In a recent study, fossilized coral reefs gave new insight into the direct correlation between an increase in global temperature and the rise in sea level. The results from the study, done by a team of collaborators from Mexico and Germany, were published on April 16, 2009 in the journal Nature.
Alaskan Volcano Heats Up After 20 Years of Rest
Although it's still winter in Alaska, one of its volcanoes has begun to heat up. Starting the night of March 22, Mount Redoubt, located 106 miles southwest of Anchorage, began to spew ash over the south-central part of Alaska. This was just the beginning of a series of explosive eruptions that have been shaking the state.
A Treatment for the Not-So-Common Cold?
Recently, a study discussing the evolution of the rhinovirus genome that is responsible for nearly half of all cold infections was conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University (BYU). The knowledge gained from this study could make important contributions to the discovery of potential vaccines, which may be much more effective than common self-remedies.
The Springtime Blues: Understanding Seasonal Allergies
When T.S. Eliot wrote the opening to The Waste Land, his primary intention was to capture the disillusionment of the post-World War I generation. For seasonal-allergy sufferers, however, a line such as "April is the cruellest month." must take on a dual meaning. Indeed, sometimes the most annoying symptoms are also the most harrowing, so for those 40 million Americans who bear runny noses and watery eyes through the spring and into the summer, there might as well be a war going on in the cellular trenches of their bodies.
An Analysis of Observations from Portable Temperature and Humidity Sensors Deployed Across Oklahoma City
This study focused on the variability of temperature across the Oklahoma City metropolitan area (OKC) during a six-week period in early 2007. Twenty portable temperature and humidity sensors were strategically placed at various fire stations throughout Oklahoma City from 20 February through 1 April 2007. Data from these sensors and two local Oklahoma Mesonet sites were used to evaluate the spatial differences in temperature for the area.
Schreinemakers Rule as Applied to Non-Degenerate Ternary Systems
In experimental studies of phase relations in chemical, ceramic, metallurgical, and mineralogical systems, it is fairly rare for pressure-temperature (P-T) diagrams to be fully mapped, i.e. with all the univariant lines directly determined. This typically requires an extraordinarily large number of experiments; in many cases this is impractical or, due to extreme temperature or pressure conditions, sluggish kinetics, or other considerations, effectively impossible. Even if the availability of thermodynamic data allows the slopes of such univariant curves to be calculated, there remains a possibility that such data are not always mutually consistent. Fortunately, in a series of classic monographs published in Dutch between 1915 and 1925, F.A.H Schreinemakers derived and demonstrated the usefulness of a set of rules which is aptly suited to overcoming this problem. When some subset of the n+2 univariant lines that meet at an invariant point in an n-component system are known, this set of topologically-governed principles, which later came to be known as Schreinemakers rules, not only allows the determination of the location of remaining univariant lines, it also provides insights into the stability of divariant assemblages around the invariant point at various temperatures and pressures. In this paper, we review the 180° rule, overlap rule and half-plane rule, all of which make up Schreinemakers rules, and show how they can be applied to a ternary non-degenerate system where five phases coexist at an invariant point.