Science news

• Climate change contributing to urban 'heat islands' raising costs for cities

  29-05-2017 22:51 via cbc.ca
  
  Heat trapped by dark-coloured roads and buildings will more than double cities' costs for tackling global warming this century by driving up energy demand to keep citizens cool and by aggravating pollution, scientists said on Monday.
  
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• Stunning display of northern lights captured by photographers

  29-05-2017 19:16 via cbc.ca
  
  Canadians were treated to a spectacular display of northern lights on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, and some were fortunate enough to photograph the light show.
  
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• Creepy Swimmer's Itch Parasite in Northern Lakes Can Scratch Summer Fun

  29-05-2017 15:00 via rss.sciam.com
  
  A cooling summer dip in a freshwater lake or pond could give you a nasty reaction, but Michigan is leading the way in research and control 
  -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
  
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• Citizen scientists join the search for Planet 9

  29-05-2017 13:00
  
  Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, a citizen science project, lets space enthusiasts search for undiscovered objects in the sky, including a hypothesized planet at the far reaches of the solar system.
  
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• Squeezing every drop of fresh water from waste brine

  29-05-2017 06:00
  
  (University of California - Riverside) Engineers at the University of California, Riverside have developed a new way to recover almost 100 percent of the water from highly concentrated salt solutions. The system will alleviate water shortages in arid regions and reduce concerns surrounding high salinity brine disposal, such as hydraulic fracturing waste.
  
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• Remembrance of things past -- bacterial memory of gut inflammation

  29-05-2017 06:00
  
  (Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard) A team at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering led by Pamela Silver, Ph.D., designed a powerful bacterial sensor with a stable gene circuit in a colonizing bacterial strain that can record gut inflammation for six months in mice. This study offers a solution to previous challenges associated with living diagnostics and may bring them closer to use in human patients. The findings are reported in Nature Biotechnol
  
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• Hotspots show that vegetation alters climate by up to 30 percent

  29-05-2017 06:00
  
  (Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science) Nature Geoscience study analyzes global satellite observations, shows vegetation alters climate and weather patterns by as much as 30 percent. The researchers used a new approach and found feedbacks between the atmosphere and vegetation can be strong, explaining up to 30 percent of variability in precipitation and surface radiation. The paper is the first to examine biosphere-atmosphere interactions using purely observational data,
  
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• 'Heat island' effect could double climate change costs for world's cities

  29-05-2017 06:00
  
  (University of Sussex) Overheated cities face climate change costs at least twice as big as the rest of the world because of the 'urban heat island' effect, new research shows.
  
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• Graphene and quantum dots put in motion a CMOS-integrated camera that can see the invisible

  29-05-2017 06:00
  
  (ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences) ICFO develops the first graphene-based camera, capable of imaging visible and infrared light at the same time. The camera will be useful for many applications such as night vision, food inspection, fire control, vision under extreme weather conditions, among others.The imaging system is based on the first monolithic integration of graphene and quantum dot photodetectors with a CMOS read-out integrated circuit. This allows for low-cost mass-production.
  
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• CRISPR gene editing can cause hundreds of unintended mutations

  29-05-2017 06:00
  
  (Columbia University Medical Center) Researchers report that CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology can introduce hundreds of unintended mutations into the genome.
  
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