Showing 20 articles starting at article 561

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Computer Science: Quantum Computers, Offbeat: Earth and Climate

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Though plants can serve as a source of food, oxygen and décor, they're not often considered to be a good source of electricity. But by collecting electrons naturally transported within plant cells, scientists can generate electricity as part of a 'green,' biological solar cell. Now, researchers have used a succulent plant to create a living 'bio-solar cell' that runs on photosynthesis.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Discoveries at a major new fossil site in Morocco suggest giant arthropods -- relatives of modern creatures including shrimps, insects and spiders -- dominated the seas 470 million years ago.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Without clocks or modern tools, ancient Mexicans watched the sun to maintain a farming calendar that precisely tracked seasons and even adjusted for leap years.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Analysis of teeth of extinct lemurs has revealed fascinating clues to the evolution of humans, a new study has found.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers calculated that 74 metric tons of microplastics are dropping out of the atmosphere onto the city annually, the equivalent of more than 3 million plastic bottles falling from the sky.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Mathematical analysis identifies a vortex structure that is impervious to decay.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Wildlife researchers have completed a study that may settle the question of why, in October 2009, a group of coyotes launched an unprovoked fatal attack on a young woman who was hiking in a Canadian park. Researchers concluded that the coyotes were forced to rely on moose instead of smaller mammals for the bulk of their diet -- and as a result of adapting to that unusually large food source, perceived a lone hiker as potential prey.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

MIT researchers developed a scalable fabrication technique to produce ultrathin, flexible, durable, lightweight solar cells that can be stuck to any surface. Glued to high-strength fabric, the solar cells are only one-hundredth the weight of conventional cells while producing about 18 times more power-per-kilogram.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

In a laboratory experiment, researchers have succeeded in realizing an effective spacetime that can be manipulated. In their research on ultracold quantum gases, they were able to simulate an entire family of curved universes to investigate different cosmological scenarios and compare them with the predictions of a quantum field theoretical model.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

The biochemical process by which cyanobacteria acquire nutrients from rocks in Chile's Atacama Desert has inspired engineers at the University of California, Irvine to think of new ways microbes might help humans build colonies on the moon and Mars.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Two-million-year-old DNA has been identified -- opening a 'game-changing' new chapter in the history of evolution. Microscopic fragments of environmental DNA were found in Ice Age sediment in northern Greenland. Using cutting-edge technology, researchers discovered the fragments are one million years older than the previous record for DNA sampled from a Siberian mammoth bone. The ancient DNA has been used to map a two-million-year-old ecosystem which weathered extreme climate change.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Dinosaurs dominated the world right up until a deadly asteroid hit the earth, leading to their mass extinction, some 66 million years ago, a landmark study reveals. Fresh insights into dinosaurs' ecosystems -- the habitats and food types that supported their lives -- suggests that their environments were robust and thriving, right up until that fateful day, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

New research, based on two decades' worth of data, shows that in the ten years after its onset in 2000, the Southwestern North American (SWNA) megadrought caused a 30% change in gravity wave activity in Earth's upper atmosphere.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Experimental physicists growing icicles are closer to understanding why some form with ripples up and down their outsides, while others form with smooth, slick, even surfaces. By growing icicles from water samples with different contaminants like sodium chloride (salt), dextrose (sugar) and fluorescent dye, they discovered that water impurities become entrapped within icicles as they form and subsequently create chevron patterns that contribute to a ripple effect around their circumferences.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Researchers report the synthesis of semiconductor 'giant' core-shell quantum dots with record-breaking emissive lifetimes. In addition, the lifetimes can be tuned by making a simple alteration to the material's internal structure.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

An extreme-scale nanoscope is beginning to collect data about how pulses of light at trillions of cycles per second can control supercurrents in materials. The instrument could one day help optimize superconducting quantum bits, which are at the heart of quantum computing, a new and developing technology.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

As a result of climate change, over one-fifth of the UK may have suitable weather by mid-Century to grow Chardonnay grapes for still wines, according to new research.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Up to 78% of walkers would take a more challenging route featuring obstacles such as balancing beams, stepping stones and high steps, research has found. The findings suggest that providing 'Active Landscape' routes in urban areas could help tackle an 'inactivity pandemic' and improve health outcomes.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

A specimen retrieved from a cupboard of the Natural History Museum in London has shown that modern lizards originated in the Late Triassic and not the Middle Jurassic as previously thought.

     (via sciencedaily.com) 

Recently, researchers have developed an integrated electro-optic modulator that can efficiently change the frequency and bandwidth of single photons. The device could be used for more advanced quantum computing and quantum networks.