OK, relax, moms – we are talking about insects. Researchers have discovered that a species of ant can regrow lost parts of their brains, an ability never before seen in insects, reports CBC Radio's Quirks & Quarks. In most ant species, only the queen can reproduce. However in the Indian jumping ant, when the queen dies, female workers have the ability to take on the reproductive role for the colony. But the promotion from worker to...
Clemson University physicist Jian He and collaborators from China and Denmark created a potentially paradigm-shifting high-performance thermoelectric compound, reports Tech Xplore. "Our material is a unique hybrid atomic structure with half being crystalline and half amorphous," said He. "If you have a unique or peculiar atomic structure, you would expect to see very unusual properties because properties follow structure." The researchers created the hybrid material by intentionally mixing elements in the same group on the periodic...
A team of scientists claims to have cracked the code to a natural blue food dye. Some colours of artificial dyes are easy to replace, such as turmeric for yellow or beets for red, but finding a non-purplish natural source for the colour blue has stymied food scientists, reports CBC's Quirks & Quarks. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, a team of scientists says it has found a way to produce true blue,...
A team of researchers has identified 87 Neanderthal footprints found on an ancient shoreline on the Iberian Peninsula, phys.org reports. Researchers found evidence of as many as 36 individuals walking along a beach. The work involved studying footprints left on Matalascañas beach, in Doñana National Park, in Spain. Testing in sedimentary rock showed the footprints to be about 106,000 years old. They were revealed recently due to heavy rains. Researchers did not find evidence...
Researchers have developed a cost-effective technique that could deliver safe drinking water to millions of vulnerable people using cheap, sustainable materials and sunlight, reports Tech Xplore. A team led by associate professor Haolan Xu at UniSA's Future Industries Institute has refined a technique to derive freshwater from seawater, brackish water, or contaminated water, through highly efficient solar evaporation. "In recent years, there has been a lot of attention on using solar evaporation to create...
Researchers at Duke University have developed a method that uses machine learning, satellite imagery and weather data to autonomously find hotspots of heavy air pollution, city block by city block, reports phys.org. The technique could be a boon for finding and mitigating sources of hazardous aerosols, studying the effects of air pollution on human health, and making better informed, socially just public policy decisions. The air pollutants in which the Duke team is most interested...
Recent studies have shown that human languages are optimally balanced between accuracy and complexity, Tech Xplore reports. In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers formed two artificial neural networks trained with two generic deep learning methods. As researcher Marco Baroni explains: "We made the networks play a colour-naming game in which they had to communicate about colour chips from a continuous colour space. We did not limit the...
Cryptocurrency exchange firm Coinbase hit a market value of nearly $100 billion in its stock market listing, higher than many blue-chip companies including BP. Shares debuted on Nasdaq at $381 but closed below $330. The listing was seen as the latest step toward cryptocurrencies gaining wider acceptance among traditional investors, the BBC reports. The price of Bitcoin hit a record high of more than $63,000 today ahead of the Coinbase listing. Coinbase, which makes money primarily by charging transaction fees, had...
The team from Oxford University and British-Swedish biotech firm AstraZeneca began injecting doses of vaccine Vaxzevria into patients in April 2020. It's approved for use in almost 100 countries and forms the backbone of the World Health Organization's COVAX initiative, which aims to provide equitable access to vaccines across the globe. However, as CNET reports, the vaccine has suffered setbacks. Miscommunications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and dosing mistakes in clinical trials eroded confidence in...
Scientists, industry experts, and policymakers will discuss the latest issues surrounding space debris in a four-day conference beginning April 20. The European Space Agency will conduct the eighth European Conference on Space Debris from Darmstadt, Germany, at which they will exchange research and attempt to determine solutions to the problem of 129 million objects larger than a millimeter in orbits around Earth.
https://scitechdaily.com/space-debris-danger-to-satellites-over-129-million-objects-in-orbit-around-the-earth-video/
