"A detailed understanding of the fate of an oil spill is essential in order to foresee the extension of the environmental damage and to develop effective restoration strategies. As the first processes affecting the spilled oil are dispersion and dissolution, the determination of the composition and concentration of the soluble fraction is important for assessing the early impact of the spilled product on marine biota. In this respect, aromatic hydrocarbons are of special concern as they exhibit higher solubility and toxicity in the aquatic environment..."
Special Topic of Oil Spills

"This paper and a number of subsequent ones arose from a well timed sabbatical visit at MIT just when the Izmit earthquake and subsequent Düzce event occurred. Rob Reilinger, Semih Ergintav and colleagues had carried out GPS studies in the region for many years, providing well established pre-earthquake deformation rates and allowing for the collection of an amazing geodetic data set soon after the earthquake. My experience with modeling..."
Special Topic of Earthquakes

F. Stuart Chapin III is a Professor of Ecology in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is senior author of the second most highly cited core paper shown on April’s Top Topics map titled “BOREAL FOREST FIRES AND CLIMATE CHANGE,” from the field of Environment/Ecology: “Role of land-surface changes in Arctic summer warming,” Chapin, FS, et al., SCIENCE 310(5748): 657-60, OCT 28, 2005.
Podcast Menu | Listen: MP3 ¦ WMA, October 2010

Ray Dingledine, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Emory University is the lead author of the February 2010 Current Classics paper in the field of Pharmacology & Toxicology: “The glutamate receptor ion channels,” Dingledine, R, et al., PHARMACOL REV 51(1): 7-61, MAR 1999. Read previous interview with Ray Dingledine.
Podcast Menu | Listen: MP3 ¦ WMA, October 2010

"We presented a synthesis of laboratory and field data from nearly 40 studies around the world, as well as several new discoveries, and a conceptual framework which is consistent with the worldwide data and discoveries. The breadth of evidence presented in the paper to support its findings is probably one of the keys to the wide use of its results by the scientific community..."
Fast Breaking Paper, October 2010

"The principal purpose of the Kepler Mission is to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of stars. This cannot be done from the ground. (The habitable zone is the range of distances from a star where liquid water could exist on the surface of a planet.) The approach is to measure sequences of transits, that is the slight dimming of the stellar brightness caused by a planet as it passes in front of (transits) its parent star as viewed from our solar-system. For an Earth-Sun analog this is a change in brightness..."
Emerging Research Front, October 2010

"The paper proposes the 'Life Cycle Model of Stress' which takes brain development into account in the effects of chronic stress and/or adversities on the human brain. It describes a new model based on the synthesis of knowledge on the effects of stress from the prenatal period to old age, in animals and in humans. This paper proposes that stress occurring at different time of an individual's life may have very different effects on the brain, based on the time of exposure to the stressor. Given that different brain regions..."
Fast Breaking Paper, October 2010

"Seed dispersal is important to biodiversity conservation because it plays a major role in all main processes currently threatening global biodiversity. These include changes in land use, habitat loss and fragmentation, invasive species, climate changes altering species distributions and the escape of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In some cases, like invasive species and GMOs, excessive dispersal is the core problem itself. In other cases, the problem is exactly the opposite: insufficient dispersa..."
Featured Scientist, October 2010

Patrick S. Schnable is the Baker Professor of Agronomy, Director of the Center for Plant Genomics and the Center for Carbon Capturing Crops at Iowa State University. He is senior author of the most highly cited core paper shown on the April 2010 Top Topics map titled "APPLYING GENOME-WIDE SELECTION," from the field of Agricultural Sciences: “All possible modes of gene action are observed in a global comparison of gene expression in a maize F-1 hybrid and its inbred parents...”
Podcast Menu | Listen: MP3 ¦ WMA, October 2010

"...it has been always assumed that during strong-field ionization the electron is removed from the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and nobody expected that deeper lying orbitals could have an important contribution. However, not only we have realized that this had to be the case, we also realized that participation of multiple orbitals (multiple channels) in harmonic generation is the key to encoding attosecond multi-electron dynamics in high harmonic spectra. We also had to introduce a new concept..."
Fast Breaking Paper, October 2010