Using two abundant and relatively inexpensive elements, Boston College chemists have produced nanonets, a flexible webbing of nano-scale wires that multiplies surface area critical to improving the performance of the wires in electronics and energy applications. Scientists grew wires from titanium and silicon into a two-dimensional network of branches that resemble flat, rectangular netting, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Professor Dunwei Wang and his team report in the international edition of the German Chemical Society journal Angewandte Chemie.......

An attempt to re-energise mathematics teaching in Europe is being made in a new project examining a range of factors thought to influence achievement. Mathematics teaching is as vital as ever both in support of key fields such as life sciences, alternative energy development, or information technology, and also through its unique ability to develop widely applicable problem solving skills. It should be highly relevant not just for the elite few but for all people in education........

Scientists have yet to reach a consensus on how much and how quickly melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will contribute to sea level rise. To shed light on this question, researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research analyzed the disappearance of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the last ice sheet to melt completely in the Northern Hemisphere and the closest example of what can be expected to happen to the Greenland Ice Sheet in the next century. Their findings show that sea level rise as a result of ice sheet melt can happen very rapidly. The study will be published online this week in Nature Geoscience.........

The geysers of Yellowstone National Park owe their eistence to the "Yellowstone hotspot"--a region of molten rock buried deep beneath Yellowstone, geologists have found. But how hot is this "hotspot," and what's causing it? In an effort to find out, Derek Schutt of Colorado State University and Ken Dueker of the University of Wyoming took the hotspot's temperature........

Iowa State University researcher Robert Jernigan believes that his research shows proteins have controlled motions. Most biochemists traditionally believe proteins have a number of random, uncontrolled movements. Research conducted by Jernigan, director of the L.H. Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics together with Guang Song, an assistant professor in computer science and graduate student Lei Yang, over a 10-year period shows that not only are protein motions more restricted, but also that these restricted, controlled motions are part of the function of the proteins........

A study by a group of prominent seismologists suggests that a pattern of subtle but active faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed. Among other things, they say that the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones. The paper appears in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America at http://www.bssaonline.org/cgi/reprint/98/4/1696........

The semiconductor silicon and the ferromagnet iron are the basis for much of mankind's technology, used in everything from computers to electric motors. In this week's issue of the journal Nature (August 21st) an international group of scientists, including academic and industrial scientists from the UK, USA and Lesotho, report that they have combined these elements with a small amount of another common metal, manganese, to create a new material which is neither a magnet nor an ordinary semiconductor. The paper goes on to show how a small magnetic field can be used to switch ordinary semiconducting behaviour (such as that seen in the electronic-grade silicon which is used to make transistors) back on........

Embracing the belief that an interdisciplinary and coordinated research agenda can have a profound impact on advancing science and influencing policy, a group of experts has developed a roadmap for improving our understanding of how mercury moves through the marine ecosystem and into the fish we eat........

Scientists monitoring daily satellite images here of Greenland's glaciers have discovered break-ups at two of the largest glaciers in the last month. They expect that part of the Northern hemisphere's longest floating glacier will continue to disintegrate within the next year. A massive 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke away between July 10th and by July 24th. The loss to that glacier is equal to half the size of Manhattan Island. The last major ice loss to Petermann occurred when the glacier lost 33 square miles (86 square kilometers) of floating ice between 2000 and 2001........

Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaborative center of the University of Maryland and NIST, have reported a new way to fine-tune the light coming from quantum dots by manipulating them with pairs of lasers. Their technique, published in Physical Review Letters,* could significantly improve quantum dots as a source of pairs of entangled photons, a property with important applications in quantum information technologies. The accomplishment could accelerate development of powerful advanced cryptography applications, projected to be a key 21st-century technology........

Chronic hepatitis B infects 400 million people worldwide, a number of of them children. Even with three effective vaccines available, hepatitis B remains a stubborn, unrelenting health problem, particularly in Africa and other developing areas. The disease and its complications cause an estimated 1 million deaths globally each year........

In a study of parasites living in three estuaries on the Pacific coast of California and Baja California, scientists have determined that biomass of these parasites exceeds that of top predators, in some cases by more than 20 times. Their findings, which could have significant ecological and biomedical implications, appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature........

Nutrients from the Amazon River's outflow spread well beyond the continental shelf and drive carbon cycling in the tropical ocean, say researchers who conducted a multi-year study. They will publish their results this week online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)........

People living near vulnerable creeks and rivers along Colorado's Front Range may soon get advance notice of potentially deadly floods, thanks to a new forecasting system being tested this summer by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. Known as the NCAR Front Range Flash Flood Prediction System, it combines detailed atmospheric conditions with information about stream flows to predict floods along specific streams and catchments........

After completing one of the longest running experiments ever done on a lake, scientists from the University of Alberta, University of Minnesota and the Freshwater Institute, contend that nitrogen control, in which the European Union and a number of other jurisdictions around the world are investing millions of dollars, is not effective and in fact, may actually increase the problem of cultural eutrophication........

Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean. Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, researchers mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels........

Horticultural crops account for almost 50% of crop sales in the United States, and these crops are carefully managed to ensure good quality. But more information is needed about the crops' growth and response to seasonal and climatic changes so that management practices such as irrigation can be precisely scheduled. Existing research can be difficult to generalize because of variations in crops, planting densities, and cultural practices........

A new technique for growing single-crystal nanorods and controlling their shape using biomolecules could enable the development of smaller, more powerful heat pumps and devices that harvest electricity from heat. Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have discovered how to direct the growth of nanorods made up of two single crystals using a biomolecular surfactant. The scientists were also able to create "branched" structures by carefully controlling the temperature, time, and amount of surfactant used during synthesis........

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a completely new and independent technique that astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, researchers have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique........