Mercury, when dumped in lakes and rivers, accumulates in fish, and often ends up on our plates. A Swiss-American team of researchers led by Francesco Stellacci at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Bartosz Grzybowski at Northwestern University has devised a simple, inexpensive system based on nanoparticles, a kind of nano-velcro, to detect and trap this toxic pollutant as well as others. The particles are covered with tiny hairs that can grab onto toxic heavy metals such as mercury and cadmium.
Heavens
NASA has begun its latest hurricane science field campaign by flying an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean during a day-long flight from California to Virginia. With the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission, NASA for the first time will be flying Global Hawks from the U.S. East Coast.
Hurricane Leslie appeared to "close its eye" on NASA satellite imagery as the storm heads east of Bermuda, like a little girl shutting her eyes tight on a wild amusement ride. Often when an eye becomes cloud-filled, its a sign that the storm is weakening, and Leslie did drop from a hurricane to a tropical storm on Sept. 7.
TEMPE, Ariz. – A team of researchers from Arizona State University have found that warming resulting from megapolitan expansion is seasonally dependent, with greatest warming occurring during summer and least during winter. Among the most practical ways to combat urbanization-induced warming – the painting of building's roofs white – was found to disrupt regional hydroclimate, highlighting the need for evaluation of tradeoffs associated with combating urban heat islands (UHI).
At an airport, many people are essential for planes to take off. Gate staffs, refueling crews, flight attendants and pilots are in constant communication with each other as they perform required tasks. But it's the air traffic controller who talks with every plane, coordinating departures and runways. Communication must run through her in order for an airport to run smoothly and safely.
A racial quota system at one of the leading universities in Brazil raised the proportion of black students from low-income families, without decreasing their efforts to succeed in school, a major new study finds.
"Critics of affirmative action policies often argue that making it easier for people to get into college lowers their incentive to try hard academically. That argument doesn't stand up to our data," says Andrew Francis, an economist at Emory University and co-author of the study.
TORONTO, ON – Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, formulated by the theoretical physicist in 1927, is one of the cornerstones of quantum mechanics. In its most familiar form, it says that it is impossible to measure anything without disturbing it. For instance, any attempt to measure a particle's position must randomly change its speed.
Hurricane Michael's eye was so clear on new satellite imagery from NASA that the surface of the Atlantic Ocean could be seen through it.
New evidence shows that birds may choose their mate with the help of smell. They prefer a dissimilar mate because this gives their young a more efficient immune system. This has been shown in a new study by researchers from Lund University in Sweden, in a Swedish-French collaboration.
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. - Influenza outbreaks in the United States typically begin with the arrival of cold weather and then spread in seasonal waves across geographic zones. But the question of why epidemics can vary from one season to the next has baffled scientists.
The Atlantic Ocean hurricane season spawned two hurricanes this week and NASA satellites have been monitoring them and providing valuable data to forecasters. NASA's TRMM satellite saw very heavy rainfall and powerful towering thunderstorms in Michael when the storm became a hurricane. Michael's wind speeds more than doubled in 24 hours and it is now a major hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Leslie on Sept. 5 during a picture perfect moment, just as it was being re-classified as a hurricane, and captured two images of the storm.
The National Hurricane Center issued the advisory confirming Leslie's hurricane status at 1:45 p.m. EDT after examining visible, infrared, microwave and other data from satellites. Two instruments that fly aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided infrared and visible imagery of Leslie as it was crossing the threshold from tropical storm to hurricane status on Sept. 5.
Grandparents, an increasingly important source of child care in the United States, vary greatly in the kind of care they provide, depending on their age, resources, and the needs of their children, research at the University of Chicago shows.
A new UChicago study, based on a National Institute on Aging survey, shows that 60 percent of grandparents provided some care for their grandchildren during a 10-year period, and 70 percent of those who did provided care for two years or more.
As it passed through the northern Caribbean, around south Florida, and into Louisiana and the Middle Mississippi Valley, Hurricane Isaac brought lots of rain, some of it beneficial, and some of it not. Using data from the TRMM satellite, NASA created images of rainfall totals generated along Hurricane Isaac's path.
On Mars's poles there are ice caps of ice and dust with layers that reflect to past climate variations on Mars. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have related the layers in the ice cap on Mars's north pole to variations in solar insolation on Mars, thus established the first dated climate history for Mars, where ice and dust accumulation has been driven by variations in insolation. The results are published in the scientific journal, Icarus.