What Is a Rebreather?
	A typical Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, or scuba gear for short, usually consists of a tank containing compressed air and a mouthpiece used to regulate the flow of air from the tank into the lungs. But breathing air in this manner is extremely inefficient, especially while considering the applications of this particular apparatus. This is because the air you breathe out still contains a fair amount of oxygen. Modern scu ... [read more >>]
	26 May 2008, 08:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nitrogen Compound Pollution Can Accelerate Global Warming
	Most nitrogen pollutants released by humans into the Earth's atmosphere end up in the ocean, where they act as fertilizers and increase the production of marine plant life. This in turn determines a high absorption of carbon dioxide into oceanic sinkhole, according to a study carried out by Robert Duce, Atmospheric Science researcher and Distinguished Professor of Oceanography at the Texas A&M University. Carbon dioxide is now ... [read more >>]
	16 May 2008, 06:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Entangled State in Nitrogen Used to Localize Electrons
	Atoms are formed of a positively charged nucleus – containing protons and neutrons – and an outer shell of electrons spinning around the nucleus. Now, we know that the nucleus is found in the center of the atom, but individual electrons spinning at high speeds around the nucleus are rather hard to localize, which is why the electron shell is often called electron cloud. The electrons can occupy any position on the respective orbit at any g ... [read more >>]
	16 May 2008, 05:07GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Dry Ice Is
	Dry ice is basically frozen carbon dioxide. It might not sound like much but dry ice bears some unique properties that make it ideal for certain cooling applications. First of all, as its name says, it’s dry, meaning that unlike other ices, such as frozen water, it does not go through a liquid state when heated. More precisely, when frozen, carbon dioxide breaks down, the process being called sublimation, a transformation from the solid st ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 08:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Whales Conquered the Oceanic Abyss
	Toothed whales represent the diving champions of all air-breathing animals. Sperm whales dive at depths of over 1,200 m (3,600 ft) for more than an hour, while Cuvier’s beaked whale (a type of toothed whale) holds the record for diving amongst any sea mammal - 1,900 m (6,330 ft), that translate into 190 atmospheres, for one hour and 25 minutes. The bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon) can dive for periods of 2 hours, at depths at 495 m (1,650 ft ... [read more >>]
	09 May 2008, 04:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Let's Model Some Diamonds, He Says!
	Diamonds have fascinated humans ever since they were discovered, with their breathtaking beauty and unsurpassed hardness. Thus, modern technology is seeking for new ways of synthesizing such crystals in industrial facilities, in order to make them available for everybody. An allotrope form of carbon, the diamond is the hardest material created naturally on Earth, and the third on Moss scale, after the aggregate carbon nanorods and ultr ... [read more >>]
	04 January 2008, 08:36GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Nitrogen Fertilizers Are Bad for The Soil
	For decades now, the United States used nitrogen-based fertilizers, believing that it would benefit the soil by building organic carbon into it; but a group of scientists studying the soil has recently found that nitrogen actually fertilizers deplete the carbon reserves from it. Scientist from the University of Illinois, became interested in the problem while reviewing corn growth, and the production rates, only to discover th ... [read more >>]
	30 October 2007, 10:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Our Worst Gut Bacteria Came from the Bottom of the Sea
	What's the similarity between your gut and the bottom of the ocean? Well, they're both dark and oxygen-poor places. And full of bacteria. Now, a group of Japanese researchers has discovered that some of the nastiest germs thriving in the human intestine, triggering some severe diseases could have evolved from hardy ancestors living deep under the sea bottom. The team said they had analyzed the DNA material of two we ... [read more >>]
	04 July 2007, 03:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Are Acid Rains?
	Many acids result from the combination of a nonmetal oxide with water. Water can be found in nature, the oxides can be dumped by human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels. This is how acid rains result: rains filled with acids. The main causes are the nitrogen and sulfur oxides, that give nitric and sulfuric acids, the most powerful known acids. There are also some natural sources for acid rains, like volcanic eruptions ... [read more >>]
	05 June 2007, 15:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Artificial Photosyntesis On the Way
	This is the process that fuels life on Earth: plants simply mix carbon dioxide from the air, water and sunlight to turn them into biomass and oxygen. Chemists would also like to be able to use CO2 as a carbon source just like in the photosynthesis for synthesizing organic reactions, but this is not as simple as it might appear. Researchers led by Markus Antonietti at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces have now mad ... [read more >>]
	17 March 2007, 10:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia