Tech
MIAMI--A new study led by researchers at the University of Miami's (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that smoke from fires in Africa may be the most important source of a key nutrient--phosphorus--that acts as a fertilizer in the Amazon rainforest, Tropical Atlantic and Southern oceans.
Nutrients found in atmospheric particles, called aerosols, are transported by winds and deposited to the ocean and on land where they stimulate the productivity of marine phytoplankton and terrestrial plants leading to the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Salt is power. It might sound like alchemy, but the energy in places where salty ocean water and freshwater mingle could provide a massive source of renewable power. Stanford researchers have developed an affordable, durable technology that could harness this so-called blue energy.
The paper, recently published in American Chemical Society's ACS Omega, describes the battery and suggests using it to make coastal wastewater treatment plants energy-independent.
This is a story of carbon choices: As societies around the world continue to move toward increased renewable energy portfolios, which energy sources do we choose?
DETROIT - Alcohol use during pregnancy can have harmful consequences on the fetus including restricted growth, facial anomalies, and neurobehavioral problems. No amount of alcohol use during pregnancy has been proven safe. Yet a recent survey of midwives and nurses who provide prenatal care showed that 44% think one drink per occasion is acceptable while pregnant, and 38% think it is safe to drink alcohol during at least one trimester of pregnancy.
Sometimes the best discoveries happen when scientists least expect it. While trying to replicate another team's finding, Stanford physicists recently stumbled upon a novel form of magnetism, predicted but never seen before, that is generated when two honeycomb-shaped lattices of carbon are carefully stacked and rotated to a special angle.
The authors suggest the magnetism, called orbital ferromagnetism, could prove useful for certain applications, such as quantum computing. The group describes their finding in the July 25 issue of the journal Science.
The ability to combine many functions into a single microchip is a significant advance in the quest to perfect the tiny, self-powered sensors that will expand the Internet of things. KAUST researchers have managed to combine sensing, energy-harvesting, current-rectifying and energy-storage functions into a single microchip.
In the year 2026, at rush hour, your self-driving car abruptly shuts down right where it blocks traffic. You climb out to see gridlock down every street in view, then a news alert on your watch tells you that hackers have paralyzed all Manhattan traffic by randomly stranding internet-connected cars.
A new microscope breaks a long-standing speed limit, recording footage of brain activity 15 times faster than scientists once believed possible. It gathers data quickly enough to record neurons' voltage spikes and release of chemical messengers over large areas, monitoring hundreds of synapses simultaneously - a giant leap for the powerful imaging technique called two-photon microscopy.
Large-scale atlases of organs in a healthy state are soon going to be available, in particular, within the Human Cell Atlas. This is a significant step in better understanding cells, tissues and organs in healthy state and provides a reference when diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease. However, due to the sheer number of possible combinations of treatment and disease conditions, expanding these data to characterize disease and disease treatment in traditional life science laboratories is labor intensive and costly and, hence, not scalable.
Many parents are reluctant to talk with their kids about sex. But a new study shows that interventions involving parents and children lead to safer sexual practices - and do not make adolescents more likely to engage in sexual activity.
What The Study Did: This randomized clinical trial and meta-analysis focused on intensive blood pressure control compared with a standard control regimen on the risk of stroke in patients who had had a previous stroke.
Authors: Kazuo Kitagawa, M.D., Ph.D., of the Tokyo Women's Medical University, Shinjukuku, Tokyo, is the corresponding author.
(doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2019.2167)
By combining thin organic layers with thick layers of hybrid perovskite, researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have developed micrometer-thick organic light-emitting diodes that could improve the affordability and viewing angles of high-performance displays and televisions in the near future.
A simple pressure pump, made from balloons and nylon stockings, means more people in more places will be able to test water contaminants and blood samples.
The ingenious device unveiled in the prestigious Lab on a Chip journal cost just $2 to make, yet works almost as well as its expensive and cumbersome lab counterparts.
Pumps are used to make biological samples flow through microfluidic devices while their contents are identified beneath a microscope.
A team of fusion researchers succeeded in proving that energetic ions with energy in mega electron volt (MeV) range are superiorly confined in a plasma for the first time in helical systems. This promises the alpha particle (helium ion) confinement required for realizing fusion energy in a helical reactor.
The global economy still relies on the fossil carbon sources of petroleum, natural gas and coal, not just to produce fuel, but also as a raw material used by the chemical industry to manufacture plastics and countless other chemical compounds. Although efforts have been made for some time to find ways of manufacturing liquid fuels and chemical products from alternative, sustainable resources, these have not yet progressed beyond niche applications.