The good news is global and local. Keeping inland lakes from turning green means less greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change. Healthy drinking water, fishing and recreation opportunities are also increased when waters are not green. What’s wrong with being green? Toxins released by algal blooms can ruin drinking water. When dense algae …
Tomasz Skwarnicki, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University, has uncovered new information about a class of particles called pentaquarks. His findings could lead to a new understanding of the structure of matter in the universe. Assisted by Liming Zhang, an associate professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, Skwarnicki …
People in many parts of the world feed birds in their backyards, often due to a desire to help wildlife or to connect with nature. In the United States alone, over 57 million households in the feed backyard birds, spending more than $4 billion annually on bird food. While researchers know that bird feeding can …
The shade of a single tree can provide welcome relief from the hot summer sun. But when that single tree is part of a small forest, it creates a profound cooling effect. According to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, trees play a big role in keeping our towns …
A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds. The Jakobshavn (YA-cob-shawv-en) glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and thinning nearly 130 feet (almost 40 meters) annually. But it started growing again at about the …
Physicists in the United States, Austria and Brazil have shown that shaking ultracold Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) can cause them to either divide into uniform segments or shatter into unpredictable splinters, depending on the frequency of the shaking. “It’s remarkable that the same quantum system can give rise to such different phenomena,” said Rice University physicist Randy Hulet, …
A new study has revealed how clouds are modifying the warming created by human-caused climate change in some parts of the world. Led by Swansea University’s Tree Ring Research Group, researchers from Sweden, Finland and Norway analysed information contained in the rings of ancient pine trees from northern Scandinavia to reveal how clouds have reduced the impact of natural …
A new method allows the quantum state of atomic “qubits”—the basic unit of information in quantum computers—to be measured with twenty times less error than was previously possible, without losing any atoms. Accurately measuring qubit states, which are analogous to the one or zero states of bits in traditional computing, is a vital step in …
A team of engineers at the University of California, Berkeley and the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of The Claremont Colleges combined CRISPR with electronic transistors made from graphene to create a new hand-held device that can detect specific genetic mutations in a matter of minutes. The device, dubbed CRISPR-Chip, could be used to rapidly diagnose …
Scientists develop a robust experiment that shows human brain waves respond to changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields. Many humans are able to unconsciously detect changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields, according to scientists at Caltech and the University of Tokyo. The study, led by geoscientist Joseph Kirschvink (BS, MS ’75) and neuroscientist Shin Shimojo at Caltech …
