Science | WPN World People News

China, the world's largest producer of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFC), received a US $95 million grant on April 23, 2013 to help reduce its production of HCFCs. These substances, used primarily in refrigeration and air-conditioning and in the manufacture of foam products, deplete the ozone layer and exacerbate climate change. The grant is from the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which provides the funds in exchange for verified annual reductions of HCFC production levels.

This is an artist's concept of the Saturnian plasma sheet based on data from Cassini magnetospheric imaging instrument. It shows Saturn's embedded "ring current," an invisible ring of energetic ions trapped in the planet's magnetic field.

Crown ether “cages” trap potassium ions but leave nanotubes with a repellant negative charge in solutions that will be valuable for forming very strong, highly conductive carbon nanotube fibers. The Rice University discovery appears in ACS Nano.

The nano-network releases insulin in response to changes in blood sugar.

Model simulations spanning 140 years show that warming from carbon dioxide will change the frequency that regions around the planet receive no rain (brown), moderate rain (tan), and very heavy rain (blue). The occurrence of no rain and heavy rain will increase, while moderate rainfall will decrease.

The Danish 1.54-metre telescope located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has captured a striking image of NGC 6559, an object that showcases the anarchy that reigns when stars form inside an interstellar cloud.

The magnetic reconnection region in the tail of Earth's magnetosphere.

This is an artist's rendering of all-optical control of an individual electronic spin within a diamond. This spin is associated with a naturally occurring defect in diamond known as the nitrogen-vacancy center, a promising quantum bit (qubit) for quantum information processing. In their recently published paper, Yale et al. develop techniques to initialize, manipulate, and read out the electronic spin of this qubit using only pulses of light.

Shown are three examples of partitioning carbon nanotubes in liquid phases. Left: nanotubes partitioned by diameter. Smaller diameters, on the bottom, appear purple. Center: partitioned between semiconductors (amber, top) and metals. Right: A sample with different diameter range partitioned between metals (yellow) and semiconductors. Color differences are due to differences in electronic structure.