River beds that can shift naturally are more efficient carbon sinks than straightened rivers
It takes about 8500 years for a grain of sand from the Andes to be washed across the Argentine lowlands into the Río Paraná. The 1200-kilometer journey in the river called Río Bermejo is interrupted by many stops in river floodplains, where the grain is deposited, sometimes over thousands of years, and then washed free again. The sand is accompanied by organic carbon, washed in from soil and...
Brazil scientists test frozen jaguar semen to help species
Brazilian and American scientists on Thursday tranquilized a wild-born female jaguar now living in a protected area in Sao Paulo state. They're hoping the 110-pound feline named Bianca could make history for the second time in two years.
Detector advance could lead to cheaper, easier medical scans
Researchers in the U.S. and Japan have demonstrated the first experimental cross-sectional medical image that doesn't require tomography, a mathematical process used to reconstruct images in CT and PET scans . The work, published Oct. 14 in Nature Photonics, could lead to cheaper, easier and more accurate medical imaging.
Is it worth trying to sway the most staunch climate deniers?
Thanks to algorithms that learn about social media users' content preferences, Facebook timelines, Twitter feeds, suggested YouTube videos, and other news streams can look startlingly different from one person's online account to the next. Media and communication experts often wrestle with how to rein in the forces that further polarize people with different views, especially people who sit on...
A better way to raise chickens for low-intensity, small stakeholders
How can rural producers in Rwanda better produce chicken for both household consumption and profit? University of Tennessee researchers are suggesting a hybrid model for the Rwandan broiler industry, among other improvements, in a new journal article.
Morro Bay seagrass loss causes change in fish populations
The loss of seagrass habitat caused a dramatic shift in fish species in Morro Bay. Areas once covered with lush seagrass meadows and unique fish species are now home to muddy-seafloor-loving flatfish, according to a paper by Cal Poly researchers published in the October 2021 print edition of Estuaries and Coasts.
WA shipwreck reveals secrets of 17th -century Dutch seafaring domination
Many Dutch ships passed the West Australian coast while enroute to Southeast Asia in the 1600s—and the national heritage listed shipwreck, Batavia, has revealed through its timbers the history of the shipbuilding materials that enabled Dutch East India Company (VOC) to flourish against major European rivals for the first time.
Honeybees use social distancing to protect themselves against parasites
Honeybees increase social distancing when their hive is under threat from a parasite, finds a new study led by an international team involving researchers at UCL and the University of Sassari, Italy.
Building planets from protoplanetary discs
Planets and their stars form from the same reservoir of nebular material and their chemical compositions should therefore be correlated but the observed compositions of planets do not match completely those of their central stars. In our Solar system, for example, all the rocky planets and planetesimals contain near-solar proportions of refractory elements (elements like aluminum that condense...
Using AI to provide the world with drinking water
Providing fresh drinking water for our society is a challenge that has persisted through multiple efforts. Though water covers 71% of earth's surface, more than 2.5 billion people in the world lack access to fresh water at least once a month. For Amir Barati Farimani and his team, combatting this problem meant refining the desalination process, the removal of salt or ions that are not favorable to...
Inflation uncertainty highest in four decades
Consumer sentiment has remained virtually unchanged in the past three months, at levels comparable to the pandemic low point in April 2020, according to the University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers.
Extra hour for early voting an easy win in Texas, but some election reform measures draw mild support
The majority of Texans support, at varying intensities, the newly enacted state laws aimed at reshaping elections in the state, according to a new five-year survey project from the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs and Texas Southern University Jordan-Leland School of Public Affairs.
World Bank report recognises importance of measurement beyond GDP
The World Bank's flagship report, The Changing Wealth of Nations/ for the first time emphasizes the importance of social capital to sustainability. By including the role of trust, social norms and community cohesiveness in securing a sustainable future, it represents a major advance in the international effort to go beyond GDP for the measurement of progress.
Imaging the chemical fingerprints of molecules
Flip through any chemistry textbook and you'll see drawings of the chemical structure of molecules—where individual atoms are arranged in space and how they're chemically bonded to each other. For decades, chemists could only indirectly determine chemical structures based on the response generated when samples interacted with x-rays or particles of light. For the special case of molecules on a...
Why do humans possess a twisted birth canal?
The relatively narrow human birth canal presumably evolved as a "compromise" between its abilities for parturition, support of the inner organs, and upright walking. But not only the size of the birth canal, also its complex, "twisted" shape is an evolutionary puzzle. Katya Stansfield from the University of Vienna and her co-authors have published a study in BMC Biology presenting new insights...
The Amazon is still burning. Can UN summit in Glasgow address such climate failures?
By all measures, Giovane Garrido Mendonça should be a logger.
California lawmakers call for changes after Orange County oil spill
Weeks after a massive oil spill marred the Orange County coast with significant environmental and economic damage, state lawmakers met in Sacramento on Thursday to demand that those responsible "be held accountable," with one legislator calling for an end to offshore drilling in California.
Dogs learn about word boundaries the same way human infants learn about them
Dogs extract words from continuous speech using similar computations and brain regions as humans do, a new study combining EEG and fMRI by researchers from the Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary) finds. This is the first demonstration of the capacity to use complex statistics to learn about word boundaries in a non-human mammal. This work has been published in Current...
Unlocking molecular shape puzzles to build better chemosensors
We live in times when technology has become a regular part of our lives. Besides many portable devices, smartphones or wrist-worn fitness trackers are equipped with sensors to measure health parameters like pulse or blood saturation with oxygen. The appearance of such devices on the market made our lives easier. It revolutionized medicine, enabling us to check even the glucose level at home.
Breaking the supposed accuracy limit for TES detectors
Scientists at SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research are developing a detection technique (TES) that measures the energy of individual photons, for example in X-rays from the distant universe. Until now, it was assumed that the wiring on the detector chip brings along an inherent whimsicality in accuracy. The research team has now discovered that there is room for improvement after all....
New speed record set for measurements of water-air flows
For the first time, researchers at D-BAUG have measured air-water flows with velocities exceeding 40 m/s. To this end, two challenging measurement campaigns were carried out in the tunnel spillway of a 225 m high dam, for which special probes first had to be developed. With the new data, existing design guidelines can be validated, and so-called scale effects can be assessed more accurately. This...
Innovative chip resolves quantum headache
Quantum physicists at the University of Copenhagen are reporting an international achievement for Denmark in the field of quantum technology. By simultaneously operating multiple spin qubits on the same quantum chip, they surmounted a key obstacle on the road to the supercomputer of the future. The result bodes well for the use of semiconductor materials as a platform for solid-state quantum...
Analyzing technologies' climate efficiency in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
Technologies for the removal of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere (direct air capture, or DAC for short) are already in use, but neither their actual benefits for climate protection nor their other environmental impact have yet to be investigated.
Life on Mars? Implication from analog sites in Qaidam Basin, northwestern China
Astrobiology is a scientific field that studies the origin,evolution, and distribution of life and habitability in the universe. Mars is the most promising planet for the discovery of extraterrestrial life in the solar system; thus, exploration of Martian life and habitable environment have been a special focus in planetary science.
The crystal symmetry dependence of high-harmonic generation in monolayer dichalcogenides
The light-matter interaction has long been one of the most advanced areas in physics. Recently, it has attracted more attentions due to the rapid development of ultra-short lasers, and a variety of ultra-fast phenomena have been experimentally achieved, including band structure, transition dipole moments, and Berry curvature.