178 articles from WEDNESDAY 18.1.2023

No jail time for Kansas professor convicted for undisclosed research ties to China

A federal judge today handed down the lightest possible sentence in the U.S. government’s case against University of Kansas (KU), Lawrence, chemical engineer Franklin Tao. The decision is the latest rejection by U.S. courts of the government’s attempt to prosecute Chinese-born scientists for lapses in reporting their research interactions with China. U.S....

New study illustrates a changing flood recipe for Las Vegas

Las Vegas, with its rapid urbanization and desert landscape, is highly vulnerable to flooding. For this reason, flood managers have built an extensive system of drainage ditches and detention basins to protect the public. Now, a new study shows how intentional engineering and urban development are interacting with climate change to alter the timing and intensity of flood risk.

Billions of celestial objects revealed in gargantuan survey of the Milky Way

Astronomers have released a gargantuan survey of the galactic plane of the Milky Way. The new dataset contains a staggering 3.32 billion celestial objects—arguably the largest such catalog so far. The data for this unprecedented survey were taken with the Dark Energy Camera, built by the US Department of Energy, at the NSF's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NOIRLab.