To bee, or not to bee, a question for almond growers
Pollination by bees is vital even when crops are assumed to be pollinator independent. That's according to a study co-authored by Ethel Villalobos, a researcher in the University of Hawaii at Manoa's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences and lead of the UH Honeybee Project.
Improving shoes, showers, 3-D printing: Research launching to the space station
A variety of science investigations, along with supplies and equipment, launch to the International Space Station on the 20th SpaceX commercial resupply services mission. The Dragon cargo spacecraft is scheduled to leave Earth March 6 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Its cargo includes research on particle foam manufacturing, water droplet formation, the...
Study sheds light on how people make Super Tuesday or other tough choices
On Super Tuesday, Democratic voters from Colorado and across the United States will face a serious decision: Sanders or Warren? Biden, Klobuchar or Bloomberg? Then, afterward, what kind of wine to drink.
'Smart water' may aid oil recovery
Now there's evidence that oil and water do mix. Sort of.
Study finds 'silent' genetic variations can alter protein folding
Proteins, the workhorse of the human cell, help digest our food, carry oxygen through the body, fight off invading microbes, and so much more—but they only function when folded properly into specific, three dimensional structures.
What if mysterious 'cotton candy' planets actually sport rings?
Some of the extremely low-density, "cotton candy like" exoplanets called super-puffs may actually have rings, according to new research published in The Astronomical Journal by Carnegie's Anthony Piro and Caltech's Shreyas Vissapragada
Space weather model gives earlier warning of satellite-killing radiation storms
A new machine-learning computer model accurately predicts damaging radiation storms caused by the Van Allen belts two days prior to the storm, the most advanced notice to date, according to a new paper in the journal Space Weather.
To predict an epidemic, evolution can't be ignored
When scientists try to predict the spread of something across populations—anything from a coronavirus to misinformation—they use complex mathematical models to do so. Typically, they'll study the first few steps in which the subject spreads, and use that rate to project how far and wide the spread will go.
Swamp wallabies conceive new embryo before birth—a unique reproductive strategy
Marsupials such as kangaroos or wallabies are known for their very different reproductive strategies compared to other mammals. They give birth to their young at a very early stage and significant development occurs during a lengthy lactation period in which the offspring spends most of its time in a pouch. Although in some marsupials new ovulation happens only a few hours after giving birth, the...
Putting a price on the protective power of wetlands
In coastal communities prone to hurricanes and tropical storms, people typically turn to engineered solutions for protection: levees, sea walls and the like. But a natural buffer in the form of wetlands may be the more cost-effective solution, according to new research from the University of California San Diego.
Gold in limbo between solid and melted states
If you heat a solid material enough, the thermal energy (latent heat) causes the material's molecules begin to break apart, forming a liquid. One of the most familiar examples of this phase transition from a well-ordered solid to less-ordered liquid state is ice turning into water.
KITE code could power new quantum developments
A research collaboration led by the University of York's Department of Physics has created open-source software to assist in the creation of quantum materials which could in turn vastly increase the world's computing power.
From Russia, with fruit: Arctic mission gets record resupply
A Russian icebreaker has made a successful supply run to deliver new crew and goods to an international scientific expedition investigating the depths of the high Arctic in winter.
Half of world's beaches could vanish by 2100
Climate change and sea level rise are currently on track to wipe out half the world's sandy beaches by 2100, researchers warned Monday.
Is there a technological solution to aquatic dead zones?
Could pumping oxygen-rich surface water into the depths of lakes, estuaries, and coastal ocean waters help ameliorate dangerous dead zones? New work led by Carnegie's David Koweek and Ken Caldeira and published open access by Science of the Total Environment says yes, although they caution that further research would be needed to understand any possible side effects before implementing such an...
Technology provides a new way to probe single molecules
Biology can be murky, and medicine involves dealing with very complex mixtures of molecules. A new technology developed at Northwestern University now offers some clarity to scientists with precision measurements of proteins down to their atoms.
Cloud data speeds set to soar with aid of laser mini-magnets
Tiny, laser-activated magnets could enable cloud computing systems to process data up to 100 times faster than current technologies, a study suggests.
Exposure to 'fake news' during the 2016 US election has been overstated: study
Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, debates have raged about the reach of so-called "fake news" websites and the role they played during the campaign. A study published in Nature Human Behaviour finds that the reach of these untrustworthy websites has been overstated.
What can you learn by peering into a fruit fly's gut? It turns out a lot!
They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. But what about a real-time window into the complexity of the gastrointestinal system?
Directed species loss from species-rich forests strongly decreases productivity
At high species richness, directed loss, but not random loss, of tree species strongly decreases forest productivity. This is shown by data from a big forest project in China in which the University of Zurich is involved. Previous studies based on random species loss could therefore bias the predictions of how more realistic extinction scenarios are likely to affect ecosystem functioning.
How quickly do flower strips in cities help the local bees?
Insects rely on a mix of floral resources for survival. Populations of bees, butterflies, and flies are currently rapidly decreasing due to the loss of flower-rich meadows. In order to deal with the widespread loss of fauna, the European Union supports "greening" measures, for example, the creation of flower strips.
How three genes rule plant symbioses
For billions of years life on Earth was restricted to aquatic environments, the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes. Then 450 million years ago the first plants colonized land, evolving in the process multiple types of beneficial relationships with microbes in the soil.
Disposal of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing poses dangers to drivers
Environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing—aka "fracking," the process by which oil and gas are extracted from rock by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water and chemicals—are well documented, but according to a paper co-written by a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign environmental economics expert, the technique also poses a serious safety risk to local traffic.
Biologists capture fleeting interactions between regulatory proteins and their genome-wide targets
New York University biologists captured highly transient interactions between transcription factors—proteins that control gene expression—and target genes in the genome and showed that these typically missed interactions have important practical implications. In a new study published in Nature Communications, the researchers developed a method to capture transient interactions of NLP7, a...
Marine cyanobacteria do not survive solely on photosynthesis
Marine cyanobacteria are single-cell organisms that settled in the oceans millions of years ago. They are organisms that, by means of photosynthesis, create organic material by using inorganic substances. Specifically, the cyanobacteria known as Prochlorococcus and Synechococcus are the most abundant photosynthetic organisms on Earth and they generate a large part of the oxygen necessary for life,...