British Columbia, Tapio Schneider of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Yusuke Yokoyama of the University of Tokyo.
###
For more information about the research, visit http://arc2climate.org.
High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:
http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1104_FESD-earth-lg.jpg
CAPTION: A Rice University-based team of geoscientists is going to great lengths -- from Earth's core to its atmosphere -- to investigate the role that deep-Earth processes play in climate evolution over million-year timescales.
CREDIT: Rice University
A copy of the NSF grant abstract is available at:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1338842
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=128983&org=NSF
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 1-Nov-2013
ShareContact: Jade Boyd
jadeboyd@rice.edu
713-348-6778
Rice University
HOUSTON -- (Oct. 31, 2013) -- A Rice University-based team of geoscientists is going to great lengths -- from Earth's core to its atmosphere -- to get to the bottom of a long-standing mystery about the planet's climate.
"We want to know what controls long-term climate change on Earth, the oscillations between greenhouse and icehouse cycles that can last as long as tens of million years," said Cin-Ty Lee, professor of Earth science at Rice and the principal investigator (PI) on a new $4.3 million, five-year federal grant from the National Science Foundation's Frontiers in Earth-System Dynamics (FESD) Program.
"There are long periods where Earth is relatively cool, like today, where you have ice caps on the North and South poles, and there are also long periods where there are no ice caps," Lee said. "Earth's climate has oscillated between these two patterns for at least half a billion years. We want to understand what controls these oscillations, and we have people at universities across the country who are going to attack this problem from many angles."
For starters, Lee distinguished between the type of climate change that he and his co-investigators are studying and the anthropogenic climate change that often makes headlines.
"We're working on much longer timescales than what's involved in anthropogenic climate change," Lee said. "We're interested in explaining processes that cycle over tens of millions of years."
Lee described the research team as "a patchwork of free spirits" that includes bikers, birdwatchers and skateboarders who are drawn together by a common interest in studying the whole Earth dynamics of carbon exchange. The group has specialists in oceanography, petrology, geodynamics, biogeochemistry and other fields, and it includes more than a dozen faculty and students from the U.S., Europe and Asia. Rice co-PIs include Rajdeep Dasgupta, Gerald Dickens and Adrian Lenardic.
The team will focus on how carbon moves between Earth's external and internal systems. On the external side, carbon is known to cycle between oceans, atmosphere, biosphere and soils on timescales ranging from a few days to a few hundred thousand years. On million-year to billion-year timescales, carbon in these external reservoirs interacts with reservoirs inside Earth, ranging from crustal carbon stored in ancient sediments preserved on the continents to carbon deep in Earth's mantle.
"Because of these differences in timescales, carbon cycling at Earth's surface is typically modeled independently from deep-Earth cycling," Lee said. "We need to bring the two together if we are to understand long-term greenhouse-icehouse cycling."
From the fossil record, scientists know that atmospheric carbon dioxide plays a vital role in determining Earth's surface temperatures. Many studies have focused on how carbon moves between the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere. Lee said the FESD team will examine how carbon is removed from the surface and cycled back into the deep Earth, and it will also examine how volcanic eruptions bring carbon from the deep Earth to the surface. In addition, the team will examine the role that volcanic activity and plate tectonics may play in periodically releasing enormous volumes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. One of several hypotheses that will be tested is whether Earth's subduction zones may at times be dominated by continental arcs, and if so, whether the passage of magmas through ancient carbonates stored in the continental upper plate can amplify the volcanic flux of carbon.
"Long-term climate variability is intimately linked to whole-Earth carbon cycling," Lee said. "Our task is to build up a clearer picture of how the inputs and outputs change through time."
In addition to the Rice team, the project's primary investigators include Jaime Barnes of the University of Texas at Austin, Jade Star Lackey of Pomona College, Michael Tice of Texas A&M University and Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawaii. Research affiliates include Steve Bergman of Shell, Mark Jellinek of the University of British Columbia, Tapio Schneider of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Yusuke Yokoyama of the University of Tokyo.
###
For more information about the research, visit http://arc2climate.org.
High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:
http://news.rice.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1104_FESD-earth-lg.jpg
CAPTION: A Rice University-based team of geoscientists is going to great lengths -- from Earth's core to its atmosphere -- to investigate the role that deep-Earth processes play in climate evolution over million-year timescales.
CREDIT: Rice University
A copy of the NSF grant abstract is available at:
http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1338842
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=128983&org=NSF
Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,708 undergraduates and 2,374 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice has been ranked No. 1 for best quality of life multiple times by the Princeton Review and No. 2 for "best value" among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/AboutRiceU.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A tunnel designed to smuggle drugs from Tijuana, Mexico, to San Diego is equipped with electricity, ventilation and a rail system, U.S. authorities said Thursday, making it one of the more sophisticated secret passages discovered along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Authorities seized more than 8 tons of marijuana and 325 pounds of cocaine in connection with the discovery, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. Three suspects were in U.S. custody.
The tunnel links warehouses in Tijuana and San Diego's Otay Mesa industrial area. The area is filled with nondescript warehouses, making it easier to conceal trucks being loaded with drugs.
The tunnel was found Wednesday and completed only recently, ICE said. Authorities did not say exactly when it was built or whether drugs are believed to have gotten through undetected.
As U.S. border security has heightened on land, Mexican drug cartels have turned to ultralight aircraft, small fishing boats and tunnels. More than 75 underground passages have been discovered along the border since 2008, designed largely to smuggle marijuana.
The tunnels are concentrated along the border in California and Arizona. San Diego is popular because its clay-like soil is easy to dig. In Nogales, Ariz., smugglers tap into vast underground drainage canals.
The tunnel is the eighth major passage discovered in San Diego since 2006, a period during which Mexico's Sinaloa cartel has solidified its hold on the prized smuggling corridor. ICE said Wednesday's tunnel was the first in the San Diego area that was found to be used for cocaine.
U.S. and Mexican authorities did not disclose the dimensions of the tunnel.
In November 2011, authorities found a 600-yard tunnel that resulted in seizures of 32 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border, with 26 tons found on the U.S. side, accounting for one of the largest pot busts in U.S. history. The tunnel was equipped with electric rail cars, lighting and ventilation. Wooden planks lined the floor.
On Thanksgiving Day of 2010, authorities found a roughly 700-yard passage equipped with rail tracks that extended from the kitchen of a Tijuana home to two San Diego warehouses, netting about 22 tons of marijuana on both sides of the border.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cross-border-drug-tunnel-equipped-rail-system-181455709.htmlIt’s that time again — that time when dozens of spurious articles pop up all over the web touting all the dangers of the flu vaccine. Articles on unreliable, alarmist, misinformative sites like Natural News, Mercola, chiropractic blogs and other such sites rail against the “toxins” in the vaccine, or claim the flu vaccine doesn’t work, or that it causes this or that horrible disease, or that the flu itself just really isn’t all that bad. (I’m not going to link to any of them. They get too much attention as it is.)
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/LzNxZrkmpCk/setting-the-record-straight-debunking-all-the-flu-vacc-1455630807PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Aitziber Lasa
a.lasa@elhuyar.com
34-943-363-040
Elhuyar Fundazioa
This news release is available in Spanish.
Scientists are usually after defect-free nano-structures. Yet in this case the UPV/EHU researcher Angel Rubio and his collaborators have put the structural defects in boron nitride nanotubes to maximum use. The outcome of his research is a new light-emitting source that can easily be incorporated into current microelectronics technology. The research has also resulted in a patent.
Boron nitride is a promising material in the field of nanotechnology, thanks to its excellent insulating properties, resistance and two-dimensional structure similar to graphene. And specifically, the properties of hexagonal boron nitride, the focus of this research, are far superior to those of other metals and semiconductors currently being used as light emitters, for example, in applications linked to optical storage (DVD) or communications. "It is extremely efficient in ultraviolet light emission, one of the best currently available on the market," remarked the UPV/EHU researcher Angel Rubio.
However, the light emission of boron nitride nanotubes takes place within a very limited range of the ultraviolet spectrum, which means they cannot be used in applications in which the emission needs to be produced within a broader range of frequencies and in a controlled way (for example in applications using visible light).
The research carried out by the UPV/EHU's NanoBio Spectroscopy Group has come up with a solution to overcome this limitation, and open up the door to the use of hexagonal boron nitride nanotubes in commercial applications.
They have shown that by applying an electric field perpendicular to the nanotube, it is possible to get the latter to emit light across the whole spectrum from the infrared to the far ultraviolet and to control it in a simple way. This ease of control is only to be found in nanotubes due to their cylindrical geometry (these are tubular structures with lengths in the order of micrometres, and diameters in the order of nanometres).
Rubio has been working with boron nitride nanotubes for nearly 20 years. "We proposed them theoretically, and then they were found experimentally. So far, all our theoretical predictions have been confirmed, and that is very gratifying," he explained. Once the properties of layered hexagonal boron nitride and its extremely high efficiency in light emission were known, this research sought to show that these properties are not lost in nanotubes. "We knew that when a sheet was rolled up and a tube was formed, a strong coupling was produced with the electric field and that would enable us to change the light emission. We wanted to show," and they did in fact show, "that light emission efficiency was not being lost due to the fact that the nanotube was formed, and that it is also controllable."
Boron absences
The device functions on the basis of the use of natural (or induced) defects in boron nitride nanotubes. In particular, the defects enabling controlled emission are the gaps that appear in the wall of the nanotube due to the absence of a boron atom, which is the most common defect in its manufacture. "All nanotubes are very similar, but the fact that you have these defects makes the system operational and efficient, and what is more, the more defects you have, the better it functions."
Rubio highlighted "the simplicity" of the device proposed. "It's a device that functions with defects, it does not have to be pure, and it's very easy to build and control." Nanotubes can be synthesised using standard methods in the scientific community for producing inorganic nanotubes; the structures synthesised as a result have natural defects, and it is possible to incorporate more if you want by means of simple, post-synthesis irradiation processes. "It has a traditional transistor configuration, and what we are proposing would work with current electronic devices," he stressed. The "less attractive" part, as specified by Rubio, is that boron nitride nanotubes are still only produced in very small quantities, and as yet there is no economically viable synthesis process on a commercial scale.
Beyond graphene
Rubio is in no doubt about the potential of the new materials based on two-dimensional systems, and specifically, of compounds that offer an alternative to graphene, like, for example, hexagonal boron nitride. Without prejudice to graphene, Rubio believes that the alternative field could have greater potential in the long term and needs to be explored: "It's a field that has been active for over the last fifteen years, even though it has been less visible. We have been working with hexagonal boron nitride since 1994, it's like our child, and I believe that it has opened up an attractive field of research, which more and more groups are joining."
###
Further information:
This research has been conducted by the NanoBio Spectroscopy Group (ETSF-Centre for Scientific Development, Department of Materials Physics, Faculty of Chemistry of the UPV/EHU), led by Prof ngel Rubio, in collaboration with Dr Ludger Wirtz (University of Luxembourg), Dr Claudi Attaccalite (University of Grenoble) and Dr Andrea Marini (CNR Italian Research Council - Rome), who are three veteran researchers in the group.
ngel Rubio is professor of Materials Physics of the UPV/EHU, head of the NanoBio Spectroscopy Group and Chairman of the ETSF-European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility of the UPV/EHU, as well as external director of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Oct-2013
ShareContact: Aitziber Lasa
a.lasa@elhuyar.com
34-943-363-040
Elhuyar Fundazioa
This news release is available in Spanish.
Scientists are usually after defect-free nano-structures. Yet in this case the UPV/EHU researcher Angel Rubio and his collaborators have put the structural defects in boron nitride nanotubes to maximum use. The outcome of his research is a new light-emitting source that can easily be incorporated into current microelectronics technology. The research has also resulted in a patent.
Boron nitride is a promising material in the field of nanotechnology, thanks to its excellent insulating properties, resistance and two-dimensional structure similar to graphene. And specifically, the properties of hexagonal boron nitride, the focus of this research, are far superior to those of other metals and semiconductors currently being used as light emitters, for example, in applications linked to optical storage (DVD) or communications. "It is extremely efficient in ultraviolet light emission, one of the best currently available on the market," remarked the UPV/EHU researcher Angel Rubio.
However, the light emission of boron nitride nanotubes takes place within a very limited range of the ultraviolet spectrum, which means they cannot be used in applications in which the emission needs to be produced within a broader range of frequencies and in a controlled way (for example in applications using visible light).
The research carried out by the UPV/EHU's NanoBio Spectroscopy Group has come up with a solution to overcome this limitation, and open up the door to the use of hexagonal boron nitride nanotubes in commercial applications.
They have shown that by applying an electric field perpendicular to the nanotube, it is possible to get the latter to emit light across the whole spectrum from the infrared to the far ultraviolet and to control it in a simple way. This ease of control is only to be found in nanotubes due to their cylindrical geometry (these are tubular structures with lengths in the order of micrometres, and diameters in the order of nanometres).
Rubio has been working with boron nitride nanotubes for nearly 20 years. "We proposed them theoretically, and then they were found experimentally. So far, all our theoretical predictions have been confirmed, and that is very gratifying," he explained. Once the properties of layered hexagonal boron nitride and its extremely high efficiency in light emission were known, this research sought to show that these properties are not lost in nanotubes. "We knew that when a sheet was rolled up and a tube was formed, a strong coupling was produced with the electric field and that would enable us to change the light emission. We wanted to show," and they did in fact show, "that light emission efficiency was not being lost due to the fact that the nanotube was formed, and that it is also controllable."
Boron absences
The device functions on the basis of the use of natural (or induced) defects in boron nitride nanotubes. In particular, the defects enabling controlled emission are the gaps that appear in the wall of the nanotube due to the absence of a boron atom, which is the most common defect in its manufacture. "All nanotubes are very similar, but the fact that you have these defects makes the system operational and efficient, and what is more, the more defects you have, the better it functions."
Rubio highlighted "the simplicity" of the device proposed. "It's a device that functions with defects, it does not have to be pure, and it's very easy to build and control." Nanotubes can be synthesised using standard methods in the scientific community for producing inorganic nanotubes; the structures synthesised as a result have natural defects, and it is possible to incorporate more if you want by means of simple, post-synthesis irradiation processes. "It has a traditional transistor configuration, and what we are proposing would work with current electronic devices," he stressed. The "less attractive" part, as specified by Rubio, is that boron nitride nanotubes are still only produced in very small quantities, and as yet there is no economically viable synthesis process on a commercial scale.
Beyond graphene
Rubio is in no doubt about the potential of the new materials based on two-dimensional systems, and specifically, of compounds that offer an alternative to graphene, like, for example, hexagonal boron nitride. Without prejudice to graphene, Rubio believes that the alternative field could have greater potential in the long term and needs to be explored: "It's a field that has been active for over the last fifteen years, even though it has been less visible. We have been working with hexagonal boron nitride since 1994, it's like our child, and I believe that it has opened up an attractive field of research, which more and more groups are joining."
###
Further information:
This research has been conducted by the NanoBio Spectroscopy Group (ETSF-Centre for Scientific Development, Department of Materials Physics, Faculty of Chemistry of the UPV/EHU), led by Prof ngel Rubio, in collaboration with Dr Ludger Wirtz (University of Luxembourg), Dr Claudi Attaccalite (University of Grenoble) and Dr Andrea Marini (CNR Italian Research Council - Rome), who are three veteran researchers in the group.
ngel Rubio is professor of Materials Physics of the UPV/EHU, head of the NanoBio Spectroscopy Group and Chairman of the ETSF-European Theoretical Spectroscopy Facility of the UPV/EHU, as well as external director of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society.
Share
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
If you blink, you're gonna miss it. Hell, even if you're looking right at it, you still might not see it. But you'll definitely feel it. The Aviationist found a video of a Syrian fighter bomber flying overhead and caught it dropping a bomb pretty much right on top of the cameraman. The plane sends flares out at first but then you see a white streak heading straight towards the ground and before you know it, the camera gets smashed sideways. Scary.
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Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/J8iUelRMgYw/@caseychan
