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97 articles from PhysOrg

Transportation recovery after disasters: A collaborative university/community model

Transportation systems play a critical role in maintaining supply chains for effective post-disaster recovery. The March 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns coincided with a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Salt Lake City, Utah, resulting in supply chain disruptions throughout the region. A team of researchers collaborated with local agencies and transportation organizations to use this event and the community's...

A new method boosts wind farms' energy output, without new equipment

Virtually all wind turbines, which produce more than 5 percent of the world's electricity, are controlled as if they were individual, free-standing units. In fact, the vast majority are part of larger wind farm installations involving dozens or even hundreds of turbines, whose wakes can affect each other.

Landfill odor: Health problems, but no elevated cancer risk

Missouri's health department on Thursday announced findings of a lengthy examination of the troubled Bridgeton Landfill in suburban St. Louis, determining that the foul odor emitting from the landfill created health problems but did not increase the risk of cancer.

Scientists have standardized genome editing terminology

Genome editing can cure diseases, boost food production and open vast new fields of scientific discovery. But to realize its full potential, scientists need to precisely describe the details of their genome editing attempts to one another and the wider world.

Nanoscale fluid-phase changes revealed

Millions of barrels of oil are produced daily from shale reservoirs, yet a significant amount remains untouched, trapped in molecular-sized pores on a nanoscale. Current reservoir models can't predict oil behavior or recovery at this scale, so companies can't accurately estimate production amounts for financial investors.

Discovery of the interactions between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

The arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis (AMS) is one of the most ancient and broadly occurring mutualistic associations between plants and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). This intimate relationship improves plant mineral nutrient acquisition, which potentially enhances crop yield. In addition, AMS can increase plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. AMS also contributes to many ecosystem...

Scientists discover new antiviral defense system in bacteria

Bacteria use a variety of defense strategies to fight off viral infection, and some of these systems have led to groundbreaking technologies, such as CRISPR-based gene-editing. Scientists predict there are many more antiviral weapons yet to be found in the microbial world.

New method can remove dyes from wastewater

North Carolina State University researchers have demonstrated that a synthetic polymer can remove certain dyes from water, and that the polymer can be recovered and reused. The findings offer a new potential method for cleaning wastewater after use by textiles, cosmetics or other industries.

Simplified voice box enriches human speech

An ongoing debate among scientists, on why chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates cannot speak or sing like humans, has focused mainly on evolutionary changes in human brain development. Attention has now expanded to anatomical changes of the voice box that may have played a role in our capacity to produce complex sounds.

The formation of a super strong Mongolian cyclone and its contributing factors

From the 13th to the 16th of March 2021, an extremely strong dust storm struck Mongolia and northern China successively, causing 590 herdsmen to disappear and 16 people to die in Mongolia. When the dust storm reached central Inner Mongolia in the early morning of 15 March, the gust speed reached up to 40 m s−1, which is equivalent to the intensity of a grade 12 typhoon. When it arrived in the...

Hubble sees supergiant Betelgeuse slowly recovering after blowing its top

Analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories, astronomers have concluded that the bright red supergiant star Betelgeuse quite literally blew its top in 2019, losing a substantial part of its visible surface and producing a gigantic Surface Mass Ejection (SME). This is something never before seen in a normal star's behavior.

Uncovering the past: Researchers create 3D images of fossils

Idaho National Laboratory is perhaps best known for innovative research that helps shape the clean energy economies of today and tomorrow—and for good reason. But while much of the laboratory's work is focused on building a sustainable future, INL is also doing its part to preserve the past.

When you Google the word 'tick,' you're helping science

Knowledge about the spread of tick-borne diseases is extremely limited and notoriously difficult to acquire. A new study from the University of Copenhagen demonstrates that internet searches just might be the way to keep an eye on ticks and other effects of climate change.

Interactive map of metabolical synthesis of chemicals

A research team comprised of Woo Dae Jang, Gi Bae Kim, and Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at KAIST reported an interactive metabolic map of bio-based chemicals. Their research paper "An interactive metabolic map of bio-based chemicals" was published online in Trends in Biotechnology on August 10, 2022.

Carbon storage in harvested wood products

Wood is infinitely useful. Critically important for our changing climate, trees store carbon. When trees are harvested for wood products like lumber, some of that carbon continues to be stored. Even after a wood product is discarded, it keeps storing carbon.

Study achieves longest continuous tracking of migrating insects

Insects are the world's smallest flying migrants, but they can maintain perfectly straight flight paths even in unfavorable wind conditions, according to a new study from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and the University of Konstanz. Researchers radio tracked migrating hawkmoths for up to 80 kilometers—the longest distance that any insect has been continuously monitored in...