Sci-Tech news

• Unrest and eruptions

  09-02-2016 22:48
  
  Seismic, deformation, and gas activity (unrest) typically precedes volcanic eruptions. Tracking the changes of this activity with monitoring data makes it increasingly possible to successfully forecast eruptions from stratovolcanoes. However, this is not the case for monogenetic volcanoes (usually the result of a single magmatic pulse). Eruptions from these volcanoes tend to be small but are particularly difficult to anticipate since they occur at unexpected locations, and there is very limited
  
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• Americans recognize 'past presidents' who never were, study finds

  09-02-2016 22:04
  
  Ask Americans to name the former U.S. president whose face currently graces the U.S. $10 dollar bill and most will be quick to answer Alexander Hamilton.
  
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• In Tech: Google ads, Verizon video, domain leadership

  09-02-2016 21:40
  
  Google is helping to promote the fight against extremism through its own digital advertising network.
  
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• With restraint, YouTube rolls out original programming

  09-02-2016 21:22
  
  Michael "Burnie" Burns hears a discrepancy. Before greeting moviegoers at the debut of his film, the writer-actor is eavesdropping on all the big-budget movie trailers playing ahead of his much smaller crowdfunded concoction, "Lazer Team."
  
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• Agencies contend Facebook is breaching French privacy laws

  09-02-2016 21:22
  
  Two agencies contend Facebook is breaching privacy laws in France by tracking and using the personal data of more than 30 million users there without their knowledge.
  
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• New thin film transistor may lead to flexible electronics

  09-02-2016 21:21
  
  An engineering research team at the University of Alberta has invented a new transistor that could revolutionize thin-film electronic devices.
  
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• Bring on the drones: Mediterranean sees severe overfishing

  09-02-2016 21:07
  
  Experts say almost all species in the Mediterranean are still overfished despite decades of seeing stocks dwindle—and the European Union is considering creative solutions like using drones or space technology to catch fraudulent fishermen.
  
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• Water tests show a few homes in Ohio village still have lead

  09-02-2016 21:05
  
  The state Environmental Protection Agency says the latest round of tests in a northeast Ohio village has found high levels of lead in tap water at 11 of the 180 homes where owners voluntarily submitted samples.
  
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• Flood risk can be higher with levees than without them

  09-02-2016 21:03
  
  People living behind levees on floodplains may not be as immune to flood damage as they think, according to results of a study led by the University of California, Davis.
  
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• Obama seeks cybersecurity boost to replace 'ancient' tech (Update)

  09-02-2016 20:23
  
  President Barack Obama said Tuesday he is asking Congress for $3.1 billion to update the government's archaic computer systems to protect them from cyberattacks as part of a new, centralized effort to boost cybersecurity.
  
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• Obama seeks cybersecurity boost to replace 'ancient' tech

  09-02-2016 20:23
  
  The federal government is relying on archaic computers systems to protect reams of critical data from cyberattacks, President Barack Obama warned Tuesday as he announced a new, centralized effort to boost cybersecurity.
  
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• Absorbing acoustics with soundless spirals

  09-02-2016 20:22
  
  Researchers at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, CNRS, and the University of Lorraine have recently developed a design for a coiled-up acoustic metasurface which can achieve total acoustic absorption in very low-frequency ranges.
  
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• Rare bumble bee may be making a comeback in Pacific northwest

  09-02-2016 20:18
  
  Bombus occidentalis used to be the most common bumble bee species in the Pacific Northwest, but in the mid 1990s it became one of the rarest. Now, according to an article in the Journal of Insect Science offers, it may be making a comeback.
  
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• Paper: Homeownership a 'dream deferred' for millennial generation

  09-02-2016 19:53
  
  For previous generations of Americans, homeownership was seen as one of the final rites of passage into adulthood and financial independence.
  
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• An artificial diet may make it easier to rear insects

  09-02-2016 19:51
  
  Scientists who conduct research on insects need to be able to keep them alive, sometimes for many generations. That can be difficult, especially since members of many insect species are particularly picky eaters.
  
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• NASA data reveals tropical cyclone forming near Madagascar

  09-02-2016 19:50
  
  The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellite and NASA's RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station have provided forecasters with data that shows System 96S, a tropical low pressure area in the Southern Indian Ocean, is consolidating and developing into a depression.
  
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• Identifying plant and animal DNA switches much faster and cheaper

  09-02-2016 19:44
  
  Epigenetics is a fast-growing field of research all over the world. Ecological epigenetics has now been further advanced thanks to the development of a new research technique. "This technique is cheaper and faster and enables research that was previously impossible to conduct." The time has come to look at how important epigenetic changes are for dealing with climate change, plagues and other stress-factors. The research team led by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) is publishing
  
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• Adaptive control techniques can help manage pests more effectively

  09-02-2016 19:42
  
  As population growth, greater food consumption, competition for land use, and climate change pose challenges to world food production, managing loss of crop due to pests and weeds becomes increasingly important. While chemical pesticides offer effective means for control, potential loss of crop yield is still significant, as is cost. Global potential loss from pests has been estimated to be between 50% and 80% of yield based on crop type.
  
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• Scientists discover hidden galaxies behind the Milky Way

  09-02-2016 19:41
  
  Hundreds of hidden nearby galaxies have been studied for the first time, shedding light on a mysterious gravitational anomaly dubbed the Great Attractor.
  
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• Mysterious menominee crack is unusual geological pop-up feature

  09-02-2016 19:30
  
  Seismologists studying a massive crack in the ground that appeared north of Menominee, Michigan in 2010 now think they know what the unusual feature might be. But as they explain in their study published this week in the journal Seismological Research Letters, there are still some mysteries to clear up about the strange geological occurrence in the rural Michigan woods.
  
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• Protect your Chicago water heater against earthquakes? There's a better bet

  09-02-2016 19:29
  
  Chicago homeowners, take note: you'll get a better return on your investment if you buy a lottery ticket when the jackpot is high, rather than pay to secure your water heater against earthquake damage.
  
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• Ancient gene network helps plants adapt to their environments

  09-02-2016 19:22
  
  The only constant is change. In evolution, there are, however, some exceptions. While the enormous diversity of life suggests that organisms are constantly being refitted with new or modified parts, many of the tools used to build these new organisms are just too useful to tinker with. For this reason they are, as scientists say, "conserved" over evolutionary time.
  
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• Engineers develop hybrid technology to create biorenewable nylon

  09-02-2016 19:21
  
  Engineers at Iowa State University have found a way to combine a genetically engineered strain of yeast and an electrocatalyst to efficiently convert sugar into a new type of nylon.
  
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• Humans have always been migrants

  09-02-2016 19:18
  
  A short animated film commissioned by two University of Kent historians challenges the concept that migration at current levels is a new phenomenon.
  
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• Researchers illuminate 'dark side' of the transcriptome

  09-02-2016 19:09
  
  A new way of mapping the "transcriptome"—the collection of RNA read-outs that are expressed by a cell's active genes—has been devised by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. RNA is both the molecular bridge between DNA and the production of proteins that carry out the functions of life and the molecular toolbox that collectively helps those proteins do their work. As such, RNA exists in a variety of forms, each with a particular role and
  
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• Superconductivity: Footballs with no resistance

  09-02-2016 19:04
  
  Superconductors have long been confined to niche applications, due to the fact that the highest temperature at which even the best of these materials becomes resistance-free is minus 70 degrees Celsius. Nowadays they are mainly used in magnets for nuclear magnetic resonance tomographs, fusion devices and particle accelerators.
  
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• 'Molecular movie' opens door to new cancer treatments

  09-02-2016 18:58
  
  An international team of scientists led by the University of Liverpool has produced a 'structural movie' revealing the step-by-step creation of an important naturally occurring chemical in the body that plays a role in some cancers.
  
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• The big dig: A global software solution for road, water and sewer repairs

  09-02-2016 18:57
  
  Ever have your street repaved one year, only to have it torn up for sewage work shortly afterwards? Municipal blunders like this may soon be a thing of the past, thanks to new software developed by researchers at Concordia University in MOntreal.
  
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• Robotically driven system could reduce cost of discovering drug and target interactions

  09-02-2016 18:56
  
  Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have created the first robotically driven experimentation system to determine the effects of a large number of drugs on many proteins, reducing the number of necessary experiments by 70%.
  
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• The universe's primordial soup flowing at CERN

  09-02-2016 18:54
  
  Researchers have recreated the universe's primordial soup in miniature format by colliding lead atoms with extremely high energy in the 27 km long particle accelerator, the LHC at CERN in Geneva. The primordial soup is a so-called quark-gluon plasma and researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have measured its liquid properties with great accuracy at the LHC's top energy. The results have been submitted to Physical Review Letters.
  
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• Hunting pressure on forest animals in Africa is on the increase

  09-02-2016 18:45
  
  Since about 25 years, animal species in West and Central Africa are no longer being hunted solely for the purpose of local self-sufficiency, but increasingly also for sale in urban areas several hundred kilometres away. As a consequence, many populations have dramatically decreased or already disappeared altogether. A team of European researchers led by Goethe University Frankfurt has now predicted hunting pressure for the Congo Basin and produced a detailed map, which could help in regional pla
  
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• The 370-mph 'bullet' fueled by batteries

  09-02-2016 17:16 via rss.cnn.com
  
  World fastest electric car? Introducing the Venturi Buckeye Bullet 3, a 370 mph 'bullet' fueled by batteries.
  
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• New Yale Study Pinpoints Key Protein in Severe Vascular Disease

  09-02-2016 16:56 via scitechdaily.com
  
  New research from Yale University investigates factors that squeeze, or narrow, the aorta in a common vascular disease, revealing a target for potential new treatments. Individuals who suffer from supravalvular aortic stenosis, a condition characterized by narrowing of the aorta, have only one copy instead of the usual two copies of the gene encoding elastin. […]
  The post New Yale Study Pinpoints Key Protein in Severe Vascular Disease appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• New Research Shows Long-Term Global Warming Needs External Drivers

  09-02-2016 16:46 via scitechdaily.com
  
  New research from NASA and Duke University provides new evidence that natural cycles alone aren’t sufficient to explain the global atmospheric warming observed over the last century. A study by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, shows, in detail, the reason why global temperatures remain […]
  The post New Research Shows Long-Term Global Warming Needs External Drivers appeared first on SciTech Da
  
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• Twisted X-rays unravel the complexity of helical structures

  09-02-2016 16:43
  
  Since the discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals just over 100 years ago, X-ray diffraction as a method of structure determination has dominated structural research in materials science and biology. However, many of the most important materials whose structures remain unknown do not readily crystallize as three-dimensional periodic structures. Crystallization can also alter the properties of the material to be studied: a crystallized protein may not function in the way that it would
  
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• New caddisfly species discovered in the Balkan biodiversity hotspot of Kosovo

  09-02-2016 16:43
  
  The Republic of Kosovo turns out to be a unique European biodiversity hotspot after a second new species of aquatic insect has been described from the Balkan country. The new caddisfly was discovered by Prof. Halil Ibrahimi from the University of Prishtina, Kosovo, and international research team. They have their finding published in the open-access journal ZooKeys.
  
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• Ices and Shadows – Cassini Views Saturn’s Moon Tethys

  09-02-2016 16:38 via scitechdaily.com
  
  NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft views Saturn’s moon Tethys. Saturn’s moon Tethys appears to float between two sets of rings in this view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, but it’s just a trick of geometry. The rings, which are seen nearly edge-on, are the dark bands above Tethys, while their curving shadows paint the planet at the bottom […]
  The post Ices and Shadows – Cassini Views Saturn’s Moon Tethys appeared first on SciTech Daily.
  
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• Peculiar 'cauliflower rocks' may hold clues to ancient Mars life

  09-02-2016 16:30
  
  Evidence of water and a warmer, wetter climate abound on Mars, but did life ever put its stamp on the Red Planet? Rocks may hold the secret. Knobby protuberances of rock discovered by the Spirit Rover in 2008 near the rock outcrop Home Plate in Gusev Crater caught the attention of scientists back on Earth. They look like cauliflower or coral, but were these strange Martian rocks sculpted by microbes, wind or some other process?
  
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• How stable is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet?

  09-02-2016 16:29
  
  A future warming of the Southern Ocean caused by rising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere may severely disrupt the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The result would be a rise in the global sea level by several metres. A collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may have occurred during the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago, a period when the polar surface temperature was around two degrees Celsius higher than today. This is the result of a series of model simulati
  
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• Reconstructing past oxygen minimums with an eye to the future

  09-02-2016 16:20
  
  A recent paper published in PLOS ONE uses geochemical and fossil evidence from the period of global warming at the end of the last ice age to reconstruct the depth and extent of ocean areas with dissolved oxygen below those necessary for most organisms to function. The results show that warming was associated with increases in the extent of hypoxic zones, and that these zones also intruded further toward the surface of the oceans near continental margins, areas with high species density and dive
  
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• New catalysts recovery project to reduce sulfur emissions in refineries

  09-02-2016 16:00
  
  Wanting to improve the catalysts used in sulfur recovery plants of Pemex Gas and Basic Petrochemicals (PGPB; Pemex is an oiling Mexican company), the Mexican Oil Institute (IMP) developed a titanium dioxide reactivation project implemented in the Claus process.
  
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• Entanglement for identical particles doesn't follow textbook rules

  09-02-2016 16:00
  
  (Phys.org)—In quantum entanglement, two particles are correlated in such a way that any action on one of them affects the other even when they are far apart. The traditional methods of measuring the degree of quantum entanglement were originally developed for nonidentical particles, such as between an electron and a proton, or two atoms of different types.
  
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• Obama administration plans new high-level cyber official

  09-02-2016 15:50
  
  The Obama administration is creating a new high-level federal official to coordinate cybersecurity across civilian agencies and to work with military and intelligence counterparts, as part of its 2017 budget proposal announced Tuesday.
  
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• Asian gudgeon bring new terror to rivers

  09-02-2016 15:50
  
  Small in size but significant in terms of the ecological and economic damage they cause, Asian gudgeon are invading a great number of water courses across the world, particularly in Europe. These fish carry a half-animal/half-fungal parasite, which has very likely been present in China for millions of years and which is fatal to most other fish species. Having discovered this pathogen 10 years ago, IRD researchers and their partners have recently demonstrated how quickly it can spread in a Turki
  
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• Five ways particle accelerators have changed the world (without a Higgs boson in sight)

  09-02-2016 15:40
  
  The Large Hadron Collider is probably the world's most famous science experiment. The 27km-long ring-shaped particle accelerator beneath the edge of the Alps grabbed the world's attention in 2013 when it proved the existence of the Higgs boson particle. This helped physicists confirm that one of their key theories about the way the universe worked was correct – a huge step for science. But particle accelerators also have a big impact on our real lives. Even Christmas wouldn't be the same w
  
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• Scientists study India's deadly 'meteorite' (Update)

  09-02-2016 15:37
  
  Indian scientists were Tuesday analysing a small blue object, described by local authorities as a meteorite, which fell from the sky and killed a bus driver.
  
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• Terrestrial laser scanning in California

  09-02-2016 15:32
  
  Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) is a powerful mapping tool that helps us to image natural surfaces at centimeter scale, which is established in this research study by evaluating the performance of long-range TLS, Riegl Z620i and Riegl LPM-800HA, on characterizing natural surfaces. Prabin Shilpakar and colleagues have developed a procedure to test componential uncertainty budgets of the TLS system, such as instrumental error, georeferencing error, and surface modeling error.
  
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• Study accurately dates coral loss at Great Barrier Reef

  09-02-2016 15:31
  
  The timing of significant Great Barrier Reef coral loss captured by a series of historical photos has been accurately determined for the first time by a University of Queensland)-led study.
  
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• Where aid fails, appropriate technology can succeed

  09-02-2016 15:30
  
  Technology can be a wonderful servant but a terrible master. As we know, its applications are not always beneficial to people or to the environment.
  
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• Superconductors could detect superlight dark matter

  09-02-2016 15:30
  
  (Phys.org)—Many experiments are currently searching for dark matter—the invisible substance that scientists know exists only from its gravitational effect on stars, galaxies, and other objects made of ordinary matter. On Earth, scientists are using particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to search for dark matter, while keeping an eye out elsewhere with detectors in space and even detectors located thousands of feet underground. Although scientists have covered
  
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