Shorebirds breeding in Alaska are being exposed to mercury at levels that could put their populations at risk, according to new research from The Condor: Ornithological Applications.
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AMHERST, Mass. - University of Massachusetts Amherst computer science graduate students Kyle Wray and Luis Pineda, with their professor Shlomo Zilberstein, today described a new approach to managing the challenge of transferring control between a human and an autonomous system, in a paper they presented at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in New York City.
A lightweight telescope that a team of NASA scientists and engineers is developing specifically for CubeSat scientific investigations could become the first to carry a mirror made of carbon nanotubes in an epoxy resin.
Led by Theodor Kostiuk, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the technology-development effort is aimed at giving the scientific community a compact, reproducible, and relatively inexpensive telescope that would fit easily inside a CubeSat. Individual CubeSats measure four inches on a side.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - More seniors are getting help from family, friends and hired helpers to keep them in their homes, despite disabilities that keep them from total independence, a new study finds.
But that increase isn't happening evenly across all groups. And the rising demand may have implications for the lives and careers of caregivers, and for policies that aim to support at-home caregivers.
Habitual cycling, whether as transportation to work or as a recreational activity, is associated with lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes (T2D), according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. This cohort study, conducted by Martin Rasmussen of the University of Southern Denmark, and colleagues, included 24,623 men and 27,890 women from Denmark, recruited between the ages of 50 and 65, and compared the association between self-reported recreational and commuter cycling habits with T2D incidence measured in the Danish National Diabetes Registry.
Neutrinos are elementary particles known for displaying weak interactions. As a result, neutrinos passing each other in the same place hardly notice one another. Yet, neutrinos inside a supernova collectively behave differently because of their extremely high density. A new study reveals that neutrinos produced in the core of a supernova are highly localised compared to neutrinos from all other known sources. This result stems from a fresh estimate for an entity characterising these neutrinos, known as wave packets, which provide information on both their position and their momentum.
Nepartak was a powerful category four tropical typhoon when it hit Taiwan last week but weakened to a tropical storm as it moved into the Taiwan Strait. NASA calculated the heavy rainfall the typhoon brought to Taiwan and China before it dissipated over southeastern China.
A team of small, shoebox-sized satellites, flying in formation around the Earth, could estimate the planet's reflected energy with twice the accuracy of traditional monolith satellites, according to an MIT-led study published online in Acta Astronautica. If done right, such satellite swarms could also be cheaper to build, launch, and maintain.
The Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Darby as it was developing in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
When it comes to putting technology in space, size and mass are prime considerations. High-power gallium nitride-based high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are appealing in this regard because they have the potential to replace bulkier, less efficient transistors, and are also more tolerant of the harsh radiation environment of space. Compared to similar aluminum gallium arsenide/gallium arsenide HEMTs, the gallium nitride-based HEMTs are ten times more tolerant of radiation-induced displacement damage.
An international team has made use of the power of the HAWK-I infrared instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) to produce the deepest and most comprehensive view of the Orion Nebula [1] to date. Not only has this led to an image of spectacular beauty, but it has revealed a great abundance of faint brown dwarfs and isolated planetary-mass objects.
A Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California San Diego-led research team analyzing satellite cloud records has found that the cloudy storm tracks on Earth are moving toward the poles and subtropical dry zones are expanding. Cloud tops are also moving higher in the atmosphere.
The record confirms computer climate models that have predicted these changes to have taken place during the past several decades as a consequence of the accumulation of societally generated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
A research team in Japan has now succeeded in developing high precision X-ray deformable mirrors that can be configured as necessary. They are the first to have achieved the formation of three types of X-ray focused beams, which differ in focused spot size, without changing the experimental setup. These findings constitute a considerable step towards developing a multifunctional X-ray microscope, which will be able to perform a variety of microscopic analyses in one device.
In order to live, it is necessary for creatures not only to synthesize essential components, but also degrade harmful or superfluous components. Autophagy, an intracellular degradation system conserved among eukaryotes from yeast to humans, contributes to cell homeostasis via isolating and degrading various unnecessary components within cells. Since autophagy dysfunction is linked to severe diseases such as neurodegeneration and cancer, the artificial control of autophagy promises to facilitate the development of therapeutic and preventive treatment for these and severe diseases.
The subtropical weather in Cornwall means new exotic crops such as quinoa and Japanese persimmon are now more likely to succeed, according to a new technique developed by University of Exeter experts to monitor the climate.
Parts of Cornwall have become subtropical since 2000 and this could create opportunities to grow new, unusual plants. Sunflowers, maize, grapevines and tea are already grown in the Duchy.