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.

Neanderthals are not the only species whose dentition is characterized by the possession of thin enamel

The Dental Anthropology Group of the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has participated in a paper published in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology on the dental remains of Homo antecessor, the species recovered from level TD6 of the Gran Dolina site (Atapuerca, Burgos), which reveals new aspects of the biology of this species.

Harnessing the healing power within our cells

University of Queensland researchers have identified a pathway in cells that could be used to reprogram the body's immune system to fight back against both chronic inflammatory and infectious diseases.

Researchers find a 'kernel of truth' in the urgent fight against tar spot of corn

Although discovered in the United States only seven years ago, tar spot has wreaked havoc on corn yield—resulting in an estimated 1.2-billion-dollar loss in 2021 alone. The miscreant behind this devastating plant disease, Phyllachora maydis, is an emergent fungal pathogen whose biology remains obscure. This lack of understanding significantly limits disease management strategies, and no corn...

Is There Water on the Moon? We Asked a NASA Scientist

Is there water on the Moon? Yes! But you won’t find pools of liquid H2O on the lunar surface — water on the Moon is mostly in the form of ice. Harvesting this water is a critical component of future human deep space exploration, which is why our golf cart-sized VIPER, or the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, will be traveling to the Moon’s South Pole to search for...

NASA’s Geotail Mission Operations Come to an End After 30 Years

Portal origin URL: NASA’s Geotail Mission Operations Come to an End After 30 YearsPortal origin nid: 485059Published: Wednesday, January 18, 2023 - 16:16Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: After 30 years in orbit, mission operations for the joint NASA-JAXA Geotail spacecraft have ended, after the failure of the spacecraft’s remaining data...

What's driving re-burns across California and the West?

Seasonal temperature, moisture loss from plants and wind speed are what primarily drive fires that sweep across the same landscape multiple times, a new study reveals. These findings and others could help land managers plan more effective treatments in areas susceptible to fire, particularly in the fire-ravaged wildland-urban interfaces of California.

Researchers uncover secrets on how Alaska's Denali Fault formed

When the rigid plates that make up Earth's lithosphere brush against one another, they often form visible boundaries, known as faults, on the planet's surface. Strike-slip faults, such as the San Andreas Fault in California or the Denali Fault in Alaska, are among the most well-known and capable of seriously powerful seismic activity.

NASA Recaps Webb Telescope Findings From AAS Meeting

Portal origin URL: NASA Recaps Webb Telescope Findings From AAS MeetingPortal origin nid: 485090Published: Wednesday, January 18, 2023 - 14:05Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: Scientists shared new findings and updates from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, also called “Webb” or “JWST,” at press conferences during the 241st meeting of the...

Satellites can be used to detect waste sites on Earth

A new computational system uses satellite data to identify sites on land where people dispose of waste, providing a new tool to monitor waste and revealing sites that may leak plastic into waterways. Caleb Kruse of Earthrise Media in Berkeley, California, Dr. Fabien Laurier from the Minderoo Foundation in Washington DC, and colleagues present this method in PLOS ONE.

Underlying assumptions of air quality need to be redefined, says study

The 40-meter-high monitoring tower of the Innsbruck Atmospheric Observatory near the city center of Innsbruck in Austria continuously provides data on the composition of the atmosphere near the surface. Every hour, 36,000 data points are recorded. Using a special measuring method—the so-called eddy covariance method—the concentration of air components can be continuously monitored.

How mycorrhizal types control biodiversity effects on productivity

Mycorrhizal symbiosis helps plants expand their root surface area, giving plants greater access to nutrients and water. Although the first and foremost role of mycorrhizal symbiosis is to facilitate plant nutrition, how mycorrhizal types mediate the nutrient acquisition and interactions of coexisting trees in forests has not been clear to scientists.