SAN ANTONIO — March 13, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has been awarded a three-year, $2,041,000 grant from NASA’s Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI) program to further develop a novel ground-penetrating radar instrument. The Synthetic Pulse Artemis Radar for Crustal Imaging (SPARCI, pronounced “sparky”) instrument is designed to characterize the depth of the regolith and upper megaregolith, the upper broken-up layers of lunar crust associated with ...

ANYmal has for some time had no problem coping with the stony terrain of Swiss hiking trails. Now researchers at ETH Zurich have taught this quadrupedal robot some new skills: it is proving rather adept at parkour, a sport based on using athletic manoeuvres to smoothly negotiate obstacles in an urban environment, which has become very popular. ANYmal is also proficient at dealing with the tricky terrain commonly found on building sites or in disaster areas. To teach ANYmal these new skills, two teams, both from the group led by ETH Professor Marco Hutter of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, followed different approaches. Exhausting the mechanical options Working ...

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a highly aggressive tumour of the lung that occurs especially in heavy smokers. Due to the rapid spread of this tumour type, most patients can only be treated with chemotherapy with remarkable initial anti-tumour efficacy. However, relapse often occurs over the course of time. A research team at the University of Cologne led by Professor Dr Roman Thomas, director of the Department of Translational Genomics and speaker of the Collaborative Research Center 1399 (CRC 1399, ...

Jackson School of Geosciences Professor Peter Flemings is the recipient of the 2024 Robert R. Berg Outstanding Research Award, a top honor bestowed by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a worldwide professional association. Over the course of his career, Flemings has worked to apply his academic research to effect real-world breakthroughs. His work analyzing how pressure within Earth’s crust is controlled by geology and fluid flow, for example, shaped how oil companies now safely search for hydrocarbons. Flemings and his students explored how the evolution of rock layers controls the flow of fluids within them and the distribution ...

Findings from a new study conducted by a team of researchers at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and published in the journal mBio, reflect the important role that the gut microbiome (communities of bacteria) plays in the airway health of persons with cystic fibrosis.    Cystic fibrosis is an inherited disease that causes sticky, thick mucus to build up in the lungs and other organs, causing persistent infections that can be deadly. Until relatively recently, CF microbiology research has largely ...

Scientists have long suspected nematodes, commonly known as roundworms, inhabit Utah’s Great Salt Lake sediments, but until recently, no one had actually recovered any there. It took a University of Utah postdoc with a hammer and loads of field experience to solve the puzzle. Along with biology professor Michael Werner, postdoctoral researcher Julie Jung announced in a study published March 13 that they discovered thousands of tiny worms in the lake’s microbialites, those reef-like structures that cover about a fifth of the lakebed. Their initial attempts failed to find nematodes in lakebed sediments, prompting Jung to take a hammer to samples ...

Most U.S. consumers surveyed in February 2024 predicted that they would see an increase in food prices over the next 12 months. Sixty-four percent of respondents predict food prices to rise in the next year, and the average predicted increase is 3.7%, according to the February Consumer Food Insights Report. The survey-based report out of Purdue University’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability assesses food spending, consumer satisfaction and values, support of agricultural and food policies and trust in information sources. Purdue experts conducted and evaluated the survey, which ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Three peer-reviewed journals have recently published research papers by Penn State’s Hammel Family Human Rights Initiative. The papers illustrate how the initiative’s programs help K-12 educators address difficult issues such as racism. The three journals that published the initiative papers are School-University Partnerships, Journal of Practitioner Research and Journal of Teacher Education. JTE, as it’s known, is widely considered the top-ranked research journal in the field of teacher education. Some of the scholars who independently ...

Oil and gas operations across the United States are emitting more than 6 million tons per year of methane, the main component of natural gas and the most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, according to Stanford-led research published March 13 in Nature. These emissions, which result from both intentional vents and unintentional leaks, amount to $1 billion in lost commercial value for energy producers. The annual cost rises to $10 billion when researchers account for harm to the economy and human well-being caused by adding this amount of heat-trapping methane ...

Images Physicists often turn to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability to explain why fluid structures form in plasmas, but that may not be the full story when it comes to the ring of hydrogen clumps around supernova 1987A, research from the University of Michigan suggests.   In a study published in Physical Review Letters, the team argues that the Crow instability does a better job of explaining the "string of pearls" encircling the remnant of the star, shedding light on a longstanding astrophysical mystery.   "The fascinating ...

NEWPORT, Ore. – Marine heat waves in the northeast Pacific Ocean create ongoing and complex disruptions of the ocean food web that may benefit some species but threaten the future of many others, a new study has shown. The study, just published in the journal Nature Communications, is the first of its kind to examine the impacts of marine heat waves on the entire ocean ecosystem in the northern California Current, the span of waters along the West Coast from Washington to Northern California. The researchers found that the biggest beneficiary of marine heat waves is gelatinous zooplankton – predominantly ...

The International Society of Microbiota (ISM) announces its 11th World Congress, "Targeting Microbiota 2024", scheduled for October 14-15 at the Corinthia Palace in Malta. This event is set to highlight the latest research and developments in microbiotal medicine, emphasizing its impact on human health and its potential in shaping future medical treatment approaches. Detailed Workshop: Probiotic Prescribing Practices dedicated to Medical Professionals The congress will feature a critical workshop on October 15, titled “Probiotic Prescribing Practices: Empowering Medical Doctors for Improved Patient Health.” ...

Engineering Biology for Climate & Sustainability is the fifth technical roadmap developed by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC) and represents the first dedicated to innovations and opportunities towards overcoming a significant global challenge. The roadmap targets and challenges are aligned and were drawn from existing climate and sustainability literature, particularly those focused on long-term impacts and opportunities, including reports from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.  The roadmap consists of six themes ...

ChatGPT and its ability to hold conversations and produce written content have been the focus of a lot of attention in the last year in the field of technology and artificial intelligence. However, AI has been around for some time, helping us in all sorts of everyday tasks, from navigation systems to social network algorithms, not to mention machine translation. Ever since neural machine translation (NMT) systems began to be used on a widespread basis a few years ago, AI has seen exponential growth in its uptake in the translation industry. This has led to new challenges in the relationship between human and machine translators. Today, the post-editing ...

An unassuming brown bovine from the south of Brazil has made history as the first transgenic cow capable of producing human insulin in her milk. The advancement, led by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Universidade de São Paulo, could herald a new era in insulin production, one day eliminating drug scarcity and high costs for people living with diabetes.  “Mother Nature designed the mammary gland as a factory to make protein really, really efficiently. We can take advantage ...

Ammonia (NH3) is an important molecule with many applications. The end product of the famed Haber–Bosch process, it is commonly synthesized to capture nitrogen for fertilizers, and is used for refrigeration, in cleaning products, and in the production of pharmaceuticals. Recently, this modest molecule has also attracted interest as a potential resource for addressing one of today’s most pressing challenges — the need for reliable and abundant renewable fuels. Ammonia is stable and safe ...

Most babies begin recognizing themselves in mirrors when they are about a year and half old. This kind of self-recognition is an important developmental milestone, and now scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have discovered a key driver for it: experiences of touch. Their new study found babies who were prompted to touch their own faces developed self-recognition earlier than those who did not. The research was published this month in the journal Current Biology. “This suggests that babies pulling ...

A Dartmouth Engineering-led study published in Joule reported the discovery of an entirely new high-performance material for solar absorbers—the central part of a solar cell that turns light into electricity—that is stable and earth-abundant. The researchers used a unique high-throughput computational screening method to accelerate the discovery process and were able to quickly evaluate approximately 40,000 known candidate materials. "This is the first example in the field of photovoltaics where a new material has been found through this type ...

Small wearable or implantable electronics could help monitor our health, diagnose diseases, and provide opportunities for improved, autonomous treatments. But to do this without aggravating or damaging the cells around them, these electronics will need to not only bend and stretch with our tissues as they move, but also be soft enough that they will not scratch and damage tissues. Researchers at Stanford have been working on skin-like, stretchable electronic devices for over a decade. In a paper published ...

Females of some whale species have evolved to live drastically longer lives so they can care for their families, new research shows. The study focussed on five whale species that – along with humans – are the only mammals known to go through menopause. The findings show that females of these whale species that experience menopause live around 40 years longer than other female whales of a similar size. By living longer without extending their “reproductive lifespan” (the years in which they breed), these ...

UCL Press Release Under embargo until Wednesday 13 March 2024, 16:00 UK time / 12:00 US Eastern time   Global GDP loss from climate change will increase exponentially the warmer the planet gets when its cascading impact on global supply chains is factored in, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The study, published in Nature, is the first to chart “indirect economic losses” from climate change on global supply chains that will affect regions that would have been less affected by projected warming temperatures. These previously unquantified disruptions in supply chains will further exacerbate projected economic losses due ...

From identifying the influenza virus that caused the pandemic of 1918 to developing vaccines against pneumococcal pneumonia and bacterial meningitis in the 1970s, combating infectious disease has a rich history at Rockefeller. That tradition continues as the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research at Rockefeller University (SNFiRU) caps a successful first year with the establishment of a new advisory board. This international advisory board was created in part to give guidance on how to best use ...

When we daydream, we must be able to snap back to attention at a moment’s notice. Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital uncovered how our brains can do things like react to a question when we’re daydreaming: firing activity in part of the brain called the dentate gyrus keeps us focused on what’s happening in our environment. And the team found that the same neural activity also helps with forming memories. The findings were published in Nature on March 13, 2024. “We have found a brain mechanism for breaking up periods of mind wandering and realigning the ‘cognitive ...

The regeneration of forest saplings is pivotal for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem productivity, necessitating innovative management techniques for continuous forest coverage. Traditional 2-dimensional remote sensing struggles to accurately capture the complex, understory sapling dynamics. To address this, researchers are exploring the use of aerial laser scanning (ALS) for its potential in providing detailed 3-dimensional insights. However, despite progress in using ALS data to estimate tree metrics, accurately identifying and quantifying the phenotypic ...

Woods Hole, Mass. (March 13, 2024) - Emperor penguin populations have been exceedingly difficult to monitor because of their remote locations, and because individuals form breeding colonies on seasonal sea ice fastened to land (known as fast ice) during the dark and cold Antarctic winter. Now, new research that incorporates very high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery with field-based validation surveys and long-term data has provided the first multi-year time series that documents emperor penguin global population trends. Researchers ...