Tech
A new way of measuring wealth inequality better accounts for the way we experience it. In a paper published in Economics Letters, economists Samuel Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute and Wendy Carlin of University College London and the Santa Fe Institute propose a novel twist on the widely used Gini coefficient--a workhorse statistical measure for gauging the gap between haves and have-nots.
New research led by scientists at the University of Bristol has shown that the feedback mechanisms that were thought to keep the marine nitrogen cycle relatively stable over geological time can break down when oxygen levels in the ocean decline significantly.
The nitrogen cycle is essential to all forms of life on Earth - nitrogen is a basic building block of DNA.
Scientists studying one of the most common forms of childhood cancer have made an important breakthrough in understanding how the disease progresses.
Neuroblastoma is a rare type of cancer of the nervous system that mainly affects babies and young children.
It often begins in the adrenal gland but in around half of cases the condition has spread throughout the body when it is diagnosed, particularly to bone and bone marrow, and in these high risk cases survival is only about 50%.
Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a method that could pave the way to establishing universal standards for measuring the performance of quantum computers.
The new method, called cycle benchmarking, allows researchers to assess the potential of scalability and to compare one quantum platform against another.
When trying to better the odds for survival, a major dilemma that many animals face is dispersal -- being able to pick up and leave to occupy new lands, find fresh resources and mates, and avoid intraspecies competition in times of overpopulation.
For birds, butterflies and other winged creatures, covering long distances may be as easy as the breeze they travel on. But for soil-dwellers of the crawling variety, the hurdle remains: How do they reach new, far-off habitats?
The tropical cyclone season in the Southern Pacific Ocean has kicked off with Tropical Cyclone Rita, and NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the storm and analyzed it in infrared light for temperature data.
Rita developed on Nov. 24 as Tropical Cyclone 1P, 452 miles north of Port Vila, Vanuatu. By 10 a.m. EST (1500 UTC) on Nov. 24, Tropical Cyclone 1P strengthened into a tropical storm and was named Rita.
A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has unearthed a well-preserved Styracosaurus skull--and its facial imperfections have implications for how paleontologists identify new species of dinosaurs.
The skull was discovered by Scott Persons in 2015, then a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences, during an expedition in the badlands northwest of Dinosaur Provincial Park.
In the 2019 harvest, members of the Landless Workers' Movement (MST), in Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, commemorated a harvest estimated at 16,000 tons of organic and agroecological rice, the biggest production of its kind in the whole country. 363 families in 15 settlements work in the rice production.
Thousands of rare diseases cumulatively affect millions of people across the globe, yet because each case is so rare doctors struggle to accurately diagnose and effectively treat individual patients. Every time a patient with an unspecified disorder walks into a new clinic or shows up in an emergency room, doctors must start from scratch. The patients often go through years of such experiences before they ever get a diagnosis.
Scientists believe they've hit upon a way to get a handle on this problem.
SEATTLE, November 26, 2019 -- Fire ants build living rafts to survive floods and rainy seasons. Georgia Tech scientists are studying if a fire ant colony's ability to respond to changes in their environment during a flood is an instinctual behavior and how fluid forces make them respond.
In the aftermath of the notorious accidents in the history of nuclear energy at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), where all three have turned into devastating disasters due to meltdown in the core of a reactor, leading in turn to the release of radiation into the environment, many countries around the world have already pledged to a nuclear power phase-out.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 25, 2019 - A technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and scaled up by Vertimass LLC to convert ethanol into fuels suitable for aviation, shipping and other heavy-duty applications can be price-competitive with conventional fuels while retaining the sustainability benefits of bio-based ethanol, according to a new analysis.
The Korea Brain Research Institute (KBRI, President Pann Ghill Suh) announced on November 12 that korean research team made up of Dr. Hyung-Jun Kim and Shinrye Lee of KBRI, and professor Kiyoung Kim of Soonchunhyang University, found a new molecular mechanism of suppressing neuronal toxicity associateded dementia and Lou Gehrig's disease.
These findings were published in the November issue of Autophagy (IF=11.059). The authors' names and the title of the paper are as follows.
Versatile compounds called perovskites are valued for their application in next generation solar energy technologies. Despite their efficiency and relative cheapness, perovskite devices have yet to be perfected; they often contain atomic-level structural defects.
As Australia confronts devastating bushfire conditions, people across the nation are doing all they can to ensure the safety of their homes, property and loved ones.
But while many individuals are responding well to bushfire risks, a lack of preparation on the community level could be hampering their efforts, according to new research from the University of South Australia.