Showing 20 articles starting at article 281

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Engineering: Robotics Research, Geoscience: Geography

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Some of the ocean's tiniest organisms get swept into underwater currents that act as a conduit that shuttles them from the sunny surface to deeper, darker depths where they play a huge role in affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystem, according to new research.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Climate change and human activities like deforestation are causing more fires in central and west Africa's wet, tropical forests, according to the first-ever comprehensive survey there. The fires have long been overlooked.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

New algorithm encourages robots to move more randomly to collect more diverse data for learning. In tests, robots started with no knowledge and then learned and correctly performed tasks within a single attempt. New model could improve safety and practicality of self-driving cars, delivery drones and more.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A research team studied earthquake hazard maps from five countries and found that all the maps seemed to overpredict the historically observed earthquake shaking intensities. In analyzing the possible causes, the researchers discovered the issue was with the conversion equations used in comparing the maps predicting future quakes with actual shaking data, rather than systemic problems with the hazard modeling itself.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have discovered the missing piece of the puzzle behind a rare opening in the sea ice around Antarctica, which was nearly twice the size of Wales and occurred during the winters of 2016 and 2017. A study reveals a key process that had eluded scientists as to how the opening, called a polynya, was able to form and persist for several weeks.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A research team has found that ancient rocks and fossils from long-extinct marine reptiles in Angola clearly show a key part of Earth's past -- the splitting of South America and Africa and the subsequent formation of the South Atlantic Ocean.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Common household products containing nanoparticles -- grains of engineered material so miniscule they are invisible to the eye -- could be contributing to a new form of indoor air pollution, according to a new study.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have unveiled evidence for ancient human resilience to climate change in the Eastern Mediterranean.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Evapotranspiration (ET) includes evaporation from soil and open water pools such as lakes, rivers, and ponds, as well as transpiration from plant leaves. The difference between precipitation and ET indicates the water balance available for societal needs, including agricultural and industrial production. However, measuring ET is challenging. A new study presents a computer model that uses artificial intelligence (AI) for ET prediction based on remote sensing estimates.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A new study that looked at nearly 40 million flights in 2019 calculated the greenhouse gas emissions from air travel for essentially every country on the planet. At 911 million tons, the total emissions from aviation are 50 per cent higher than the 604 million tons reported to the United Nations for that year.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A four-legged robot trained with machine learning has learned to avoid falls by spontaneously switching between walking, trotting, and pronking -- a milestone for roboticists as well as biologists interested in animal locomotion.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists have developed a smart, reusable adhesive more than ten times stronger than a gecko's feet adhesion, pointing the way for development of reusable superglue and grippers capable of holding heavy weights across rough and smooth surfaces. The research team found a way to maximize the adhesion of the smart adhesives by using shape-memory polymers, which can stick and detach easily when needed simply by heating them. This smart adhesive can support extremely heavy weights, opening new possibilities for robotic grippers that allow humans to scale walls effortlessly, or climbing robots that can cling onto ceilings for survey or repair applications.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Landslides are one of the most destructive natural disasters on the planet, causing billions of dollars of damage and devastating loss of life every year. A global team of researchers has provided help for those who work to predict landslides and risk evaluations.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

In unincorporated communities in the United States-Mexico borderlands, historically and socially marginalized populations become invisible to the healthcare system, showing that geography acts as a structural determinant of health for low-income populations.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have developed tiny, flexible devices that can wrap around individual nerve fibers without damaging them. The researchers combined flexible electronics and soft robotics techniques to develop the devices, which could be used for the diagnosis and treatment of a range of disorders, including epilepsy and chronic pain, or the control of prosthetic limbs.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Interactions between wind turbines could reduce power output by 30% in proposed offshore wind farm areas along the East Coast, new research has found. In all, the farms could still meet 60% of the electricity demand of New England.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

For most human proteins, there are no small molecules known to bind them chemically (so called 'ligands'). Ligands frequently represent important starting points for drug development but this knowledge gap critically hampers the development of novel medicines. Researchers at CeMM, in a collaboration with Pfizer, have now leveraged and scaled a method to measure the binding activity of hundreds of small molecules against thousands of human proteins. This large-scale study revealed tens of thousands of ligand-protein interactions that can now be explored for the development of chemical tools and therapeutics. Moreover, powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, it allows unbiased predictions of how small molecules interact with all proteins present in living human cells. These groundbreaking results have been published in the journal Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.adk5864), and all generated data and models are freely available for the scientific community.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Oil is an important natural resource for many industries, but it can lead to serious environmental damage when accidentally spilled. While large oil spills are highly publicized, every year there are many smaller-scale spills into lakes, rivers and oceans. The longer that oil remains in freshwater, the more chemical changes it undergoes, creating products that can persist in the environment.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Dust can have a huge impact on local air quality, food security, energy supply and public health. Previous studies have found that dust levels are decreasing across India, particularly northern India, the Persian Gulf Coast and much of the Middle East, but the reason has remained unclear. Researchers found that the decrease in dust can be attributed to the Arctic warming much faster than the rest of the planet, a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. This process destabilizes the jet stream and changes storm tracks and wind patterns over the major sources of dust in West and South Asia.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Just as water moves through a river, rivers themselves move across the landscape. They carve valleys and canyons, create floodplains and deltas, and transport sediment from the uplands to the ocean.