Tech
Trees planted in urban spaces provide a multitude of ecosystem services: they reduce air pollution and noise, provide habitat and shelter for other species, and reduce erosion during heavy rains. They also offer opportunities for relaxation, attenuate urban heat islands and contribute both to landscapes and a sense of place. At the same time, trees can be a source of allergens, generate maintenance costs and cause accidents or threats to native biodiversity if introduced from elsewhere.
The chips of the future will include photonics and electronics; they will have a bandwidth, speed and processing and computing abilities that are currently unthinkable; they will make it possible to integrate many other components and their capabilities will increase exponentially compared to electronic chips. In all, they will be essential in many fields; they will bring us a little closer, for example, to quantic computing or to the autonomous car.
A new study published prior to World Osteoporosis Day finds that the COVID-19 pandemic, which has severely affected management of non-communicable diseases, is markedly impacting the management of osteoporosis as judged by access to online FRAX fracture risk assessments.1,2
Globally, usage of the Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX®) website was on average 58% lower in April than in February 2020.
Worldwide demand for food from the tropics that meets higher environmental and social standards has risen sharply in recent years. Consumers often have to make ethically questionable decisions: products may be available to the global market through child labour, starvation wages or environmental destruction. Building on an interdisciplinary project in Peru, an international research team with the participation of the University of Göttingen has now published an overview article on the transition to responsible, high-quality cocoa production.
MIPT researchers Leopold Lobkovsky and Raissa Mazova, and their young colleagues from Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University have created a model of landslide-induced tsunamis that accounts for the initial location of the landslide body. Reported in Landslides, the model reveals that tsunami height is affected by the coastal slope and the position of the land mass before slipping. The highest and most devastating waves result from onshore landslide masses.
A new study provides strong evidence that exposure to light pollution alters predator-prey dynamics between mule deer and cougars across the intermountain West, a rapidly growing region where nighttime skyglow is an increasing environmental disturbance.
Food waste is one of the most important issues of current food systems: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that more than one third of food is either lost or wasted along the entire food supply chain causing significant economic, social and environmental impacts.
Using a magnetic field and hydrogels, a team of researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated a new possible way to rebuild complex body tissues, which could result in more lasting fixes to common injuries, such as cartilage degeneration. This research was published today in Advanced Materials.
HOUSTON - (Oct. 19, 2020) - The abstract benefits of biochar for long-term storage of carbon and nitrogen on American farms are clear, and now new research from Rice University shows a short-term, concrete bonus for farmers as well.
That would be money. To be precise, money not spent on irrigation.
In the best-case scenarios for some regions, extensive use of biochar could save farmers a little more than 50% of the water they now use to grow crops. That represents a significant immediate savings to go with the established environmental benefits of biochar.
While plastics recycling is not new science, current processes don't make it economically worthwhile-- waste plastics get "down-cycled" into lower grade, less useful material. It's a challenge that continues to be an obstacle in tackling a growing global pollution crisis in single use plastics.
TROY, N.Y. -- Bioimaging technologies are the eyes that allow doctors to see inside the body in order to diagnose, treat, and monitor disease. Ge Wang, an endowed professor of biomedical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has received significant recognition for devoting his research to coupling those imaging technologies with artificial intelligence in order to improve physicians' "vision."
When the air outside is bad, office workers are more likely to order food delivery than go out for lunch, which in turn increases plastic waste from food packaging, according to a study by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), Ozersk Technological Institute, and the Russian Academy of Sciences have improved a processing technology of a monazite concentrate which is a mineral raw material employed as a source of rare earth elements and thorium. The latter, in turn, is a part of the thorium-uranium fuel cycle that is more eco-friendly compared to the one based on uranium and plutonium. A related article appears in Energies.
New Rochelle, NY, October 19, 2020--Texas has the most restrictive electoral environment in 2020, and Oregon has the least restrictive voting practices of the 50 states. This is based on a study of the relative "cost of voting" in each of the 50 states, as described in the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal. Click here (http://doi.org/10.1089/elj.2020.0666) to read the Issue now.