Pufferfish-inspired device relies on sunlight to produce clean drinking water. A new invention that uses sunlight to drive water purification could help solve the problem of providing clean water off the grid. The device resembles a large sponge that soaks up water but leaves contaminants – like lead, oil and pathogens – behind. To collect the purified water from the sponge, one simply places it in sunlight. The researchers described the device in a paper published this week in the…
New research provides insights into the process of diffusion in living systems, with implications from novel active coatings to understanding how pathogens are cleared from lungs. A drop of food coloring slowly spreading in a glass of water is driven by a process known as diffusion. While the mathematics of diffusion have been known for many years, how this process works in living organisms is not as well understood. Now, a study published in Nature Communications provides new insights on…
One prospective source of renewable energy is hydrogen gas produced from water with the aid of sunlight. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a material, nanoporous cubic silicon carbide, that exhibits promising properties to capture solar energy and split water for hydrogen gas production. The study has been published in the journal ACS Nano. “New sustainable energy systems are needed to meet global energy and environmental challenges, such as increasing carbon dioxide emissions and climate change”, says Jianwu Sun,…
The uptake of CO₂ from the air is an essential process of plant photosynthesis. In dry areas, some plants shift this process to the night so that they can keep their stomata closed during the day and thus reduce the evaporation of water. To do this, they possess a special photosynthesis mechanism (Crassulacean acid metabolism, CAM). The extent to which plants use this mechanism for their energy balance depends, in part, on the unpredictability of precipitation. Scientists from the University…
Study simulated a control surface at the end of a wing used to maneuver an aircraft. Using data collected in a NASA Langley Mach 6 wind tunnel, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign replicated the hypersonic flow conditions of a compression ramp flow by means of Direct Numerical Simulation. The simulation yielded an abundance of additional data, which can be used to better understand the phenomena that occur surrounding vehicles traveling at hypersonic speeds. “Data from experiments are somewhat…
A new study, in which the Andalusian Earth Sciences Institute (IACT) (CSIC-UGR) participated, has described for the first time a key stage in the beginning of the great glaciations and indicates that it can happen to our planet in the future. The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Nature The study claims to have found a new connection that could explain the beginning of the ice ages on Earth Antarctic iceberg melt could hold the key to the…
Crash tests are primarily known from traffic safety research. The Austrian Road Safety Board, together with TU Graz, has now investigated tobogganing accidents for the first time in a computer-simulated crash test. With alarming results: Without helmet, fatal head injuries are possible in collisions with trees, for example, even at low speeds. Wearing a helmet and the correct sitting position dramatically reduce the risk of injury for children while tobogganing. More than 2,200 people are injured in toboggan accidents in…
UCLA researchers using a model of airway tissue created from human stem cells have pinpointed how smoking cigarettes causes more severe infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in the airways of the lungs. The study, led by scientists at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA and published in Cell Stem Cell, will help researchers better understand COVID-19 risks for smokers and could inform the development of new therapeutic strategies…
Biologists study social responsiveness in fish In order to escape predators, many fish – including insects, fish and birds – have developed strategies for rapidly transmitting information on threats to others of their species. This information is transmitted within a group of hundreds, or even thousands, of individuals in (escape) waves. This collective response is also, in the case of fish, known as shoal behaviour. Special parasites can, however, manipulate such a survival strategy. Researchers at the University of Münster…
Continued climate change could spell disaster for many species. A new study from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology confirms that most birds–but not all–synchronize their migratory movements with seasonal changes in vegetation greenness. This is the first study of its kind to cover the Western Hemisphere during the year-long life cycle of North American migratory birds that feed on vegetation, seeds, nectar, insects, or meat. The findings were published today in the Journal of Animal Ecology. “As you might expect,…
The distribution of group interactions in a social network affects the critical point at which explosive jumps in opinion, popularity, or disease spread occur. Contagion processes, such as opinion formation or disease spread, can reach a tipping point, where the contagion either rapidly spreads or dies out. When modeling these processes, it is difficult to capture this complex transition, making the conditions that affect the tipping point a challenge to uncover. In the journal Chaos, from AIP Publishing, Nicholas Landry…
The team developed this new model to better understand the role that droplet clouds play in the spread of respiratory viruses.
Susanne Vongries, manager of the BR Chorus, describes the initial situation: ‘After the initial shock of lockdown and once we’d reviewed the restrictive…
The phenomenon of human ageing is the result of a complex interaction between numerous factors, with our own immune system playing a critical role. As we get…
In their recent publication in Nature Communications, they show that newly formed memories affect how we perceive the world around us: the more familiar our…
The paper has just been published in the renowned journal Transport Reviews. “The special thing about this study is that we first present the conceivable…
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