Showing 20 articles starting at article 581
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Categories: Biology: Botany, Physics: Optics
Published A color-based sensor to emulate skin's sensitivity
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source In a step toward more autonomous soft robots and wearable technologies, researchers have created a device that uses color to simultaneously sense multiple mechanical and temperature stimuli.
Published Public gardens contribute to invasives problem
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Some nonnative plants cultivated in public gardens or arboretums are escaping to become invasive in wild forests.
Published Botany must feature more prominently on the school curriculum to promote awareness of climate change, study warns
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Children must be taught more about the importance of plants if education about climate change and sustainability is to be effective, experts have warned.
Published To help autonomous vehicles make moral decisions, researchers ditch the 'trolley problem'
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have developed a new experiment to better understand what people view as moral and immoral decisions related to driving vehicles, with the goal of collecting data to train autonomous vehicles how to make 'good' decisions. The work is designed to capture a more realistic array of moral challenges in traffic than the widely discussed life-and-death scenario inspired by the so-called 'trolley problem.'
Published Genomic study sheds light on how carnivorous Asian pitcher plants acquired signature insect trap
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists sequenced the genome of the East Asian pitcher plant, Nepenthes gracilis, a species of carnivorous plant related to Venus flytraps, as well as sundews, beets and spinach.
Published Money to burn: Wealthy, white neighborhoods losing their heat shields
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source White, wealthy neighborhoods in the LA area -- and likely around the world -- are about to start feeling the same heat that has plagued poorer, Hispanic neighborhoods for generations. A new study shows the protective effect of income has largely eroded over the past 40 years, as landscape plants can't keep up with the pace of climate warming.
Published The waxy surface protecting plants might hold the key to developing stronger crops
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have discovered that the waxy protective barrier around plants might play a role in sending chemical signals to other plants and insects.
Published how far can the wind can carry a plant's seeds? New model
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Playing an essential foundational role in an ecosystem, plants contribute to the well-being of human health by helping create resources like food and medicine. Therefore, to better understand how plants can maintain resiliency in the face of challenges like climate change, researchers recently developed an innovative mathematical model that can provide fast and reliable predictions of how far wind can carry a plant's seeds.
Published Researchers decipher enzyme scissors of intestinal microbes
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Fruit and vegetables contain a variety of plant natural products such as flavonoids, which give fruits their colour and are said to have health-promoting properties. Most plant natural products occur in nature as glycosides, i.e. chemical compounds with sugars. In order for humans to absorb the healthy plant natural products, the sugar must be split off in the intestine. Microorganisms in the intestinal flora help to speed up the process. So-called C-glycosides, i.e. plant natural products with a carbon-based bond to a sugar, would even be practically indigestible without the intestinal microbes (e.g. nothofagin in rooibos tea).
Published What was thought of as noise, points to new type of ultrafast magnetic switching
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers discover a new type of ultrafast magnetic switching by investigating fluctuations that normally tend to interfere with experiments as noise.
Published Eye-safe laser technology to diagnose traumatic brain injury
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have designed and developed a novel diagnostic device to detect traumatic brain injury (TBI) by shining a safe laser into the eye.
Published Flower power on Indian farms helps bees and boosts livelihoods
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Planting flowers beside food crops on farms in India attracts bees, boosts pollination and improves crop yield and quality, researchers have found.
Published A spectrum of possibilities: Insights into the evolution of far-red light photosynthesis
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists have unraveled the evolutionary journey of a unique type of photosynthesis that allows some bacteria to harness far-red light, a region beyond the visible spectrum. This discovery could pave the way for engineering plants with enhanced light absorption capabilities and has implications for our search for extraterrestrial life.
Published The secret life of an electromagnon
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Scientists have revealed how lattice vibrations and spins talk to each other in a hybrid excitation known as an electromagnon. To achieve this, they used a unique combination of experiments on an X-ray free electron laser. Understanding this fundamental process at the atomic level opens the door to ultrafast control of magnetism with light.
Published Scientists harness flower 'super power' to pave the way for new drug treatments
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have developed a way of joining up the head and tail of a protein, making it more stable and easier to get into cells.
Published Slash-and-burn agriculture can increase forest biodiversity, researchers find
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source The slash-and-burn agriculture practiced by many Indigenous societies across the world can actually have a positive impact on forests, according to a new study done in Belize. Researchers found that in areas of the rainforest in which Indigenous farmers using slash-and-burn techniques created intermediate-sized farm patches -- neither too small nor too large -- there were increases in forest plant diversity.
Published Nextgen computing: Hard-to-move quasiparticles glide up pyramid edges
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source A new kind of 'wire' for moving excitons could help enable a new class of devices, perhaps including room temperature quantum computers.
Published Compact accelerator technology achieves major energy milestone
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Researchers have demonstrated a compact particle accelerator less than 20 meters long that produces an electron beam with an energy of 10 billion electron volts (10 GeV). There are only two other accelerators currently operating in the U.S. that can reach such high electron energies, but both are approximately 3 kilometers long. This type of accelerator is called a wakefield laser accelerator.
Published The Fens of eastern England once held vast woodlands
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source The Fens of eastern England, a low-lying, extremely flat landscape dominated by agricultural fields, was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, according to new research. Scientists have studied hundreds of tree trunks, dug up by Fenland farmers while ploughing their fields. The team found that most of the ancient wood came from yew trees that populated the area between four and five thousand years ago.
Published AI for perovskite solar cells: Key to better manufacturing
(via sciencedaily.com) Original source Tandem solar cells based on perovskite semiconductors convert sunlight to electricity more efficiently than conventional silicon solar cells. In order to make this technology ready for the market, further improvements with regard to stability and manufacturing processes are required. Researchers have succeeded in finding a way to predict the quality of the perovskite layers and consequently that of the resulting solar cells: Assisted by Machine Learning and new methods in Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is possible assess their quality from variations in light emission already in the manufacturing process.