Posts

A Florida State University researcher has uncovered a new geophysical phenomenon where a hurricane or other strong storm can spark seismic events in the nearby ocean as strong as a 3.5 magnitude earthquake. “We’re calling them ‘stormquakes,’” said lead author Wenyuan Fan, an assistant professor of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Science. “This involves coupling of the atmosphere-ocean and solid earth. During a storm season, hurricanes or nor’easters transfer energy into the ocean as strong ocean waves, and the waves interact with the solid earth producing intense seismic source activity....

Men with higher numerical IQs were shown to be more likely to partake in skill-based gambling, such as horse racing, choose more complicated betting options, and spend more money, according to a study published in the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. More than 15,000 Finnish males who had taken an IQ test as part of their mandatory military duty while enlisting in the Finnish Defense Forces participated in the research....

Results may help improve vaccination strategies in vulnerable patients. Individuals with kidney failure who were on dialysis had an incomplete and delayed antibody response and a blunted cellular immune response following COVID-19 vaccination, compared with people with normal kidney function.Immune responses were substantially stronger with the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine than with the PfizerBioNTech BNT162b2 vaccine. A variety of other characteristics also predicted the strength of patients’ immune responses following vaccination....

In a paper published today (March 26, 2020) in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, air pollution experts from Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) conducted a wide-ranging literature review of research on the effects of green infrastructure (trees and hedges) on air pollution. The review found that there is ample evidence of green infrastructure’s ability to divert and dilute pollutant plumes or reduce outdoor concentrations of pollutants by direct capture, where some pollutants are deposited on plant surfaces....

Cambridge, Massachusetts – June 16, 2015 – The high seas of Mars may never have existed. According to a new study that looks at two opposite climate scenarios of early Mars, a cold and icy planet billions of years ago better explains water drainage and erosion features seen on the planet today. For decades, researchers have debated the climate history of Mars and how the planet’s early climate led to the many water-carved channels seen today....

Greenland’s glaciers flowing into the ocean are grounded deeper below sea level than previously measured, allowing intruding ocean water to badly undercut the glacier faces. That process will raise sea levels around the world much faster than currently estimated, according to a team of researchers led by Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. The researchers battled rough waters and an onslaught of icebergs for three summers to map the remote channels below Greenland’s marine-terminating glaciers for the first time....

A new study indicates that insomnia lead to about 274,000 mistakes, which caused $31 billion in losses, due to accidents and workplace errors over a 12 month period. Researchers used data from the America Insomnia Survey (AIS), which is a nationwide phone survey of people with health insurance that was administered to 10,094 Americans. The scientists published their findings in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry. It’s by far the largest to look at the effects of insomnia at the workplace....

New research from Yale University suggests that simply being in the habitable zone isn’t sufficient to support life. A planet also must start with an internal temperature that is just right. The search for habitable, alien worlds needs to make room for a second “Goldilocks,” according to a Yale University researcher. For decades, it has been thought that the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life was its distance from its sun....

FSU Associate Professor of Physics Takemichi Okui and Assistant Professor of Physics Kohsaku Tobioka published a new paper in the journal Physical Review Letters that proposes that this decay is actually a new, short-lived particle that has avoided detection in similar experiments. “This is such a rare disintegration,” Okui said. “It’s so rare, that they should not have seen any. But if this is correct, how do we explain it?...

Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, have developed a new type of amplifier for boosting electrical signals. The device can be used for everything from studying stars, galaxies, and black holes to exploring the quantum world and developing quantum computers. “This amplifier will redefine what it is possible to measure,” said Jonas Zmuidzinas, chief technologist at JPL, who is Caltech’s Merle Kingsley Professor of Physics and a member of the research team....

Materials made of single atomic layers are highly valued for their low-friction qualities, useful in reducing friction in hard disks or moving parts of satellites or space telescopes. Graphene, consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like a honeycomb, is a prime example and is under examination for its potential as a lubricating layer. Earlier studies showed that a graphene ribbon can glide almost friction-free across a gold surface....

Previous research had shown that coot parents preferentially feed the brightly ornamented chicks over those whose plumage has been manipulated to be less colorful, giving the ornamented chicks a survival advantage. This parental preference within families can drive the evolution of ornamentation in the offspring, just as female mate choice can result in ornamented males in the context of sexual selection (peacocks being the classic example of that). Left unresolved by the earlier research, however, was why coot parents would have a preference for ornamented chicks in the first place, and whose fitness interests are served by the ornamentation, said Bruce Lyon, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and first author of the new study, published December 30, 2019, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....

This method opens up a new avenue for paleontological research, allowing for a greater understanding not only of dinosaurs but also of the ecosystems and communities in which they existed. From Fantasia to Jurassic Park, the T. rex is seen as a terrifying apex predator that would chase down its prey and crunch on it whole. But how much did this iconic dinosaur actually chow down on bones? And what about other predatory dinosaurs that existed long before it?...

MIT engineers and researchers in South Korea have developed a sweat-proof “electronic skin” — a conformable, sensor-embedded sticky patch that monitors a person’s health without malfunctioning or peeling away, even when a wearer is perspiring. The patch is patterned with artificial sweat ducts, similar to pores in human skin, that the researchers etched through the material’s ultrathin layers. The pores perforate the patch in a kirigami-like pattern, similar to that of the Japanese paper-cutting art....

In a touch-screen display or a solar panel, any conductive overlay had better be clear. Engineers employ transparent thin films of indium tin oxide (ITO) for the job, but a high-tech material’s properties are only half its resume. They must also be as cheap and easy to manufacture as possible. In a new study, researchers from Brown University and ATMI Inc. report the best-ever transparency and conductivity performance for an ITO made using a chemical solution, which is potentially the facile, low-cost method manufacturers want....

We’ve long been warned of the risks of dyeing hair at home and in salons. Products used can cause allergies and skin irritation — an estimated 1% of people have an allergy to dye. Furthermore, repeated use of some dyes has been linked to cancer. But there soon may be a solution for the growing list of salons and hair color enthusiasts searching for natural alternatives to dyes and cosmetics....

Engineers have created decision-making and motion-planning systems to prevent casualties and property damage when self-driving cars are involved in unavoidable collisions. After determining that a collision of some sort is unavoidable, the system analyzes all possible courses of action and selects the one with the least severe consequences. “What can we do in order to minimize the consequences?” said Amir Khajepour, a professor of mechanical and mechatronics engineering at the University of Waterloo....

The World Health Organization declared the illness resulting from the new virus, COVID-19, a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. By early March 2020, the novel coronavirus—now named SARS-CoV-2—had infected more than 90,000 people worldwide and killed at least 3,100. Like other coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 particles are spherical and have proteins called spikes protruding from their surface. These spikes latch onto human cells, then undergo a structural change that allows the viral membrane to fuse with the cell membrane....

Rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep is a fascinating period when most of our dreams are made. Now, in a study of mice, a team of Japanese and U.S. researchers show that it may also be a time when the brain actively forgets. Their results suggest that forgetting during sleep may be controlled by neurons found deep inside the brain that were previously known for making an appetite-stimulating hormone. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health....

Genomic evidence for the Chinese mountain cat as a wildcat conspecific (Felis silvestris bieti) and its introgression to domestic cats. Analyses of genomic data suggest that the little-studied Chinese mountain cat, which has held a controversial taxonomic status, is a subspecies of wildcat and was not involved in feline domestication in China. The findings support the theory that housecats originated solely from the domestication of the African wildcat. The study also found that the genetic integrity of the Chinese mountain cat may have been disrupted through ancient introgression with the Asiatic wildcat and modern-day mixing with domestic cats....