135 articles from MONDAY 2.5.2022

Campaign reduces car idling at two elementary schools

An anti-idling campaign at two Salt Lake County elementary schools was effective in reducing idling time by 38%, and an air monitoring experiment found that air quality around schools can vary over short distances. These findings, published in the journal Atmosphere, can help schools and school districts along the Wasatch Front plan to protect students, staff and the community from idling-related...

'Atomic photon source' based on the movement of atoms

Compact, CMOS compatible on-chip photon sources have attracted much attention to the scientific community and the semiconductor industry. As the transistor's feature size is continuously scaling down, the integration density and switching speed in integrated electronic circuits increases exponentially. This leads to an increasingly large power dissipation from electrical connections between...

Risk of lower groundwater levels in northern Sweden with a warmer climate

When the winters get warmer in northern Sweden, there is a risk for groundwater level decline, despite heavy precipitation. The villain in this story is lingering ground frost that prevents snow meltwater and rain from filling underground reservoirs. This is the finding of a new thesis from the University of Gothenburg.

Artificial intelligence can identify students at risk of failing and provide tools for success

Artificial intelligence offers new opportunities to improve university education. This is demonstrated by the Learning Intelligent System (LIS) project, which has been developed by researchers at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) with backing from the eLearning Innovation Center. The system was created by a transdisciplinary research team at the UOC and has already produced excellent...

Finding the best lentil varieties for every farm

Lentils are an important and popular food in many parts of the world. They are also a nutritional powerhouse. This versatile legume is a great source of protein, carbohydrates, and fiber, and high in mineral nutrients and vitamins like iron, zinc, magnesium, potassium, and vitamin B.

NASA Simulation Suggests Some Volcanoes Might Warm Climate, Destroy Ozone Layer

Portal origin URL: NASA Simulation Suggests Some Volcanoes Might Warm Climate, Destroy Ozone LayerPortal origin nid: 478455Published: Monday, May 2, 2022 - 13:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: A new NASA climate simulation suggests that extremely large volcanic eruptions called “flood basalt eruptions” might significantly warm Earth’s climate...

Studies find the seeds of a forest's renewal after wildfire, drought

By quantifying the seed production of more than 700 trees species worldwide and how each species' productivity can vary by location, two new studies can help boost the success of efforts to replant and restore forests after devastating wildfires, droughts or other disturbances. The studies, which synthesize data on species from the tropics to subarctic regions, are the first to quantify global...

Dinosaur extinction changed plant evolution

The absence of large herbivores after the extinction of the dinosaurs changed the evolution of plants. The 25 million years of large herbivore absence slowed down the evolution of new plant species. Defensive features such as spines regressed and fruit sizes increased. The research has demonstrated this using palm trees as a model system.

Photonic slide rule: Simultaneous resolving of wavelength and polarization state

Mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) is a unique regime with various potential applications in fingerprint detections. It is also one of three atmospheric transmission windows that shows significant possibilities in low-light-level night vision and free-space communications. The accurate detection of unknown photons in this band plays an indispensable role in aeronautics and astronautics applications....

Exploring the murky history of the chase for the blue whale

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever existed, weighing as much as two thousand people together. This is why this cetacean was the most chased species in the world due to its size and economic yield when whaling started, around the mid-19th century. The first captures, in northern Norway, expanded to other marine areas, and in only a few decades, in the North Atlantic, more than...

China is building an asteroid deflection mission of its own, due for launch in 2025

There's an old joke that the dinosaurs are only extinct because they didn't develop a space agency. The implication, of course, is that unlike our reptilian ancestors, we humans might be able to save ourselves from an impending asteroid strike on Earth, given our six-and-a-half decades of spaceflight experience. But the fact is that while we have achieved amazing things since Sputnik kicked off...

Ice lost, island found?

The eastern coast of Antarctica has lost most of the Glenzer and Conger ice shelves. In the process, it gained what is likely an island. If confirmed, the unnamed island would be one in a series of islands exposed in recent years as portions of the floating glacial ice hugging the continent's coast have disintegrated.

Search reveals eight new sources of black hole echoes

Scattered across our Milky Way galaxy are tens of millions of black holes—immensely strong gravitational wells of spacetime, from which infalling matter, and even light, can never escape. Black holes are dark by definition, except on the rare occasions when they feed. As a black hole pulls in gas and dust from an orbiting star, it can give off spectacular bursts of X-ray light that bounce and...

Scientists create viable, reproducing yeast-cyanobacterial hybrids

Every plant, animal or other nucleus-containing cell also harbors an array of miniature "organs" that perform essential functions for the cell. In plants, for example, organelles called chloroplasts photosynthesize to generate energy for the organism. Because some organelles contain their own DNA and resemble single-celled organisms, scientists have long theorized that the evolution of complex...

Nanotechnology enables visualization of RNA structures at near-atomic resolution

We live in a world made and run by RNA, the equally important sibling of the genetic molecule DNA. In fact, evolutionary biologists hypothesize that RNA existed and self-replicated even before the appearance of DNA and the proteins encoded by it. Fast forward to modern day humans: science has revealed that less than 3% of the human genome is transcribed into messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules that in...