Tech
Global warming is affecting daytime and night-time temperatures differently - and greater night-time warming is more common than greater daytime warming worldwide - new research shows.
University of Exeter scientists studied warming from 1983 to 2017 and found a difference in mean annual temperature of more than 0.25°C between daytime and night-time warming in over half of the global land surface.
Days warmed more quickly in some locations, and nights did in others - but the total area of disproportionately greater night-time warming was more than twice as large.
Genova (Italy), 30 September 2020 - The way humans interpret behavior of AI-endowed artificial agents, such as humanoid robots, depends on specific individual attitudes that can be detected from neural activity. Researchers at IIT-Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) demonstrated that people's bias towards robots, that is, attributing them intentionality or considering them as "mindless things", can be correlated with distinct brain activity patterns.
Immune checkpoint blockade therapy (ICT) has shown potential in the treatment of multiple tumors, but the poor response rate has restricted its further application.
Although scientists have developed some combination treatments to enhance the efficacy of ICT, satisfactory tumor inhibition in a variety of tumor models has not been achieved.
The 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence has revealed areas of the Los Angeles basin where the amplification of shaking of high-rise buildings is greatest, according to a new report in Seismological Research Letters.
The 6 July 2019 magnitude 7.1 earthquake, located 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Los Angeles, did not cause structural damage in the city. But there was significant shaking in some high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles--so much that their residents reported feeling nauseous from the movement.
ITHACA, N.Y. - Metals such as iron and calcium play a crucial role inside the human body, so it's no surprise that bioengineers would like to integrate them into the soft, stretchy materials used to repair skin, blood vessels, lungs and other tissue.
Designing elastomers - a type of polymer with rubber-like properties - is a laborious process that yields a product with limited versatility. But Cornell engineers have developed a new framework that makes elastomer design a modular process, allowing for the mixing and matching of different metals with a single polymer.
Protecting crops against pests and diseases is essential to ensure a secure food supply. Around 95 percent of food comes from conventional agriculture, which uses chemical pesticides to keep crops healthy. Increasingly, however, organic pesticides are also being sought as an alternative. Some organic pesticides contain live spores of the fungus Trichoderma, which have the ability to suppress other pathogens. Researchers at the University of Göttingen have now discovered that one Trichoderma species can cause severe rot in cobs of maize (corn).
Cocoa is in great demand on the world market, but there are many different ways to increase production. A research team from the University of Göttingen has now investigated the relative importance of the use of pesticides, fertilisers and manual pollination in a well replicated field trial in Indonesian agroforestry systems. The result: an increase in both cocoa yield and farming income was achieved - not by agrochemicals, but by manual pollination. The study was published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment.
Oceanographers have found that a hurricane can be considerably strengthened in the Gulf of Mexico through the compounding effects of two extreme weather events. This process could continue in the future as ocean temperatures continue to rise around the world, according to a study co-authored by a Texas A&M University at Galveston professor.
Millions of years ago, fire swept across the planet, fueled by an oxygen-rich atmosphere in which even wet forests burned, according to new research by University of Colorado Boulder scientists.
Friend-to-friend text messaging may be the new door-to-door canvassing leading up to the 2020 election.
Columbia researchers have found that texting may be an effective alternative to conventional, face-to-face voter mobilization tactics during the COVID-19 pandemic. The team, which was led by Data Science Institute postdoctoral research fellow Aaron Schein, found that receiving a message from a friend led to increased voter turnout during the 2018 midterm elections. The estimated effect was equivalent to door-to-door canvassing, an important finding in the social distancing era.
Engineers from UNSW Sydney have crunched the numbers on green hydrogen production costs to reveal that Australia is in prime position to take advantage of the green hydrogen revolution, with its great solar resource and potential for export.
The researchers identified the key factors required to reduce the cost of green hydrogen to become competitive with other methods of producing hydrogen using fossil fuels.
In the search for clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels, one promising solution relies on photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells - water-splitting, artificial-photosynthesis devices that turn sunlight and water into solar fuels such as hydrogen.
Creating "work bubbles" during the COVID-19 pandemic can help reduce the risk of company-wide outbreaks while helping essential businesses continue to function, as the example of Bombardier Aviation demonstrates in an analysis published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
A variety of nanoparticles are designed for targeted drug delivery, but unfortunately only a very small proportion of the injected nanoparticles reach the target site such as solid tumours. The reason behind the low targeting efficiency is often considered a "black box" and had thus been little explored for many years.
Broadband light emission in the infrared has proven to be of paramount importance for a large range of applications that include food quality and product/process monitoring, recycling, environmental sensing and monitoring, multispectral imaging in automotive as well as safety and security. With the advent of IoT and the increasing demand in adding more functionalities to portable devices (such as smart watches, mobile phones etc.) the introduction of on-chip spectrometers for health monitoring, allergen detection food quality inspection, to name a few, is expected to happen soon.