Tech
Northern China, a hotspot of air pollution, has always been an area of great interest to study owing to the significant impacts on human health, the climate and ecosystems.
Physicist have shown that the motion of domain walls can be detected by monitoring voltage generated in superconducting devices. This finding can facilitate magnetic racetrack memory applications. The result was published in Physical Review Letters -publication. The international research group included researcher from the University of Jyväskylä.
WASHINGTON (Jan. 6, 2020) -- As food consumed in the U.S. becomes more and more processed, obesity may become more prevalent. Through reviewing overall trends in food, George Washington University (GW) researcher Leigh A. Frame, PhD, MHS, concluded that detailed recommendations to improve diet quality and overall nutrition are needed for consumers, who are prioritizing food that is cheaper and more convenient, but also highly processed. Her conclusions are published in a review article in Current Treatment Options in Gastroenterology.
New York, NY--January 6, 2020--Spinal cord injuries (SCI) can cause devastating damage, including loss of mobility and sensation. Every year, there are an estimated 17,000 new SCIs in the US alone, a rate higher than in most regions of the world. In addition, the rate of SCIs in people 65-years or older is expected to rise in the US, from 13.0% in 2010 to 16.1% by 2020. Data also shows a high survival rate for these patients, who need to function in everyday life but find sitting to be a major challenge.
Physicists from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and the Institute for High Pressure Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences have used computer modeling to refine the melting curve of graphite that has been studied for over 100 years, with inconsistent findings. They also found that graphene "melting" is in fact sublimation. The results of the study came out in the journal Carbon.
A new study shows that China's inland surface water quality improved significantly from 2003-2017, coinciding with major efforts beginning in 2001 to reduce water pollution in the country.
The research was conducted by a team led by Profs. MA Ting and ZHOU Chenghu from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Their findings were published in Science Advances.
The newly reported genome sequence of a water lily sheds light on the early evolution of angiosperms, the group of all flowering plants. An international team of researchers, including scientists at Penn State, used high-throughput next-generation sequencing technology to read out the water lily's (Nymphaea colorata) genome and transcriptome--the set of all genes expressed as RNAs.
Clusters composed of a few atoms tend to be spherical. They are usually organized in shells of atoms around a central atom. This is the case for many elements, but not for gold! Experiments and advanced computations have shown that freestanding clusters of twenty gold atoms take on a pyramidal shape. They have a triangular ground plane made up of ten neatly arranged atoms, with additional triangles of six and three atoms, topped by a single atom [see figure where a model of twenty oranges is compared with the theoretical and experimental structure].
A 2017 report of the discovery of a particular kind of Majorana fermion--the chiral Majorana fermion, referred to as the "angel particle"--is likely a false alarm, according to new research. Majorana fermions are enigmatic particles that act as their own antiparticle and were first hypothesized to exist in 1937. They are of immense interest to physicists because their unique properties could allow them to be used in the construction of a topological quantum computer.
Building and maintaining soil health is essential to agricultural sustainability, long-term productivity, and economic viability. Soil health is defined as the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living system that supports biological productivity, to maintain environmental quality, and to promote plant, animal, and human health.
The 170,000-year-old charred remains of starchy plant parts from Border Cave, South Africa provides the earliest direct evidence for the collecting and cooking of carbohydrate-rich rhizomes, a new study reports. The findings suggest that palatable rhizomes from Hypoxis sp.– a genus of small flowering plants – ay have been a reliable and transportable staple food for Middle Stone Age humans at the site and perhaps a familiar source of food for early human populations traveling throughout Africa and beyond.
Color-changing fibers and mathematical theory combine to disclose the simple rules that govern the strength and stability of commonly used knots, researchers report. The new study addresses a centuries-old mystery - what makes knots work? Fibers tied into knots and tangles remain one of humanity's most ancient and enduring technologies and play a ubiquitous, fundamental role in our daily lives.
"The inhabitants of the Border Cave in the Lebombo Mountains on the Kwazulu-Natal/eSwatini border were cooking starchy plants 170 thousand years ago," says Professor Lyn Wadley, a scientist from the Wits Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (Wits ESI). "This discovery is much older than earlier reports for cooking similar plants and it provides a fascinating insight into the behavioural practices of early modern humans in southern Africa. It also implies that they shared food and used wooden sticks to extract plants from the ground."
Boulder, Colo., USA: Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have mapped a rare earth element deposit of magmatic carbonatite located in the Mountain Pass region of the eastern Mojave Desert. The new report details the geophysical and geological setting of the deposit, including a map of the deposit's subsurface extent, to help land-use managers evaluate sites for further exploration. The report was recently published in the Geological Society of America's online journal, Geosphere.
Researchers at Columbia University and University of California, San Diego, have introduced a novel "multi-messenger" approach to quantum physics that signifies a technological leap in how scientists can explore quantum materials.
The findings appear in a recent article published in Nature Materials, led by A. S. McLeod, postdoctoral researcher, Columbia Nano Initiative, with co-authors Dmitri Basov and A. J. Millis at Columbia and R.A. Averitt at UC San Diego.