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On a bright July day 2 years ago, Kurt Kjær was in a helicopter flying over northwest Greenland—an expanse of ice, sheer white and sparkling. Soon, his target came into view: Hiawatha Glacier, a slow-moving sheet of ice more than a kilometer thick. It advances on the Arctic Ocean not in a straight wall, but in a conspicuous semicircle, as though spilling out of a basin. Kjær, a geologist at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, suspected the glacier was hiding an explosive secret. The helicopter landed near the surging river that drains the glacier, sweeping out rocks...

A way of controllably shrinking carbon nanotubes has been developed by US researchers. They say the technique could someday be used to make faster computers and other novel electronic devices. Carbon nanotubes have been used to make a variety of different nanoscale electronic devices, including sensors and transistors. These can outperform conventional components, working at higher frequencies and sensitivities, thanks to the novel physical and electronic properties of nanotubes. These properties, however, depend strongly on the dimensions of each tube. And, until now, there has been no reliable way to make nanotubes to order. This means "nanotube device fabrication is...

Magnetic resonance imaging no longer requires a roomful of equipment – including superconducting magnets that must be cooled to extreme temperatures. A multidisciplinary team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and the University of California, Berkeley, both in the US, developed a highly sensitive laser detector that produces magnetic resonance images at room temperature using low-power, off-the-shelf magnets. MRI works by measuring minute magnetic signals from atomic nuclei whose "spins" have been aligned using external magnetic fields. As different atoms react differently, this provides a unique way to image tissue inside the human body or analyse many other materials....