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Categories: Mathematics: Modeling, Offbeat: Earth and Climate

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Fertilizer restrictions along Florida's 156-mile-long Indian River Lagoon were intended to reduce nutrient inputs from urban and agricultural land uses. The hope was that water quality would improve by reducing the nitrogen load. While these restrictions were well-intended, a study finds fertilizer use is not the root cause of the lagoon's environmental issues. It's sewage. For decades, fertilizer use was implicated for about 71 percent of the lagoon's environmental impairments. In fact, current estimates show 79 percent of nitrogen loading is from septic systems; 21 percent is from residential fertilizer use.

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A team has combined economic theory with biology to understand how natural systems respond to change. The researchers noticed a similarity between consumers' shopping behavior and the behavior of metabolic systems, which convert food into energy in our bodies. The team focused on predicting how different metabolic systems might respond to environmental change by using an economic tool called the Slutsky equation. Their calculations indicated that very different metabolic systems actually share previously unknown universal properties, and can be understood using tools from other academic fields. Metabolic processes are used in drug development, bioengineering, food production and other industries, so being able to predict how such systems will respond to change can offer many benefits.

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Scientists have shown it's possible to grow fungi in thin sheets that could be used for fire-retardant cladding or even a new kind of fungal fashion.

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Scientists have created a global database of pollination data for almost 3000 orchid species.

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Using Japan's most powerful supercomputer, researchers reproduced cases of clear air turbulence around Tokyo. They simulated the fine vortices responsible for this dangerous phenomenon. The usefulness of the simulation in predicting turbulence was confirmed by comparing simulation data with data from aircraft recordings. This research should improve the forecasting of turbulence.

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Structural engineers are familiar with seventeenth-century scientist Robert Hooke's theory that a hanging chain will mirror the shape of an upstanding rigid arch. However, new research now shows that this common-held belief is incorrect because, regardless of the similarities, the hanging chain and the arch are two incompatible mechanical systems.

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Board games based on numbers, like Monopoly, Othello and Chutes and Ladders, make young children better at math, according to a comprehensive review of research published on the topic over the last 23 years.

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The arrangement of electrons in matter, known as the electronic structure, plays a crucial role in fundamental but also applied research such as drug design and energy storage. However, the lack of a simulation technique that offers both high fidelity and scalability across different time and length scales has long been a roadblock for the progress of these technologies. Researchers have now pioneered a machine learning-based simulation method that supersedes traditional electronic structure simulation techniques. Their Materials Learning Algorithms (MALA) software stack enables access to previously unattainable length scales.

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Researchers are using a new model to clarify why millions of years ago more animal species from Asia made the leap to the Australian continent than vice versa. The climate in which the species evolved played an important role.

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A solution for temporal asymmetry -- or entropy production -- in thermodynamics has been developed to further our understanding of the behavior of biological systems, machine learning, and AI tools. The researchers worked on the time-irreversible Ising model dynamics caused by asymmetric connections between neurons.

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A new tool helps scientists develop machine-learning models that generate richer, more detailed captions for charts, and vary the level of complexity of a caption based on the needs of users. This could help improve accessibility for people with visual disabilities.

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Researchers created a generic framework that enables an engineer or scientist to evaluate the effectiveness of defense schemes that seek to limit a hacker's ability to learn secret information by observing the behavior of a victim computer program.

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Imagine strapping on a virtual reality headset and 'walking' through a long-gone neighborhood in your city -- seeing the streets and buildings as they appeared decades ago. That's a very real possibility now that researchers have developed a method to create 3D digital models of historic neighborhoods using machine learning and historic Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.

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Squash bugs, a common and difficult-to-control agricultural pest, need healthy bacteria in their gut to grow and stay alive. However, they do not acquire any bacteria from their parents when they are first born, leaving them vulnerable until their microbiome can be stocked. Researchers report that, to acquire these healthy bacteria, young bugs innately seek out and eat the poop from older squash bugs.

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Urea reacts extremely quickly under the conditions that existed when our planet was newly formed. This new insight furthers our understanding of how life on Earth might have begun.

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Orangutans can make two separate sounds simultaneously, much like songbirds or human beatboxers, according to a new study.

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In the space of a few months generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, Google's Bard and Midjourney, have been adopted by more and more people in a variety of professional and personal ways. But growing research is underlining that they are encoding biases and negative stereotypes in their users, as well as mass generating and spreading seemingly accurate but nonsensical information. Worryingly, marginalized groups are disproportionately affected by the fabrication of this nonsensical information.

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Animals that eat fruit or sip nectar often ingest alcohol because naturally occurring yeasts turning sugar into ethanol. But how do animals feel about that? A new study details an experiment to determine whether hummingbirds are turned off by alcohol in sugar water. At 1% by volume, no. At 2% by volume, they consume much less. The implication is that hummingbirds have adjusted to small amounts of alcohol likely present in flowers and backyard feeders.

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A team of scientists has observed past episodic intraplate magmatism and corroborated the existence of a partial melt channel at the base of the Cocos Plate. Situated 60 kilometers beneath the Pacific Ocean floor, the magma channel covers more than 100,000 square kilometers, and originated from the Galápagos Plume more than 20 million years ago, supplying melt for multiple magmatic events -- and persisting today.

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How do asset markets work? Which stocks behave similarly? Economists, physicists, and mathematicians work intensively to draw a picture but need to learn what is happening outside their discipline. A new paper now builds a bridge.