223 articles from MONDAY 9.12.2019

New Laser Transmitter to Enable International Gravitational Wave Observatory

This blog post originated in the 2018 Science Mission Directorate Science and Technology Report. PROJECT Laser Transmitter for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) Mission KEY POINTS A highly stable and robust laser design is a key subsystem required for the LISA observatory. By leveraging lessons learned from previous missions and the latest technologies in photonics packaging...

Ice in Motion: Satellites Capture Decades of Change

Portal origin URL: Ice in Motion: Satellites Capture Decades of ChangePortal origin nid: 456417Published: Monday, December 9, 2019 - 16:30Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: New time-lapse videos of Earth's glaciers and ice sheets as seenfrom space, some spanning nearly 50 years, are providing new insights into howthe planet's frozen...

Breakthrough in 'distributed deep learning'

Computer scientists, using a divide-and-conquer approach that leverages the power of compressed sensing, have shown they can train the equivalent of a 100 billion-parameter distributed deep learning network on a single machine in less than 35 hours for product search and similar extreme classification problems.

Lighting up cardiovascular problems using nanoparticles

Heart disease and stroke are the world's two most deadly diseases, causing over 15 million deaths in 2016 according to the World Health Organization. A key underlying factor in both of these global health crises is the common condition, atherosclerosis, or the build-up of fatty deposits, inflammation and plaque on the walls of blood vessels. By the age of 40, around half of us will have this...

Researchers identify 'Achilles' heel' of drug-resistant superbug

A deadly superbug that infects an estimated 54,500 Americans a year has a secret weapon, a protein, that allows it to defy antibiotic treatment and immune system attacks. However, the secret is out now that researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have identified the protein that acts as a defense mechanism for vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). Their...

Dozens feared dead in eruption of New Zealand volcano

A volcano on a New Zealand island erupted Monday with a towering blast of ash and scalding steam as tourists were exploring the moon-like surface, killing five people and leaving perhaps two dozen others missing and presumed dead. Eighteen others were rescued, some of them severely burned.

Predicting a protein's behavior from its appearance

Proteins are the building blocks of life and play a key role in all biological processes. Understanding how they interact with their environment is therefore vital to developing effective therapeutics and the foundation for designing artificial cells.

Acoustic focusing to amass microplastics in water

Microplastics are receiving a lot of attention lately due to their difficulty in removal from the environment. Sieves and filtration are currently the predominant way to capture microplastics in water. However, this is impractical because filters clog easily and regularly need to be cleaned or replaced. Another issue is that it has been impossible to collect anything smaller than 0.3 mm, the size...

The Antarctic: Study provides data about the structure of the icy continent

The Antarctic is one of the parts of Earth that we know the least about. Due to the massive ice shield, the collection of geophysical information on site is extremely difficult and expensive. Satellite data from the European Space Agency (ESA) has now been used as the basis for new insights on the deep structure of the continent. Scientists from Kiel University (CAU) recently published their...

A tech jewel: Converting graphene into diamond film

Can two layers of the "king of the wonder materials," i.e. graphene, be linked and converted to the thinnest diamond-like material, the "king of the crystals?" Researchers of the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials (CMCM) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) have reported in Nature Nanotechnology the first experimental observation of a chemically induced conversion of...

Green hydrogen: Research to enhance efficiency

Laboratory experiments and a parabolic flight campaign have enabled an international team of researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) to gain new insights into water electrolysis, in which hydrogen is obtained from water by applying electric energy. Water electrolysis could play a key role in the energy transition if efficiency improvements can be achieved. The findings...

Nanowire detects Abrikosov vortices

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Institute of Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated the possibility of detecting Abrikosov vortices penetrating through a superconductor-ferromagnet interface. The device considered in their study, published in Scientific Reports, is a ferromagnetic nanowire...

New function for plant enzyme could lead to green chemistry

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a new function in a plant enzyme that could have implications for the design of new chemical catalysts. The enzyme catalyzes, or initiates, one of the cornerstone chemical reactions needed to synthesize a wide array of organic molecules, including those found in lubricants, cosmetics, and those used as raw...

Strategies to lower risk for violent crime and gun violence

With violent crimes and gun violence rising annually and the number of gun deaths in the U.S. surpassing all other nations, researchers at the annual meeting of The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) present a series of studies during its Study of Violent Crime and Gun Violence symposium which contributes several new frameworks that can be used toward improving laws, civilian strategies, legislation...

Cities and their rising impacts on biodiversity—a global overview

The rapid expansion of cities around the world is having an enormous impact on biodiversity. To gain a clearer picture of the situation, an international group of scientists, including Professor Andrew Gonzalez from McGill's Biology Department, surveyed over 600 studies on the impacts of urban growth on biodiversity. They published their findings today in Nature Sustainability.

Tackling air pollution: researchers present emissions inventory for Nepal

Data on emission amounts and sources have an important role to play in shaping policy on climate protection and air quality. Now, scientists from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, have presented the first high-resolution inventory to record emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in Nepal over an extended period of time. Their research reveals...

Climate change and the threat to global breadbaskets

Climate change is not just resulting in a steady increase in temperatures, but also in an increased frequency and severity of extreme climatic events, like droughts, heat waves, and floods. These extreme conditions are particularly damaging for agriculture. Climate variability is responsible for at least 30% of the annual fluctuations in worldwide agricultural yield. Under "normal" climatic...

Asian water towers are world's most important and most threatened

Scientists from around the world have assessed the planet's 78 mountain glacier-based water systems. For the first time, they ranked them in order of their importance to adjacent lowland communities while assessing their vulnerability to future environmental and socioeconomic changes. These systems, known as mountain water towers, store and transport water via glaciers, snow packs, lakes and...

Volcano F is the origin of 'floating stones'

Stones do not float in water—this is a truism. But there is hardly a rule without exception. In fact, some volcanic eruptions produce a very porous type of rock with a density so low that it does float: Pumice. An unusually large amount of it is currently drifting in the Southwest Pacific towards Australia. When it was first sighted in the waters around the island state of Tonga at the beginning...

480-million-year-old fossils reveal sea lilies' ancient roots

Sea lilies, despite their name, aren't plants. They're animals related to starfish and sea urchins, with long feathery arms resting atop a stalk that keeps them anchored to the ocean floor. Sea lilies have been around for at least 480 million years—they first evolved hundreds of millions of years before the dinosaurs. For nearly two centuries, scientists have thought about how modern sea lilies...

Wing genes responsible for tiny treehopper's extraordinary helmet

Why the treehopper developed the enlarged, three-dimensional hood ornament that distinguishes it from the rest of the insect world remains a mystery to scientists, though it's theorized that mimicry or camouflage designed to protect it from predators is a likely reason. But a study from researchers in UConn's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department, published today in the journal Nature...

Identification of a key protein linked to aging

Aging is a dramatic public health issue in the face of the current demographic changes: the proportion of 60 and over in the world's population will almost double by 2050. In this context, a new discovery has just broadened scientific knowledge. Researchers shed light on the mechanisms of senescence, by identifying a key protein associated with aging.

Tackling air pollution: Researchers present emissions inventory for Nepal

Data on emission amounts and sources have an important role to play in shaping policy on climate protection and air quality. Now, scientists have presented the first high-resolution inventory to record emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in Nepal over an extended period of time. Their research reveals that the air pollution problem is growing at a much faster rate than the economy.

Liquid flow is influenced by a quantum effect in water

Researchers have discovered that the viscosity of solutions of electrically charged polymers dissolved in water is influenced by a quantum effect. This tiny quantum effect influences the way water molecules interact with one another. Yet, it can lead to drastic changes in large-scale observations. This effect could change the way scientists understand the properties and behavior of solutions of...

Storing data in everyday objects

Researchers and an Israeli scientist have discovered a new method for turning nearly any object into a data storage unit. This makes it possible to save extensive data in, say, shirt buttons, water bottles or even the lenses of glasses, and then retrieve it years later. The technique also allows users to hide information and store it for later generations. It uses DNA as the storage medium.

Explaining the tiger stripes of Saturn's moon Enceladus

Slashed across the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus are four straight, parallel fissures or 'tiger stripes' from which water erupts. These fissures aren't quite like anything else in the Solar System. Researchers now think they have a model to explain them.