183 articles from TUESDAY 12.10.2021

Team develops computationally quick approach to predict molten droplet solidification on a solid surface

Gas turbine engines in planes provide the required thrust by sucking in air, heating it to very high temperatures in a combustion chamber, and finally exhausting it at high velocities. As they operate, small inorganic particles such as volcanic ash get sucked in along with the air. These particles melt in the high-temperature zones in the combustion chamber and solidify onto the cooler zones in...

Women indirectly hurt more by noncompete pacts

Nine out of 10 startups fail, and even among venture-backed fledgling companies, the success rate is only about 25%. It's even tougher for women entrepreneurs, who face challenges their male counterparts don't, according to new Cornell University research.

Study finds use of anger in online reviews simultaneously unhelpful but influential in purchase decisions

E-commerce shopping has risen sharply over the last decade, and most consumers are now reading product reviews prior to making their purchase decisions. Sites like Amazon use reviews to instill shopper confidence and boost product sales, and they often highlight specific reviews that are considered especially helpful. "Top reviews" and "helpful reviews" have become very popular labels on these...

Arctic Ocean's 'last ice area' may not survive the century

With warming climate, summer sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking fast, and now consistently spans less than half the area it did in the early 1980s. This raises the question: It this keeps up, in the future will year-round sea ice—and the creatures who need it to survive—persist anywhere?

Quantum phase transition detected on a global scale deep inside the Earth

The interior of the Earth is a mystery, especially at greater depths (> 660 km). Researchers only have seismic tomographic images of this region and, to interpret them, they need to calculate seismic (acoustic) velocities in minerals at high pressures and temperatures. With those calculations, they can create 3D velocity maps and figure out the mineralogy and temperature of the observed regions....

Low-performing computer science students face wide array of struggles

Researchers at the University of California San Diego conducted a broad student experience survey to learn which factors most impact student success in early computing courses, a field that has historically seen high failure rates and poor student retention. They found that lower-performing students reported higher stress levels on multiple factors—including cognitive, socio-economic, and...

'Selective promiscuity,' chaperones, and the secrets of cellular health

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has announced a major new advance in understanding how our genetic information eventually translates into functional proteins—one of the building blocks of human life. The research, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), elucidates how chaperones display "selective promiscuity" for the...

Researchers find Greenland's groundwater changes with thinning ice sheet

For more than a decade, a team of University of Montana researchers and students have studied the dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet as it responds to a warming climate. University of Montana (UM) Department of Geosciences researchers Toby Meierbachtol and Joel Harper said water has always been central to their research.

Attention-based deep neural network increases detection capability in sonar systems

In underwater acoustics, deep learning may improve sonar systems to help detect ships and submarines in distress or in restricted waters. However, noise interference can be a challenge. Researchers now explore an attention-based deep neural network to tackle this problem. They tested two ships, comparing their results with a typical deep neural network, and found the ABNN increases its predictions...

Zebrafish could shed light into the mysteries of the human spinal cord and its influence on our body

Researchers believe zebrafish may provide clues to understanding how the human nervous system develops since this fish experiences new movements similarly to how babies do after birth. To understand how our nervous system enables us to move and learn new movements such as walking or swimming as we grow, researchers looked closely at the nervous system of zebrafish and built models of developing...