319 articles from THURSDAY 27.5.2021

Driving in the snow is a team effort for AI sensors

A major challenge for fully autonomous vehicles is navigating bad weather. Snow especially confounds crucial sensor data that helps a vehicle gauge depth, find obstacles and keep on the correct side of the yellow line, assuming it is visible. Averaging more than 200 inches of snow every winter, Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula is the perfect place to push autonomous vehicle tech to its limits.

Dark energy survey releases most precise look at the universe's evolution

The Dark Energy Survey examines the largest-ever maps of galaxy distribution and shapes, extending more than 7 billion light-years across the Universe. The extraordinarily precise analysis, which includes data from the survey's first three years, contributes to the most powerful test of the current best model of the Universe, the standard cosmological model. However, hints remain from earlier DES...

Scientists unravel noise-assisted signal amplification in systems with memory

Signals can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise, but stochastic resonance is a fragile phenomenon. Researchers at AMOLF were the first to investigate the role of memory for this phenomenon in an oil-filled optical microcavity. The effects of slow non-linearity (i.e. memory) on stochastic resonance were never considered before, but these experiments suggest that stochastic resonance becomes...

Partners in crime: Agricultural pest relies on bacteria to overcome plant defenses

Although insect larvae may seem harmless to humans, they can be extremely dangerous to the plant species that many of them feed on, and some of those plant species are important as agricultural crops. Although plants cannot simply flee from danger like animals typically would, many have nonetheless evolved ingenious strategies to defend themselves from herbivores. Herbivorous insect larvae will...

Bacterium causing rabbit fever remains virulent for months in cold water

Although it is not spread through human contact, Francisella tularensis is one of the most infectious pathogenic bacteria known to science—so virulent, in fact, that it is considered a serious potential bioterrorist threat. It is thought that humans can contract respiratory tularemia, or rabbit fever—a rare and deadly disease—by inhaling as few as 10 airborne organisms.

Study sheds light on population history of northern east Asia

A study led by research groups of Prof. Fu Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Zhang Hucai from Yunnan University covers the largest temporal transect of population dynamics in East Asia so far and offers a clearer picture of the deep population history of northern East Asia.

Effects of nanoplastics on Canadian and Guadeloupean oysters

Oysters' exposure to plastics is concerning, particularly because these materials can accumulate and release metals which are then absorbed by the mollusks. According to a recent study published in the journal Chemosphere, the combined presence of nanoplastics and arsenic affects the biological functions of oysters. This study was conducted by the Institut national de la recherche scientifique...

Bacterium causing deadly rabbit fever remains virulent for months in cold water, researchers report

Disease ecologists have published study results showing how they were able to prove, by replicating environmental conditions in the lab, that Francisella tularensis can persist for months in cold water without any nutrients and remain fully virulent. Their results provide a plausible explanation for how the deadly pathogen, which causes rabbit fever, can overwinter in the environment outside of a...

Partners in crime: Agricultural pest that relies on bacteria to overcome plant defenses

The oral secretions of herbivorous insects can activate plant defense mechanisms that protect plant cells from being digested. However, scientists have discovered that some larvae 'partner up' with bacteria that help interrupt these plant defense mechanisms. This disrupts the plant's defenses before the digestive proteins that the larvae smear on them. These findings may help agricultural...

Comprehensive electronic-structure methods for materials design

Nicola Marzari, head of the Theory and Simulation of Materials laboratory at EFPL and director of NCCR MARVEL, has just published a review of electronic-structure methods as part of a special edition Insight on Computational Materials Design, published by Nature Materials. The article, written with Andrea Ferretti of CNR–Instituto Nanoscienze and Chris Wolverton of Northwestern University,...