Contents contributed and discussions participated by Caitlin Hutchinson - CIS Science 6

When President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act into law, much of the conversation and debate was centered on its goal of reforming Wall Street and its potential to prevent another financial crisis
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But within the act, which came into effect on April 1, 2011, is also a provision dealing specifically with eastern Congo. The section requires American companies to ensure the raw materials they use to make their products are not tied to the conflict in Congo, by auditing the mineral supply chains
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tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold, known today as conflict minerals
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Why are tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold so strategic? If you want to build airplanes, computers, TV sets, cell phones and so forth, you can’t make that technology without these minerals. They are key to technological advancement today.
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The Nobel Prize for chemistry also went to a scientist who surprised the world with his findings. On an April morning in 1982, Israeli chemist Daniel Shechtman mixed together two minerals and created something that he’d thought was impossible. Before Shechtman’s discovery, scientists thought that atoms and molecules inside crystals were packed together in a repeating, symmetrical pattern. Without repetition, there couldn’t be a crystal. But on that April morning, Shechtman didn’t see repetition. Instead, in his mineral mixture he saw patterns that never repeated.
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At first, other scientists didn’t believe him. Shechtman said his work was ridiculed by other researchers. His boss even told him to read up on the basics about crystals. Still, Shechtman knew what he’d seen. His work wasn’t published until 1984. Since then, chemists have changed the definition of crystals to include solid materials like Shechtman’s quasi-crystals. Other kinds of quasi-crystals have been created, and naturally occurring quasi-crystals have been found in Russia.
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“But he stuck to his guns, and with time researchers found that this unique crystal structure was actually right.”
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Wanted: Garbage collectors in space
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A sprawling garbage heap floats high above Earth. It contains fragments of broken-down satellites and pieces of used rockets, as well as a few unusual objects like gloves and cameras accidentally dropped by astronauts. The problem isn’t going away; it’s getting worse.
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The number of pieces of space garbage gets larger every year. Around the world, space agencies worry about the trash because even small bits of litter — no larger than the fingernail on your pinkie — can cause serious damage to satellites or spacecraft.
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youtu.be/53lMdHzvGCQ rocks earth environment

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Giant, sunken pieces of an ancient continent from the time of the dinosaurs may have been discovered deep in the Indian Ocean, scientists say.The two fragments, called microcontinents, are possibly leftovers from when India, Antarctica, and Australia were part of a supercontinent known as Gondwana (see a map of Earth during this time.)
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What the scientists found surprised them. Rather than the normal basalt rock of most seabeds, the scientists pulled up chunks of granite, gneiss, and sandstone—rocks normally found on continents. (See pictures of different types of rock.)
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Some samples even contained fossils, said team member Joanne Whittaker, a marine geophysicist at the University of Sydney in Australia."It's quite clear that these two plateaus are little fragments of Gondwana left behind as India moved away from Australia," Whittaker said.
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Two new minerals that formed during the birth of our solar system have been found inside meteorites, new research shows.The new discoveries—krotite and wassonite—are particularly exciting for scientists, who have found only about 60 minerals that can be traced to the solar system's beginnings 4.5 billion years ago.
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"By studying this mineral, we can understand a little bit more about the solar system," NASA's Nakamura-Messenger said. "Four-and-a-half billion years ago, there was a region that had the exact conditions to make this mineral."What's more, this may not be the only new mineral in the Yamato 691 meteorite."The wassonite was surrounded by a couple of other unknown mineral[s]," Nakamura-Messenger said.Likewise, another new mineral, called brearleyite, has been identified next to krotite, Caltech's Ma added—details to be revealed in August in American Mineralogist.
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