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DNA sleuth hunts wine roots in Anatolia

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There are easier places to make wine than the spectacular, desolate landscapes of southeast Turkey, but DNA analysis suggests it is here that Stone Age farmers first domesticated the wine grape.

Opportunity rover finishes walkabout on Mars crater rim

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(Phys.org)—The latest work assignment for NASA's long-lived Mars rover Opportunity is a further examination of an area where the robot just completed a walkabout.

Award-winning A/C uses old idea, new materials

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If thirst is crucial to knowledge, then one crucial step in the evolution of air conditioning was born in the 1970s, when Ron Judkoff was a hot, thirsty Peace Corp volunteer in Kedougou, Senegal, one of the warmest places on Earth.

Clays on Mars: More plentiful than expected

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(Phys.org)—A new study co-authored by the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates that clay minerals, rocks that usually form when water is present for long periods of time, cover a larger portion of Mars than previously thought. In fact, Assistant Professor James Wray and the research team say clays were in some of the rocks studied by Opportunity when it landed at Eagle crater in 2004. The rover only detected acidic sulfates and has since driven about 22 miles to Endeavour Crater, an area of the planet Wray pinpointed for clays in 2009.

Can we accurately model fluid flow in shale?

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(Phys.org)—Given that over 20 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, a third of the United States' total reserves, are thought to be trapped in shale, and given the rush to exploit shale oil and gas resources by Australia, Canada, China, and other countries around the world—even oil-rich Saudi Arabia—it's a wonder that producers still rely on models of how fluids flow underground that were devised in the heyday of oil and gas development.

Study: Martian crater may once have held groundwater-fed lake

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(Phys.org)—A NASA spacecraft is providing new evidence of a wet underground environment on Mars that adds to an increasingly complex picture of the Red Planet's early evolution.

Curiosity rover finds conditions once suited for ancient life on Mars

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(Phys.org) —An analysis of a rock sample collected by NASA's Curiosity rover shows ancient Mars could have supported living microbes.

Curiosity Mars rover sees trend in water presence

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(Phys.org) —NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has seen evidence of water-bearing minerals in rocks near where it had already found clay minerals inside a drilled rock.

Clays can expand under pressure

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It was always believed that water is "squeezed" out of the clay structure under pressure but physicists at Umea University in Sweden together with German colleagues show that this appear to be not always true if excess of liquid water is available around. The new findings are published in Angewandte Chemie.

What's between a slip and a slide? Research leads towards new standards for tennis courts

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Working with the International Tennis Federation and colleagues at the University of Exeter, the team from the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering developed a test machine which applies large forces to a surface to mimic the impact of elite tennis players on tennis courts. This impact can be up to four times the bodyweight of a player.

Attacking MRSA with metals from antibacterial clays

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In the race to protect society from infectious microbes, the bugs are outrunning us. The need for new therapeutic agents is acute, given the emergence of novel pathogens as well as old foes bearing heightened antibiotic resistance.

Mars rover Opportunity examines clay clues in rock

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(Phys.org) —NASA's senior Mars rover, Opportunity, is driving to a new study area after a dramatic finish to 20 months on "Cape York" with examination of a rock intensely altered by water.

Slow earthquakes: It's all in the rock mechanics

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(Phys.org) —Earthquakes that last minutes rather than seconds are a relatively recent discovery, according to an international team of seismologists. Researchers have been aware of these slow earthquakes, only for the past five to 10 years because of new tools and new observations, but these tools may explain the triggering of some normal earthquakes and could help in earthquake prediction.

Opportunity discovers clays favorable to martian biology and sets sail for motherlode of new clues

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Now nearly a decade into her planned 3 month only expedition to Mars, NASA's longest living rover Opportunity, struck gold and has just discovered the strongest evidence to date for an environment favorable to ancient Martian biology – and she has set sail hunting for a motherlode of new clues amongst fabulous looking terrain!!

Answer to opal mystery shows Red Centre's links to Red Planet

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(Phys.org) —The dramatic geological events that created opal, Australia's national gemstone, have been described for the first time by a University of Sydney researcher.

Papaya-clay combo could cut cost of water purification in developing countries

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An inexpensive new material made of clay and papaya seeds removes harmful metals from water and could lower the cost of providing clean water to millions of people in the developing world, scientists are reporting. Their study on this "hybrid clay" appears in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

Lab study indicates feldspar dominates ice nucleation in clouds with mix of water and ice

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(Phys.org) —A team of researchers at Britain's Institute for Climate and Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds, with assistance from Australian Matthew Woodhouse of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization has found that feldspar minerals play a far larger role in ice formation in clouds than has been realized. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes their lab studies that revealed the important nature of feldspar in ice nucleation in clouds.

Opportunity mountain goal dead ahead as Mars orbiter restarts critical targeting hunt for habitability signs

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NASA's most powerful Mars orbiter has been given the green light today (Aug. 5) to capture new high resolution spectral scans that are absolutely crucial for directing the long lived Opportunity rover's hunt for signatures of habitability atop the intriguing mountain she will soon ascend.

New NASA mission to help us learn how to mine asteroids

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Over the last hundred years, the human population has exploded from about 1.5 billion to more than seven billion, driving an ever-increasing demand for resources. To satisfy civilization's appetite, communities have expanded recycling efforts while mine operators must explore forbidding frontiers to seek out new deposits, opening mines miles underground or even at the bottom of the ocean.

Scientists find new arsenic threat in deep water wells

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"Dig deep" to avoid naturally occurring arsenic contamination has been promoted as an answer to obtaining safe water in South Asia, which has experienced mass poisoning. But arsenic has been found in numerous deep wells drilled in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam. Stanford Earth scientists suggest that the contamination occurs as arsenic is squeezed from ancient clay sediments surrounding the wells.
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