- PhysOrg
- 21/4/14 22:03
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company strapped two employees into a fueled rocketship for practice, but pulled them out shortly before sending the capsule to the edge of space Wednesday with only a test dummy.
Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin company strapped two employees into a fueled rocketship for practice, but pulled them out shortly before sending the capsule to the edge of space Wednesday with only a test dummy.
To better understand how RNA in bacteria gives rise to protein—and along the way, target these processes in the design of new antibiotics—researchers are turning their attention to the unique way this process happens in bacteria.
New research by a team at Resources for the Future (RFF) has found that at least 27% of new pests in the United States were initially detected by members of the general public. The study, which was published today in the journal Conservation Science and Practice, seeks to understand who is identifying new invasive species that make their way into the United States.
A new study by former University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduate student Jeffrey Kwang, now at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Abigail Langston, of Kansas State University; and Illinois civil and environmental engineering professor Gary Parker takes a closer look at the vertical and lateral—or depth and width—components of river erosion and drainage patterns. The study is...
They say you are what you eat; that's the case for every living thing, whether it's humans, animals, insects, or plants, thanks to stable isotopes found within.
A new investigation of stone tools buried in graves provides evidence supporting the existence of a division of different types of labor between people of male and female biological sex at the start of the Neolithic. Alba Masclans of Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas in Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on April 14, 2021.
Wastewater carries large quantities of organic substances into the rivers and lakes, leading to heavy growth of bacteria and oxygen deficiency. Measurement methods have so far been incapable of measuring this organic pollution precisely. A new method co-developed by experts from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon should provide a clear image of the water conditions in the future. The work has now been...
Climate modeling is future facing, its general intent to hypothesize what our planet might look like at some later date. Because the Earth's vegetation influences climate, climate models frequently include vegetation reconstructions and are often validated by comparisons to the past. Yet such models tend to get oversimplified, glossing over or omitting how people affected the land and its cover.
Mathematicians and engineers at the University of Utah have teamed up to show how ultrasound waves can organize carbon particles in water into a sort of pattern that never repeats. The results, they say, could result in materials called "quasicrystals" with custom magnetic or electrical properties.
New research shows how to measure the super-short bursts of high-frequency light emitted from free electron lasers (FELs). By using the light-induced ionization itself to create a femtosecond optical shutter, the technique encodes the electric field of the FEL pulse in a visible light pulse so that it can be measured with a standard, slow, visible-light camera.
Half a century had passed, but UC Santa Barbara Professor Armand Kuris was sure he'd been here before. In fact, he was completely certain. After all, he had detailed notes of the location, written carefully in India ink when he was still a graduate student.
Just as humans are challenged from the social isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, a new study finds that a solitary lifestyle has profound effects on the brains of a social insect: paper wasps.
Food waste and obesity are major problems in developed countries. They are both caused by an overabundance of food, but strategies to reduce one can inadvertently increase the other. A broader perspective can help identify ways to limit food waste while also promoting healthy nutrition, two University of Illinois researchers suggest.
The human genome contains the instructions to make tens of thousands of proteins. Each protein folds into a precise shape—and biologists are taught that defined shape dictates the protein's destined function. Tens of thousands of singular shapes drive the tens of thousands of needed functions.
By combining the 'chassis' of an oil-producing microalgae with genes from a Cuphea plant, scientists from the Single-Cell Center, Qingdao Institute of BioEnergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), can turn the algae into a microbial cell factory that can produce various oils with different properties.
An alloy is typically a metal that has a few per cent of at least one other element added. Some aluminum alloys have a seemingly strange property.
The COVID-19 pandemic has cast a harsh light on the urgent need for quick and easy techniques to sanitize and disinfect everyday high-touch objects such as doorknobs, pens, pencils, and personal protective gear worn to keep infections from spreading. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have...
Graphene excels at removing contaminants from water, but it's not yet a commercially viable use of the wonder material.
Our high-speed, high-bandwidth world constantly requires new ways to process and store information. Semiconductors and magnetic materials have made up the bulk of data storage devices for decades. In recent years, however, researchers and engineers have turned to ferroelectric materials, a type of crystal that can be manipulated with electricity.
One consequence of the coronavirus pandemic has been global restrictions on mobility. This, in turn, has had an effect on pollution levels in the atmosphere. Researchers from across the world are using this unique opportunity to take measurements, collect data, and publish studies. An international team led by Forschungszentrum Jülich's Institute of Climate and Energy Research—Troposphere has...
What are scientists passionate about? What do they actually do, and why does it matter? Answering questions like these is often part of public outreach efforts that, through demystifying the world of science for non-scientists, can increase appreciation for science and boost support for important research initiatives. Outreach can also make the sciences attractive and accessible to a broader...
International scientists from around the world are warning that chemical pollutants in the environment have the potential to alter animal and human behavior.
The Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota, renowned for its exceptionally well preserved volcanic-influenced ecosystem, was buried in lacustrine and occasionally fluvial sediments in northern Hebei and western Liaoning, China. It includes large amount of evolutionarily significant taxonomy, e.g. feathered dinosaurs, early birds, mammals and flowering plants, representing one of the most diversified...
Common ragweed is an annual plant native to parts of the United States and southern Canada. It's an invasive species that has spread to Europe. An important agricultural weed, this plant is particularly well-adapted to living at roadsides, and there are several theories why.
Ethiopia may produce less specialty coffee and more rather bland tasting varieties in the future. This is the result of a new study by an international team of researchers that looked at the peculiar effects climate change has on Africa's largest coffee producing nation. Their results are relevant both for the country's millions of smallholder farmers, who earn more on specialty coffee than on...