Sci-Tech news

• The scientific benefits of Rudolph's red nose

  21-12-2015 23:04
  
  We're all familiar with the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May (a class of 1926 Dartmouth alumnus) but scientifically speaking, what are the optical benefits of a shiny red nose on a foggy Christmas Eve?
  
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• Barcelona city hall fines Airbnb, Homeaway

  21-12-2015 23:04
  
  Barcelona's left-wing city hall said Monday it had slapped home rental websites Airbnb and HomeAway with a fine of 60,000 euros ($65,000) each for marketing lodgings in the Spanish city that lacked permits to host tourists.
  
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• Paper estimates widespread tree death in Southwestern forests under global warming scenarios

  21-12-2015 22:24
  
  A research paper published today in Nature Climate Change predicts widespread death of needleleaf evergreen trees (NET) within the Southwest United States by the year 2100 under projected global warming scenarios.
  
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• Salty sea spray affects the lifetimes of clouds, researchers find

  21-12-2015 22:23
  
  All over the planet, every day, oceans send plumes of sea spray into the atmosphere. Beyond the poetry of crashing ocean waves, this salt- and carbon-rich spray has a dramatic effect on the formation and duration of clouds.
  
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• NASA team moves closer to building a 3-D printed rocket engine

  21-12-2015 21:40
  
  A NASA team moved a step closer to building a completely 3-D printed, high-performance rocket engine by manufacturing complex engine parts and test firing them together with cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen to produce 20,000 pounds of thrust.
  
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• Neutrons offer guide to getting more out of solid-state lithium-ion batteries

  21-12-2015 21:17
  
  Although they don't currently have as much conductivity, solid-state electrolytes designed for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are emerging as a safer alternative to their more prevalent—sometimes flammable—liquid-electrolyte counterparts.
  
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• Contract to manage federal nuke lab up for grabs after 2017

  21-12-2015 21:01
  
  The $2 billion contract to manage one of the federal government's premier nuclear weapons laboratories will be up for grabs after 2017.
  
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• Wild bee decline threatens US crop production

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  The first national study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they're disappearing in many of the country's most important farmlands—including California's Central Valley, the Midwest's corn belt, and the Mississippi River valley.
  
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• Study explains the worldwide variation in plant life-histories

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  University of Exeter ecologist Dave Hodgson works with other academics to manage a plant database called COMPADRE that brings together demographic information about plant species. This database has been used to show plant life can be summarised into two variables: how fast the plant grows and its reproductive strategy.
  
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• Rivers, lakes impact ability of forests to store carbon

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  Forests help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by storing it in trees, but a sizeable amount of the greenhouse gas actually escapes through the soil and into rivers and streams.
  
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• Normal weather drives salt marsh erosion

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  For salt marshes, hurricanes are just another day at the beach.
  
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• New research shows same growth rate for farming, non-farming prehistoric people

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  Prehistoric human populations of hunter-gatherers in a region of North America grew at the same rate as farming societies in Europe, according to a new radiocarbon analysis involving researchers from the University of Wyoming and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
  
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• New hybrid electrolyte for solid-state lithium batteries

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a novel electrolyte for use in solid-state lithium batteries that overcomes many of the problems that plague other solid electrolytes while also showing signs of being compatible with next-generation cathodes.
  
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• Methane emissions in Arctic cold season higher than expected

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  The amount of methane gas escaping from the ground during the long cold period in the Arctic each year and entering Earth's atmosphere is likely much higher than estimated by current climate change models, concludes a major new study led by San Diego State University.
  
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• Melting sea ice increases Arctic precipitation, complicates climate predictions

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  The melting of sea ice will significantly increase Arctic precipitation, creating a climate feedback comparable to doubling global carbon dioxide, a Dartmouth College-led study finds.
  
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• A new twist in genetic switches: Theorists reveal new mechanism of gene regulation

  21-12-2015 21:00
  
  Rice University researchers have a new twist for those clinging to old ideas about a basic biological process.
  
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• A Smart Device Owner's Safety Guide

  21-12-2015 20:35 via abcnews.go.com
  
  What you need to know before setting up your new Internet-connected device.
  
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• Climate change: the Grinch that stole Europe's Christmas?

  21-12-2015 20:20
  
  In a season traditionally associated with ice-skating, snowball fights and mulled wine in wintry Europe, birds are chirping, flowers blooming and fake snow covering Alpine ski slopes in one of the warmest Decembers on record.
  
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• Best basil varieties for hydroponic greenhouse production

  21-12-2015 20:12
  
  As the popularity of fresh culinary herbs increases, growers are looking to year-round production methods to supply distributors and local consumers. In colder climates, culinary herb growers rely on controlled indoor environments and often employ hydroponic production techniques. A new study of basil varieties grown using two popular techniques found that plant performance is more likely related to the choice of cultivar than the type of hydroponic system used.
  
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• Container-grown conifers benefit from irrigation based on daily water use

  21-12-2015 20:10
  
  Competition for limited water resources is challenging producers of container-grown nursery plants to investigate alternative irrigation strategies. One water-conserving method available to nurseries is scheduling irrigation in response to plants' daily water use (DWU), a technique that has been shown to reduce water applications between 6% and 75% without negatively impacting the growth of ornamental shrubs.
  
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• Tentative agreement reached in dispute over endangered fish

  21-12-2015 19:34
  
  Wildlife advocates have reached a tentative agreement with the U.S. government in a dispute over an endangered fish in the Yellowstone River along the Montana-North Dakota border.
  
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• African lions are 'endangered,' must be protected: US

  21-12-2015 19:34
  
  African lions are at risk of extinction and will be protected under US law as endangered species, authorities declared Monday, months after a high profile killing stoked global outrage.
  
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• Facebook to enable viewing of Apple's animated photos

  21-12-2015 19:33
  
  The latest iPhones come with the ability to turn still images into video—just like magic—but sharing options had been limited to other Apple apps.
  
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• How LED lighting treatments affect greenhouse tomato quality

  21-12-2015 19:30
  
  To satisfy increasing consumer demand for locally grown, fresh tomatoes during off-seasons, greenhouse tomato growers often need to rely on supplemental lighting. Tomato growers are looking to light-emitting diodes (LEDs), favored for their energy-saving potential, as an alternative to high-pressure sodium lamps (HPS) in greenhouse operations. A recent study offers new information about the feasibility of using LEDs in greenhouse tomato operations.
  
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• Scientists study single 'transformer' proteins with role in cancer

  21-12-2015 19:28
  
  A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital shows how a protein involved in cancer twists and morphs into different structures.
  
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• Religion and politics led to social tension and conflict, then and now: study

  21-12-2015 19:19
  
  Humans haven't learned much in more than 2,000 years when it comes to religion and politics.
  
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• Photos: Baby Antelope Takes First Steps

  21-12-2015 19:12 via abcnews.go.com
  
  Absolutely adorable baby animals!
  
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• Twisted magnetic fields give new insights on star formation

  21-12-2015 19:11
  
  Using new images that show unprecedented detail, scientists have found that material rotating around a very young protostar probably has dragged in and twisted magnetic fields from the larger area surrounding the star. The discovery, made with the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, has important implications for how dusty disks—the raw material for planet formation—grow around young stars.
  
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• SpaceX aims for historic rocket launch, landing (Update)

  21-12-2015 18:30
  
  SpaceX aims to make history Monday by landing its most powerful Falcon 9 rocket in an upright position after launch, a key step toward making rockets as reusable as airplanes.
  
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• SpaceX aims for historic rocket launch, landing

  21-12-2015 18:30
  
  SpaceX aims to make history Monday by landing its most powerful Falcon 9 rocket in an upright position after launch, a key step toward making rockets as reusable as airplanes.
  
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• Mars gullies likely contain 'no water', study says

  21-12-2015 18:30
  
  Months after scientists announced "the strongest evidence yet" of liquid water on Mars, a study Monday said there was none at least in the valleys carved into numerous Red Planet slopes.
  
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• New study tests three-step intervention to increase faculty gender diversity in STEM

  21-12-2015 18:27
  
  Workforce homogeneity limits creativity, discovery, and job satisfaction; nonetheless, eighty-one percent of US science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) university faculty members are men.
  
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• New flow battery offers lower-cost energy storage

  21-12-2015 18:26
  
  Energy storage system owners could see significant savings from a new flow battery technology that is projected to cost 60 percent less than today's standard flow batteries.
  
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• Peering under the hood into the workings of molecular motors

  21-12-2015 18:25
  
  Understanding how tiny molecular motors called myosins use energy to fuel biological tasks like contracting muscles could lead to therapies for muscle diseases and cancers, says a team of researchers led by Penn State College of Medicine scientists.
  
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• Cocooned wasp larvae jump to shaded areas to improve their survival

  21-12-2015 18:21
  
  Jumping is not about fun and games for insect larvae. They must do it to survive. This manoeuvre is all about finding a shady spot to develop in, according to researchers from Kyushu University in Japan, who led research into the jumping behavior of a minute parasitic wasp, published in Springer's journal The Science of Nature.
  
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• How to build real lightsaber

  21-12-2015 17:49 via rss.cnn.com
  
  As even casual Star Wars fans will know, lightsabers are probably the coolest weapon ever to make an appearance on the big screen. Lightsaber fights are so elegant that they are almost hypnotic and, even though not all of us might have a strong enough flow of Force running through our veins, a lightsaber in the right hand is by far the deadliest weapon to be found in the universe.
  
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• ALMA Reveals New Evidence of Young Planets

  21-12-2015 17:40 via scitechdaily.com
  
  Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers have found telltale differences between the gaps in the gas and the dust in discs around four young stars. These new observations are the clearest indications yet that planets with masses several times that of Jupiter have recently formed in these discs. Planets are found around nearly every […]
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• Immune Therapy Drug Prolongs Survival in Advanced Lung Cancer Patients

  21-12-2015 17:23 via scitechdaily.com
  
  A newly published study involving patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer resistant to chemotherapy has found a promising weapon in an immune therapy drug commonly used to treat other cancers. The findings were published December 19 in The Lancet and presented at the 2015 annual conference of the European Society for Medical Oncology in […]
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• US broadband adoption stalls, as more go mobile

  21-12-2015 17:10
  
  Adoption of home broadband has stalled in the United States, as more Americans opt for Internet on the go with mobile devices, a survey showed Monday.
  
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• Cassini Image of Enceladus Shows Old and New Terrain

  21-12-2015 17:06 via scitechdaily.com
  
  This new Cassini image dramatically displays the contrast between the older and newer terrain on Enceladus. Newer surfaces (on the left in the image) will not have had time to accumulate craters. But as material sits exposed on the surface, impact scars build up, as in the more heavily cratered area on the top and […]
  The post Cassini Image of Enceladus Shows Old and New Terrain appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Experiments show novel X-ray method could detect nuclear materials

  21-12-2015 17:02
  
  Physicists at the Diocles Extreme Light Laboratory at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have demonstrated that their unconventional laser-based X-ray machine could provide a new defense against nuclear terrorism.
  
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• Pole dancing water molecules: How water learns to dance

  21-12-2015 17:00
  
  Perovskites are materials used in batteries, fuel cells, and electronic components, and occur in nature as minerals. Despite their important role in technology, little is known about the reactivity of their surfaces. Professor Ulrike Diebold's team at TU Wien (Vienna) has answered a long-standing question using scanning tunnelling microscopes and computer simulations: How do water molecules behave when they attach to a perovskite surface? Normally only the outermost atoms at the surface influenc
  
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• A horse of a different color: Genetics of camouflage and the Dun pattern

  21-12-2015 17:00
  
  Most horses today are treasured for their ability to run, work, or be ridden, but have lost their wild-type camouflage: pale hair with zebra-like dark stripes known as the Dun pattern. Now an international team of scientists has discovered what causes the Dun pattern and why it is lost in most horses. The results, published today in Nature Genetics, reveal a new mechanism of skin and hair biology, and provide new insight into horse domestication.
  
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• A multitool for cells

  21-12-2015 16:55
  
  Cells have an infallible sense of smell that tells them which direction to grow in to move closer to the source of a scent. ETH researchers have now learned how this sense of smell works.
  
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• Protecting a few students from negative stereotypes benefits entire classroom

  21-12-2015 16:54
  
  Interventions targeted at individual students can improve the classroom environment and trigger a second wave of benefits for all classmates, new research shows. The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, indicate that sharing a classroom with greater numbers of students who participate in a brief intervention can boost all students' grades over and above the initial benefits of the intervention.
  
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• Researchers pinpoint child-pedestrian behaviors that lead to auto accidents

  21-12-2015 16:53
  
  "Look both ways before you cross the street" may be sage advice, but it is also apparently necessary for children as old as 13, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, who have pinpointed many of the behaviors that lead to child pedestrians being hit by cars.
  
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• Hubble Image of the Week: Infant Star’s Artistic Outburst

  21-12-2015 16:53 via scitechdaily.com
  
  This newly released Hubble image shows HH34, which resides approximately 1,400 light-years away near the Orion Nebula. The artistic outburst of an extremely young star, in the earliest phase of formation, is captured in this spectacular image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The colorful wisps, found in the lower left of the image, are […]
  The post Hubble Image of the Week: Infant Star’s Artistic Outburst appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Major milestone: First electrons accelerated in European XFEL

  21-12-2015 16:48
  
  A crucial component of the European X-ray laser European XFEL has taken up operation: The so-called injector, the 45-metre long first part of the superconducting particle accelerator, has accelerated its first electrons to nearly the speed of light. This is the first beam ever accelerated at the European XFEL and represents a major advancement toward the completion of the facility.
  
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• Tim Cook Defends Encryption on Smartphones

  21-12-2015 16:35 via abcnews.go.com
  
  Following attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, thetech community is debating whether to give the government a back door to access encrypted information.
  
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• New research shows decline in population and breeding success of Antarctic seabird

  21-12-2015 16:19
  
  A fifty year study of the charismatic seabird, the southern giant petrel, on the Antarctic island of Signy shows its population has halved and its breeding success has declined in the last 10-20 years. The results by scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) are published this month in the journal Polar Biology online.
  
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