Other Sciences News

New Electrochemical Device Removes Carbon Dioxide from Stream of Air

In this diagram of the new system, air entering from top right passes to one of two chambers (the gray rectangular structures) containing battery electrodes that attract carbon dioxide; then the airflow is switched to the other chamber, while the accumulated carbon dioxide in the first chamber is flushed into a separate storage tank (at right); these alternating flows allow for continuous operation of the two-step process. Image credit: Sahag Voskian & T. Alan Hatton, MIT.
Oct 25, 2019 by News Staff

The new device, developed by researchers in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, is based on passing air through a stack of charged electrochemical plates. It captures carbon dioxide from streams of any concentration, even down to 400 parts per million currently found in the atmosphere, and allows its release into any carrier stream, including 100% carbon dioxide. In this diagram of the new system, air entering from top right passes to one...

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Rats Taught How to Drive Tiny Cars

Oct 24, 2019 by Natali Anderson

Rats can learn the complex task of navigating a rodent-operated vehicle (ROV) to a desired area, according to new research from the University of Richmond. Crawford...

Kimberlite from a mine in the United States. Image credit: Woudloper / CC BY-SA 1.0.

Researchers Find Chemical Signatures of Earth’s Primordial Mantle in Kimberlites

Oct 23, 2019 by News Staff

A team of geoscientists from Australia, Canada and the UK has detected primordial chemical signatures preserved within young kimberlites, small-volume...

Stormquakes offshore North America and seismic stations from 2006 to 2015. The located stormquakes are shown as the red circles, and the seismic stations are shown as triangles. Due to the location uncertainties, some of the apparent stormquake locations are beyond the coastlines. The yellow contours show regions where stormquakes were detected. The orange contour shows a comparison region offshore Mexico that has been struck by hurricanes but without excitation of stormquakes. The insert shows earthquakes (blue dots) reported in the International Seismological Centre catalog with magnitudes greater than 3 and shallower than 40 km from 2006 to 2015. Image credit: Fan et al, doi: 10.1029/2019GL084217.

New Geophysical Phenomenon Discovered: Stormquakes

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

Energetic storms generate strong ocean waves, which can interact with shallow seafloor features located near the edge of continental shelves known as ocean...

The moons of our Solar System are brimming with unusual landscapes. However, sometimes they look a little more familiar, as in this new radar image from the Cassini orbiter. The image shows dark streaks carved into dunes reminiscent of those we might find on a beach on Earth, or raked with flowing lines in a Japanese Zen garden — but this scene is actually taking place on Saturn’s moon Titan. While our sand is composed of silicates, the ‘sand’ of these alien dunes is formed from grains of organic materials about the same size as particles of our beach sand. The small size and smoothness of these grains means that the flowing lines carved into the dunes show up as dark to the human eye. While previous images have spotted these eerily familiar patterns on Titan's dunes, this new image (colorized) shows them in greater detail. The image was obtained by Cassini's radar mapper on July 10, 2013. The vertical seam near the center is an artifact of radar image data processing. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Sci-News.com.

Researchers Unravel Origin and Chemical Composition of Titan’s Mysterious Dunes

Oct 22, 2019 by News Staff

Vast longitudinal dunes up to 330 feet (100 m) in height in the equatorial deserts of Saturn’s moon Titan are the Solar System’s most monumental surface...

A plutonium dioxide nanoparticle. Image credit: Kristina Kvashnina.

Physicists Create Unexpected New Form of Plutonium

Oct 21, 2019 by News Staff

Physicists using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility have created a new compound of plutonium (Pu) with an unexpected, pentavalent oxidation state...

A portrait of a juvenile female Denisovan based on a skeletal profile reconstructed from ancient DNA methylation maps. Image credit: Maayan Harel.

Adaptive Genetic Variants from Archaic Hominins Found in Melanesians

Oct 19, 2019 by News Staff

Modern individuals from the Pacific islands of Melanesia harbor adaptive copy number variants (CNVs) that they inherited from two groups of our evolutionary...

Arapaima gigas. Image credit: Shizhao / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Arapaima Fish Scales are One of Nature’s Toughest Flexible Materials

Oct 17, 2019 by News Staff

Arapaima gigas is a large Amazonian fish (weighing up to 150 kg) living primarily in seasonal lakes infested with ferocious piranhas. The freshwater giant...

A capuchin monkey. Image credit: Georgia State University.

Capuchin and Rhesus Monkeys Outsmart Humans When It Comes to Cognitive Flexibility

Oct 16, 2019 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports, when it comes to being willing to explore more efficient options to solving a problem, capuchin...

3D render of the semiconductor nanostructure. Image credit: Hermann Edlbauer.

Researchers Control Quantum State of Single Electron Using High-Frequency Sound Waves

Oct 15, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of scientists sent high-frequency sound waves across a modified semiconductor device to direct the behavior of a single electron,...

Nguyen et al examined the effect of an acute but moderate prenatal alcohol exposure on glucose metabolism, lipid levels and dietary preference in adolescent and/or adult rat offspring. Image credit: Bridgesward.

Even Small Amounts of Alcohol during Pregnancy Can Cause Insulin Resistance in Male Offspring

Oct 15, 2019 by News Staff

‘Special occasion drinking’ during pregnancy could cause insulin resistance, which increases the likelihood of diabetes, in male offspring, suggests...

In human skulls, division of the nasioiniac arc (from nasion to inion, NI) by bregma into a shorter frontal arc (from nasion to bregma, NB) and longer parietooccipital arc (from bregma to inion BI), creates a geometrical relationship in which the ratio of the nasioiniac arc over the bregma-inion arc (NI/BI) coincides with the ratio of the bregma-inion arc over the nasion-bregma arc (BI/NB), both 1.6. The subdivision of the nasioiniac arc by bregma into two unequal arcs emulates the geometrical division of a line into the Golden ratio. Image credit: Tamargo & Pindrik, doi: 10.1097/SCS.0000000000005610.

Human Skull Dimensions Follow Golden Ratio: Study

Oct 7, 2019 by News Staff

The Golden ratio principle is present in the architecture and evolution of the human skull, suggests a new study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins...

Cores from Phase D (48,000-34,000 years ago) and Phase C (13,000-12,000 years ago) of Fa-Hien Lena Cave, Sri Lanka: bipolar core (4, 5, 6), bipolar orthogonal core (1, 2, 7, 8), unidirectional abrupt core (3). Image credit: Wedage et al, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0222606.

45,000-Year-Old Tiny Stone Tools Found in Sri Lanka

Oct 4, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of archaeologists has found a collection of microliths — small, retouched, often-backed stone tools — at the cave site...

Dorsal view of the left hand of a 10-week old human embryo. The dorsometacarpales are highlighted: these muscles are present in adults of many other limbed animals, while in humans they normally disappear or become fused with other muscles before birth. Image credit: Diogo et al, doi: 10.1242/dev.180349.

Human Embryos Have ‘Lizard-Like’ Limb Muscles: Study

Oct 2, 2019 by News Staff

A new study, published in the journal Development, has confirmed the transient presence of atavistic muscles — present in our ancestors, but normally...

Increasing daily consumption of nuts is associated with less long-term weight gain and a lower risk of obesity in adults. Image credit: Piviso.

Increasing Daily Nut Consumption May Help Stave Off Gradual Weight Gain, Reduce Obesity Risk

Sep 26, 2019 by News Staff

Increasing nut consumption by just half a serving (14 g) a day may help mitigate the gradual weight gain common during adulthood, and beneficially contribute...

Pet cats show a similar capacity for the formation of secure and insecure attachments towards human caregivers previously demonstrated in children and dogs. Image credit: Pexels.

Pet Cats Really Bond with Their Owners, Says New Study

Sep 24, 2019 by News Staff

Domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus) form attachments with their owners that are similar to the bonds formed by children and dogs with their caretakers,...

A portrait of a juvenile female Denisovan based on a skeletal profile reconstructed from ancient DNA methylation maps. Image credit: Maayan Harel.

Scientists Reconstruct Skeletal Anatomy of Denisovans

Sep 19, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers from Israel and Spain has produced reconstructions of Denisovans, an extinct sister group of Neanderthals, based on patterns of methylation...

The structure of the Eustachian tube in a Neanderthal man. Image credit: SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.

Chronic Ear Infections Contributed to Neanderthal Extinction

Sep 19, 2019 by News Staff

Neanderthals may have been doomed to extinction because they had persistent, life-long ear infections due to the structure of their Eustachian tubes, a...

Schmitz et al argue that the mid-Ordovician ice age was caused by global cooling, triggered by extra dust in the atmosphere of Earth from the breakup of a giant asteroid in the main asteroid belt. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Dust from Disintegrated Asteroid Triggered Mid-Ordovician Ice Age

Sep 19, 2019 by News Staff

There’s always a lot of extraterrestrial dust floating down to Earth, but this dust is normally only a tiny fraction of the other dust in our atmosphere...

Rudapithecus hungaricus was pretty ape-like and probably moved among branches like apes do now. However, it would have differed from modern great apes by having a more flexible lower back, which would mean when Rudapithecus hungaricus came down to the ground, it might have had the ability to stand upright more like humans do. Image credit: John Siddick.

Miocene Hominid Fossil Sheds New Light on Evolution of Human Bipedalism

Sep 18, 2019 by News Staff

Researchers have analyzed a pelvis of the 10 million-year-old fossil ape Rudapithecus hungaricus and found that human bipedalism might possibly have deeper...

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