Earth’s poles may switch
“This is certainly the quickest movement since we started measurements in Greenland in 1928, ” says Torsten Neubert, who heads DMI’s Solar-Terrestrial Physics Department. Neubert thi...
Are printed journals heading for extinction?
Scientific publishing is still a highly profitable business. According to Nature, the scientific side of the Reed-Elsevier publishing company made a profit of $378m on sales of $938m in 1997. However,...
Tectonic plate theory shaken on Mars
Mars is now a dry planet with most of its water either tied up in a deep permafrost or lost to outer space. However, images gathered by Mars Observer and earlier space craft such as the Viking orbiter...
Physics and fossils
Many biologists have argued that most species become extinct when new ‘fitter’ competitors arrive on the scene. For example, some scientists believe the dinosaurs became extinct after a la...
Quasicrystals clinch Wolf prize
Quasicrystals are materials that do not have a periodic lattice structure but still display subtle long-range order, such as “five-fold” symmetry, that is not possible in regular crystals....
Macroscopic spin moves
James Kikkawa and David Awschalom of the University of California, Santa Barbara have now shown that they can use electric fields to transport electrons through a distance of 0.1 mm in gallium arsenid...
Patents for microlasers
The world-wide patent rights have been licensed by the university to Nanovation Technologies in Florida. The company hopes to develop an optical circuit which would contain thousands of microcavity la...
Ozone mystery is solved
In theory, the creation of ozone – caused by the breakdown of oxygen in the atmosphere by ultraviolet light – is a mass-independent process. However, experiments by Klaus Mauersberger and ...
Fifth framework to start soon
The fifth framework will focus on four main themes: quality of life and management of living systems (ECU 2.413 bn); the user-friendly information society (ECU 3.6 bn); competitive and sustainable gro...
