Tech
A modern airplane's fuselage is made from multiple sheets of different composite materials, like so many layers in a phyllo-dough pastry. Once these layers are stacked and molded into the shape of a fuselage, the structures are wheeled into warehouse-sized ovens and autoclaves, where the layers fuse together to form a resilient, aerodynamic shell.
New research detects gamma-ray emissions at unusual energy levels (above 56 and even 100 tera electron Volts (TeV)). Scientists with the High Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Collaboration analyzed the galactic emissions by identifying their source, their location, and their spectral fit. They identified nine significant galactic emissions with energies higher than 56 TeV, three of which had energies over 100TeV.
Evaporation can explain why water levels drop in a full swimming pool, but it also plays an important role in industrial processes ranging from cooling electronics to power generation. Much of the global electricity supply is generated by steam plants, which are driven by evaporation.
A male orchid bee zips around the rainforest, a flash of iridescent green against an equally emerald background. The bee stops at various flowers, fungi and dead trees, collecting fragrant particles and storing them in pockets in its hind legs. Then, it perches on a tree trunk. But the bee doesn't rest. Instead, it flitters about, using its wings to disperse a bouquet of perfumes into the air.
The aromatic efforts are all for the sake of attracting a mate.
URBANA, Ill. - For corn growers, the decision of when and how much nitrogen fertilizer to apply is a perennial challenge. Scientists at the University of Illinois have shown that nanosatellites known as CubeSats can detect nitrogen stress early in the season, potentially giving farmers a chance to plan in-season nitrogen fertilizer applications and alleviate nutrient stress for crops.
Severe droughts happened simultaneously in the regions that supply water to Southern California almost six times per century on average since 1500, according to new University of Arizona-led research.
The study is the first to document the duration and frequency of simultaneous droughts in Southern California's main water sources - the Sacramento River basin, the Upper Colorado River Basin and local Southern California basins.
AMES, Iowa - Just like a chameleon changes its skin color in response to its environment, engineers have found a way for liquid metal - and potentially solid metal - to change its surface structure in response to heat.
Treating particles of liquid metal alloys with heat causes them to roughen their surfaces with tiny spheres or nanowires, Iowa State University engineers reported in a paper featured on the cover of the Jan. 2 issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie.
Tokyo, Japan - A scientist from Tokyo Metropolitan University and coworkers have discovered that a specific insulin-like peptide called ILP2 regulates the size of "weapons" in Gnatocerus cornutus beetles in different nutritional environments. They found diminished mandible size when expression of the peptide was suppressed, and that it was specifically expressed in the "fat body", where beetles store nutrients. This has important implications for understanding how striking growth occurs in different environments for different organisms.
English and Italian speakers with dementia-related language impairment experience distinct kinds of speech and reading difficulties based on features of their native languages, according to new research by scientists at the UC San Francisco Memory and Aging Center and colleagues at the Neuroimaging Research Unit and Neurology Unit at the San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan.
HOUSTON -- (Jan. 10, 2020) -- Rice University engineers have created a light-powered nanoparticle that could shrink the carbon footprint of a major segment of the chemical industry.
Curtis Menyuk, professor of computer science and electrical engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), has collaborated with a team directed by Philip Russell at the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPI) in Erlangen, Germany, to gain insight into naturally-occurring molecular systems using optical solitons in lasers. Optical solitons are packets of light that are bound together and move at a constant speed without changing shape.
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine have discovered how a new immune system works to protect bacteria from bacteriophages (phages), viruses that specifically infect bacteria. This new system is unusual in that it works by abortive infection -- the infected bacterial cell self-destructs to keep the infection from spreading to other cells.
Human behaviour is influenced by many things, most of which remain unconscious to us. One of these is a phenomenon known among perception psychologists as "pseudo-neglect". This refers to the observation that healthy people prefer their left visual field to their right and therefore devide a line regularly left of centre.
Diabetic patients need to measure their blood-sugar level by drawing blood before and after a meal and it is easy to develop complications due to diabetes. Recently, a research team from POSTECH developed technology that allows diagnosis of diabetes and treatment of diabetic retinopathy just by wearing 'Smart Light-emitting diode (LED) Contact Lens.' With this technology, it is anticipated that development of wearable diagnostic and therapeutic devices for diabetes will be vitalized.
Chemists have found a new use for the waste product of nuclear power - transforming an unused stockpile into a versatile compound which could be used to create valuable commodity chemicals as well as new energy sources.
Depleted uranium (DU) is a radioactive by-product from the process used to create nuclear energy. Many fear the health risks from DU, as it is either stored in expensive facilities or used to manufacture controversial armour-piercing missiles.