143 articles from FRIDAY 18.11.2022

Engineers solve a mystery on the path to smaller, lighter batteries

A new discovery could finally usher the development of solid-state lithium batteries, which would be more lightweight, compact, and safe than current lithium batteries. The growth of metallic filaments called dendrites within the solid electrolyte has been a longstanding obstacle, but the new study explains how dendrites form and how to divert them.

NOAA adopts Finland's CubeSat-proven space weather monitor

An advanced X-ray monitoring instrument tested for space aboard an ESA CubeSat will serve as an operational space weather payload on the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Next Lagrange 1 Series satellite, currently planned for launch in 2028, which will operate 1.5 million km from Earth, keeping watch for eruptions from our sun.

Study: Zebrafish are smarter than we thought

A new study from MIT and Harvard University suggests that the brains of the seemingly simple zebrafish are more sophisticated than previously thought. The researchers found that larval zebrafish can use visual information to create three-dimensional maps of their physical surroundings—a feat that scientists didn't think was possible.

Silver nanoparticles inhibit four pathogens causing kiwifruit post-harvest rot

Kiwifruit is popular with consumers due to its unique flavor and high concentration of vitamin C, minerals, and other nutrients. As demand grows and the kiwifruit producing area in China expands, post-harvest rot diseases become more severe, with the average infected rate reaching 30%–50%, causing more than 100,000 tons of fruit losses per year, which seriously limits the industry's healthy...

‘I don’t watch television’: how two Brian Coxes stumped one hotel receptionist

Scottish actor and physics professor describe their difficulty in checking in to same hotel using matching namesIt adds a whole new meaning to double booking. Or perhaps it’s more of a mathematical problem: solve Brian Cox squared? But when the question was raised by a hotel receptionist, it was left to an actor and a physicist to find an answer.Brian Cox, the former musician turned physics...

You are 'what you eat,' but you are not 'where you live'

Genetic studies of the past 20 years have extensively shown how, across human populations worldwide, the majority of genetic differences are encountered at the individual rather than at the population level. Two random humans from a single group tend indeed to be more genetically different from each other than two different human populations on average.

A study of stormy Houston switches gears

In weather terms, convection is the process of conveying heat and moisture upward through a turbulent atmosphere. From there, convection forms clouds—mostly puffy, rain-free shallow cumuli. But others evolve into towering cumulonimbus, or anvil clouds, which form thunderstorms.

Weak tropical cyclones are intensifying due to global warming, study of surface drifter data finds

A pair of researchers at Fudan University's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and CMA-FDU Joint Laboratory of Marine Meteorology, working with one colleague from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and another from the University of California San Diego, has found that weak tropical cyclones, also known as tropical storms, are growing stronger due to climate change.

Exploring the activity of adenylate cyclase in the receptor of auxins

When humans get hurt, they feel pain. Between these occurrences there is a series of indirect relay reactions. An analogical set called transduction of signals exists in all living organisms, including plants. When a stimulus appears, for instance a draft factor as an attack of a pathogen, a plant receives this information through a receptor, analyzes it, sometimes amplifies it and forms a...

Simulations suggest GW190521 merger was the result of non-spinning black holes randomly finding each other

A team of researchers from Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Università di Torino and INFN sezione di Torino, has found evidence that the black hole collision that led to an odd gravitational wave detection in 2019 was due to a unique set of circumstances. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the group describes modeling and simulating the conditions that could possibly...

CHARA Array detects elusive, dusty inner region of distant galaxy

An international team of scientists has achieved the milestone of directly observing the long-sought, innermost dusty ring around a supermassive black hole, at a right angle to its emerging jet. Such a structure was thought to exist in the nucleus of galaxies but had been difficult to observe directly because intervening material obscured our line of sight.

Study shows how moral behavior pays off in the end

Selfless behavior and cooperation cannot be taken for granted. Mohammad Salahshour of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences (now at Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior), has used a game theory-based approach to show why it can be worthwhile for individuals to set self-interests aside.