Tech
For the first time, researchers have used radar and other tools to accurately measure the volume of snow produced through cloud seeding.
Led by University of Colorado Boulder atmospheric scientist Katja Friedrich and her colleagues, the research began on a chilly day in January 2017. That's when the team watched as a flurry settled over a patch of land in western Idaho.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Cloud seeding has become an increasingly popular practice in the western United States, where states grapple with growing demands for water. Measuring how much precipitation cloud seeding produces has been a longstanding challenge. Researchers have developed a way to use radar and other tools to more accurately measure the volume of snow produced through cloud seeding.
Did a powerful queen of Cobá, one of the greatest cities of the ancient Maya world, build the longest Maya road to invade a smaller, isolated neighbor and gain a foothold against the emerging Chichén Itzá empire?
The question has long intrigued Traci Ardren, archaeologist and University of Miami professor of anthropology. Now, she and fellow scholars may be a step closer to an answer, after conducting the first lidar study of the 100-kilometer stone highway that connected the ancient cities of Cobá and Yaxuná on the Yucatan Peninsula 13 centuries ago.
Analyzing sounds from fluids in motion can help scientists gather data from biological and physical events that can be hard to quantify. For example, scientists use the famous Doppler effect to calculate how fast blood is flowing in the body. Now, scientists have measured the acoustics of a bursting soap bubble, a common example of violent event, to decipher the origin of the popping sound. Researchers Bussonnière et al. determined that the forces exerted by the liquid soap film on the air are those that create the "pop" as the bubble bursts.
Although the neutron has no net electrical charge, it still could have an electric dipole moment (EDM)--a structural measure of the distance between its positive and negative electrical charges. According to researchers C. Abel et al., this moment would be "act like an electronic compass to electric fields just as an ordinary compass does with magnetic fields." These researchers are searching for the neutron's electric dipole moment to probe new physics which was at play just after the Big Bang. Now, they have refined the sensitivity of techniques used to search for the neutron's EDM.
Advances in biomimicry - creating biological responses within non-biological substances - will enable synthetic materials to behave in ways that were typically only found in Nature. Light provides an especially effective tool for triggering life-like, dynamic responses within a range of materials. The problem, however, is that the applied light is typically dispersed throughout the sample and thus, it is difficult to localize the bio-inspired behavior to the desired, specific portions of the material.
DALLAS - Feb. 24, 2020 - Using human lung cancer cells, UT Southwestern researchers have uncovered how cells in general modulate their energy consumption based on their surroundings and, furthermore, how cancer cells override those cues to maximize energy use. The findings, published this week in Nature, extend a report from last year in which the same group discovered that the cell's skeleton can promote cancer cell growth in metastasis or when under chemotherapy assault.
EVANSTON, Ill. -- For self-driving vehicles to become an everyday reality, they need to safely and flawlessly navigate one another without crashing or causing unnecessary traffic jams.
To help make this possible, Northwestern University researchers have developed the first decentralized algorithm with a collision-free, deadlock-free guarantee.
The researchers tested the algorithm in a simulation of 1,024 robots and on a swarm of 100 real robots in the laboratory. The robots reliably, safely and efficiently converged to form a pre-determined shape in less than a minute.
A collaborative team of researchers at Utah State University and the University of Central Florida developed a tool to track cellular events that may lead to obesity-related conditions in people.
The research findings were published Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their collaborators have developed a way to retrofit the transmission electron microscope -- a long-standing scientific workhorse for making crisp microscopic images -- so that it can also create high-quality movies of super-fast processes at the atomic and molecular scale.
Researchers at the University of Southampton have identified how new checkpoint inhibitor treatments for cancer can activate tuberculosis in some patients.
Immune therapies for cancer are transforming treatment by activating the body's immune cells to fight off cancer. Immune checkpoints are part of the human body's immune system that prevent damaging inflammation, and checkpoint inhibitors are drugs used in immunotherapy to permit the body's immune system to attack cancer cells.
COLUMBIA, Mo. - Technology has shifted the way that professors teach students in higher education. For example, by uploading recorded lectures online, students can reference a digital copy of the topics discussed in class. However, lecture-based teaching traditionally leaves students as consumers of information solely with little room for student creativity or interaction.
Marine biologists have adopted "soft robotic linguine fingers" as tools to conduct their undersea research. In a study appearing February 24 in the journal Current Biology, scientists found that jellyfish held by ultra-soft robotic fingers expressed significantly fewer stress-related genes than when braced by traditional submersible grippers. Shaped like the famous noodles, this new robotic technology allows for the collection of ecological data in a gentler, less invasive manner.
Why do some people almost always drop $10 in the Salvation Army bucket and others routinely walk by? One answer may be found in an intricate and rhythmic neuronal dance between two specific brain regions, finds a new Yale University study published Feb. 24 in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The biological roots of generosity and selfishness have long fascinated neuroscientists. As social animals, primates depend upon cooperation; yet in times of scarcity or in the quest for status, selfishness often wins out.
A team of international scientists investigating how to control the spin of atom-like impurities in 2D materials have observed the dependence of the atom's energy on an external magnetic field for the first time.
The results of the study, published in Nature Materials, will be of interest to both academic and industry research groups working on the development of future quantum applications, the researchers say.