Crows completed 4 of 6 water displacement tasks, including preferentially dropping stones into a water-filled tube instead of a sand-filled tube, dropping sinking objects rather than floating objects, using solid objects rather than hollow objects, and dropping objects into a tube with a high water level rather than a low one. However, they failed two more challenging tasks, one that required understanding of the width of the tube, and one that required understanding of counterintuitive cues for a U-shaped displacement task.
Tech
TAIPEI, TAIWAN--The Phalaenopsis orchid, also known as the moth orchid, is the most important pot flower in terms of market value in the world's major floriculture markets. Because nitrogen significantly affects the growth and flowering of Phalaenopsis, nitrogen needs during flowering are of particular interest to growers.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Joint BioEnergy Institute have engineered a bacterium to synthesize pinene, a hydrocarbon produced by trees that could potentially replace high-energy fuels, such as JP-10, in missiles and other aerospace applications. With improvements in process efficiency, the biofuel could supplement limited supplies of petroleum-based JP-10, and might also facilitate development of a new generation of more powerful engines.
Revelations of the extent of government surveillance have thrown a spotlight on the security – or lack thereof – of our digital communications. Even today's encrypted data is vulnerable to technological progress. What privacy is ultimately possible? In the 27 March issue of Nature, the weekly international journal of science, researchers Artur Ekert and Renato Renner review what physics tells us about keeping our secrets secret.
Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a multi-institutional partnership led by Berkeley Lab, have identified the genetic origins of a microbial resistance to ionic liquids and successfully introduced this resistance into a strain of E. coli bacteria for the production of advanced biofuels. The ionic liquid resistance is based on a pair of genes discovered in a bacterium native to a tropical rainforest in Puerto Rico.
UPTON, NY-Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have made the first 3D observations of how the structure of a lithium-ion battery anode evolves at the nanoscale in a real battery cell as it discharges and recharges. The details of this research, described in a paper published in Angewandte Chemie, could point to new ways to engineer battery materials to increase the capacity and lifetime of rechargeable batteries.
The research was published online February 28 in the journal Analyst, a publication of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The work was supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) grant and by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA Astrobiology Program, under the NSF Center for Chemical Evolution.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Nanotechnology is advancing tools likened to Star Trek's "tricorder" that perform on-the-spot chemical analysis for a range of applications including medical testing, explosives detection and food safety.
Researchers found that when paper used to collect a sample was coated with carbon nanotubes, the voltage required was 1,000 times reduced, the signal was sharpened and the equipment was able to capture far more delicate molecules.
URBANA, Ill. – Using high-powered DNA-based tools, a recent study at the University of Illinois identified soil microbes that negatively affect ragweed and provided a new understanding of the complex relationships going on beneath the soil surface between plants and microorganisms.
Plastic, gasoline, rubber – very many items we use every day are based on oil. But this raw material is becoming increasingly scarcer. Step by step researchers are therefore investigating possibilities for using renewable raw materials to replace oil. One well-known example of this is biodiesel, which comes not from oil sources, but from fields of yellow-flowering rape. In future it is planned to produce another substance from plants, namely isobutene, a basic chemical used in the chemical industry to produce fuels, solvents, elastomers or even antiknock agents in fuel.
MIAMI - A new study showed that several Gulf of Mexico fish embryos developed serious defects in heart development following exposure to crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The study is the first to analyze the effects of the primary toxic agents released from crude oil on several commercially important pelagic fish species that spawn in the Gulf of Mexico.
Crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster causes severe defects in the developing hearts of bluefin and yellowfin tunas, according to a new study by a team of NOAA and academic scientists.
The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, show how the largest marine oil spill in United States history may have affected tunas and other species that spawned in oiled offshore habitats in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
This news release is available in Spanish.
A research study, participated in by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), has discovered that nanometric-size foam structures follow the same universal laws as does soap lather: small bubbles disappear in favor of the larger ones.
PHILADELPHIA (March 24, 2014)— The low cost of parking in many American cities may contribute to urban development that relies on automobile use and undercuts planners' efforts to increase public transport, according to a new baseline study of comprehensive public parking costs led by the Drexel University School of Public Health. The article, "Public parking fees and fines: a survey of US cities," is now published online ahead of print in the journal Public Works Management and Policy. It reports on downtown public parking costs after surveying public parking agencies in 107 U.S.
SEATTLE — Nationally, smoking rates have decreased since 1996, but the declines have been driven by a relatively small share of counties across the US, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
The study, "Cigarette smoking prevalence in US counties: 1996-2012," was published March 24 in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Population Health Metrics.