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Categories: Environmental: Water, Physics: Optics

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Researchers show how biohybrid robots based on jellyfish could be used to gather climate science data from deep in the Earth's oceans.

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An ecological imbalance in a lake can usually be attributed to increased nutrient inputs. The result: increased phytoplankton growth, oxygen deficiency, toxic cyanobacterial blooms and fish kills. Until now, controls in lake management have focused primarily on phosphorus inputs to counteract this effect. Now, this dogma is shaken by a study showing that nitrogen is also a critical driver for phytoplankton growth in lakes worldwide.

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For a long time, it was thought that amorphous solids do not selectively absorb light because of their disordered atomic structure. A new study disproves this theory and shows that amorphous solids actually exhibit dichroism, meaning that they selectively absorb light of different polarizations.

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Recycling facilities collect glass and mercury from thrown away fluorescent bulbs, but discarded lighting could also supply rare-earth metals for reuse. The 17 metals referred to as rare earths aren't all widely available and aren't easily extracted with existing recycling methods. Now, researchers have found a simpler way to collect slightly magnetic particles that contain rare-earth metals from spent fluorescent bulbs.

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New research documents the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an Antarctic ice shelf. A 6.5-mile crack formed in 2012 over 5-and-a-half minutes, showing that ice shelves can effectively shatter -- though the speed is limited by seawater rushing in. The results help inform large-scale ice sheet models and projections of future sea level rise.

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Older elephants in East Africa will be most severely impacted by climate change, threatening the long-term survival of this vulnerable African mammal, according to a new study.

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Fish weight in the western North Pacific Ocean dipped in the 2010s due to warmer water limiting food supplies, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed the individual weight and overall biomass of 13 species of fish. In the 1980s and 2010s, the fish were lighter. They attributed the first period of weight loss to greater numbers of Japanese sardine, which increased competition with other species for food. During the 2010s, while the number of Japanese sardine and chub mackerel moderately increased, the effect of climate change warming the ocean appears to have resulted in more competition for food, as cooler, nutrient-dense water could not easily rise to the surface. These results have implications for fisheries and policymakers trying to manage ocean resources under future climate change scenarios.

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Researchers have developed a microporous covalent organic framework with dense donor-acceptor lattices and engineered linkages for the efficient and clean production of hydrogen peroxide through the photosynthesis process with water and air.

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Molecules that are induced by light to rotate bulky groups around central bonds could be developed into photo-activated bioactive systems, molecular switches, and more.

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Nano- and microplastics are seemingly everywhere -- water, soil and the air. While many creative strategies have been attempted to get rid of these plastic bits, one unexpectedly effective solution for cleaning up drinking water, specifically, might be as simple as brewing a cup of tea or coffee. Boiling and filtering calcium-containing tap water could help remove nearly 90% of the nano- and microplastics present.

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Walleye are one of the most sought-after species in freshwater sportfishing, a delicacy on Midwestern menus and a critically important part of the culture of many Indigenous communities. They are also struggling to survive in the warming waters of the Midwestern United States and Canada. According to a new study, part of the problem is that walleye are creatures of habit, and the seasons -- especially winter -- are changing so fast that this iconic species of freshwater fish can't keep up.

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In a new study, a team sterilized a hydroponic nutrient solution using low-temperature plasma generated from electricity and the oxygen in the atmosphere. This new sterilization technique may allow farmers to grow crops without the use of chemical pesticides, representing an important advance in agricultural technology for sustainable crop production.

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New technologies aim to produce high-purity synthetic crystals that become excellent semiconductors when doped with impurities as electron donors or acceptors of other elements. Researchers have now determined the magnitude of the spin-orbit interaction in acceptor-bound excitons in a semiconductor. They broke through the energy resolution limit of conventional luminescence measurements by directly observing the fine structure of bound excitons in boron-doped blue diamond, using optical absorption.

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The simplest possible molecule H2+ was one of the very first molecules to form in the cosmos. This makes it significant for astrophysics, but also an important object of research for fundamental physics. It is difficult to study in experiments. However, a team of physicists has now succeeded in measuring the vibrations of the molecule with a laser.

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Researchers have developed a simulator that enables artificial visual observations for research into the visual prosthesis. This open source tool is available to researchers and offers those who are interested insight into the future application.

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A team of researchers that specializes in accounting for the carbon dioxide release by streams, rivers and lakes recently demonstrated that the chemical process known as 'carbonate buffering' can account for the majority of emissions in highly alkaline waters. Furthermore, carbonate buffering distorts the most commonly used method of tracking the origins of CO2 in streams. The research proposes a better method for tracking the origin of riverine CO2 emissions.

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Researchers have successfully filmed the operations of extremely fast electronic circuitry in an electron microscope at a bandwidth of tens of terahertz.

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Nuclear physicists have shattered a nearly 30-year-old record for precision in electron beam polarimetry. The groundbreaking result sets the stage for high-profile experiments that could open the door to new physics discoveries.

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Up to only a few inches in length, with a lemon-hued belly, the foothill yellow-legged frog may seem unassuming. But its range once stretched from central Oregon to Baja California. In 2023, it was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Its rapidly decreasing range is due in part to a fungal pathogen called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, or Bd, that has devastated amphibians around the world.

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Researchers have shown that expensive aberration-corrected microscopes are no longer required to achieve record-breaking microscopic resolution.