ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Our planet's magnetic field is in a constant state of change, say researchers who are beginning to understand how it behaves and why. Listen to this story via streaming audio , a downloadable file , or get help . December 29, 2003: Every few years, scientist Larry Newitt of the Geological Survey of Canada goes hunting. He grabs his gloves, parka, a fancy compass, hops on a plane and flies out over the Canadian arctic. Not much stirs among the scattered islands and sea ice, but Newitt's prey is there--always moving, shifting, elusive. His quarry is Earth's north magnetic pole. At the moment it's located in northern Canada, about 600 km from the nearest town: Resolute Bay, population 300, where a popular T-shirt reads "Resolute Bay isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here." Newitt stops there for snacks and supplies--and refuge when the weather gets bad. "Which is often," he says. Right: The movement of Earth's north magnetic p

Alaska is going rogue on climate change. Defiant as ever, the state that gave rise to Sarah Palin is bucking the mainstream yet again: While global temperatures surge hotter and the ice-cap crumbles, the nation's icebox is getting even icier. That may not be news to Alaskans coping with another round of 50-below during the coldest winter in two decades, or to the mariners locked out of the Bering Sea this spring by record ice growth . Then again, it might. The 49th state has long been labeled one of the fastest-warming spots on the planet. But that's so 20th Century. In the first decade since 2000, the 49th state cooled 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Widespread warming That's a "large value for a decade," the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks said in "The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska." The cooling is widespread -- holding true for 19 of the 20 National Weather Service stations sprinkle

An increase in CO2 could be one reason why a layer of Earth's upper atmosphere went through its biggest contraction in 43 years. THE GIST ·         Earth's thermosphere went through its biggest contraction in 43 years. ·         Researchers expected to see a contraction due to a solar minimum, but not this significant. ·         One explanation may be an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. enlarge More than half of the upper atmosphere's shrinkage cannot be explained.  Click to enlarge this image.  NASA RELATED CONTENT Watch videos about weather and climate. ·         Layers of Atmosphere Seen From Space ·         How Does the Sun Affect the Earth? RELATED TOPICS ·         Carbon Emissions ·         Chemistry ·         Earth ·         Earth's Upper Atmosphere Suffers Record Breaking Collapse » Scientists are mulling over why part of the Earth's atmosphere recently suffered its biggest collapse since records beg

This series of harmonic generation microscopy images shows the skin cells of a 24-year-old subject at increasing depths, ranging from the outermost layer of skin (a) to approximately 300 millionths of a meter deep (f). The magenta areas, generated from third harmonics, show skin cells and their nuclei. The green areas, generated from second harmonics, show fibers made of the protein collagen. Credit: Biomedical Optics Express Wrinkles, dryness, and a translucent and fragile appearance are hallmarks of old skin, caused by the natural aging of skin cells. But while most of us can recognize the signs of lost youth when we peer into the mirror each morning, scientists do not have a standardized way to measure the extent of age damage in skin. Now a group of Taiwanese researchers has used a specialized microscope to peer harmlessly beneath the skin surface to measure natural age-related changes in the sizes of skin cells. The results, which are published in the Optical Society's (OSA

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, in collaboration with colleagues in Germany and the Netherlands, have identified a previously unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. The nerve cells regulate cardiovascular functions such as heart rhythm and blood pressure. It is hoped that the discovery, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, will be significant in the long term in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases in humans. The scientists have managed to identify in mice a previously totally unknown group of nerve cells in the brain. These nerve cells, also known as 'neurons', develop in the brain with the aid of thyroid hormone, which is produced in the thyroid gland. Patients in whom the function of the thyroid gland is disturbed and who therefore produce too much or too little thyroid hormone, thus risk developing problems with these nerve cells. This in turn has an effect on the function of the heart, leading to cardiovascular disease. It i

Dec. 20, 2012  — Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously known states of magnetism. Ferromagnetism -- the simple magnetism of a bar magnet or compass needle -- has been known for centuries. In a second type of magnetism, antiferromagnetism, the magnetic fields of the ions within a metal or alloy cancel each other out. In both cases, the materials become magnetic only when cooled below a certain critical temperature. The prediction and discovery of antiferromagnetism -- the basis for the read heads in today's computer hard disks -- won Nobel Prizes in physics for Louis Neel in 1970 and for MIT professor emeritus Clifford Shull in 1994. "We're showing that there is a third fundamental state for magnetism," says MIT professor of physics Young Lee. The experimental work showing the existence of this new stat

By Ben West The  Pakistani Taliban  continue to undermine Pakistan's government and military establishment, and in doing so, they continue to raise questions over the security of the country's nuclear arsenal. On Dec. 15, 10 militants armed with suicide vests and grenades attacked Peshawar Air Force Base, the site of a third major operation by the Pakistani Taliban since May 2011. Tactically, the attack was relatively unsuccessful -- all the militants were killed, and the perimeter of the air base was not breached -- but the Pakistani Taliban nonetheless achieved their objective.  The attack began the night of Dec. 15 with a volley of three to five mortar shells. As the shells were fired, militants detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device near the perimeter wall of the air base. Reports indicate that all five militants inside the vehicle were killed. The other five militants engaged security forces in a nearby residential area and eventually were driven back

When probing the deepest reaches of the Cosmos or magnifying our understanding of the quantum world, a whole host of mysteries present themselves. This is to be expected when pushing our knowledge of the Universe to the limit. But what if a well-known -- and apparently constant -- characteristic of matter starts behaving mysteriously? This is exactly what has been noticed in recent years; the decay rates of radioactive elements are  changing . This is especially mysterious as we are talking about elements with "constant" decay rates -- these values aren't supposed to change . School textbooks teach us this from an early age. WATCH VIDEO: A solar eruption sends a wave of plasma hurtling towards Earth on Aug. 1, 2010. The event was captured by NASA satellites. This is the conclusion that  researchers from Stanford and Purdue University have arrived at , but the only explanation they have is even weirder than the phenomenon itself: The sun might be emitting a previ