As forests age, differences in functional traits of species become more important and reliable in predicting forest productivity, according to an international study led by professor Ma Keping at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS). As part of the study, Ma and his team evaluated data from a 10-year-old planted mixed forest to determine how functional traits of species influence productivity. Planting productive mixed forests helps researchers learn what...
Christmas shoppers who have not already bought their devices may not receive them in time, the boss of one of the world's top semiconductor chip designers has warned. Simon Segars, chief executive of chip firm Arm, said the mismatch between supply and demand is "the most extreme" he has ever seen. The "unprecedented" crisis won't be completely fixed by Christmas 2022, he said. In some cases, the wait for chips was taking 60 weeks, he said. With just...
Recent wildfires in California and nearby states have demonstrated the need to better understand the dynamics that determine where and when wildfires occur. However, the factors and conditions that interact to contribute to the probability of wildfire – such as the interplay between local vegetation, precipitation, human land use, and more – are diverse, complex, and vary between locations and over time. To improve understanding of those relationships, Isaac Park of the University of California,...
Astronomers examining the nearby universe with the help of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have just completed the largest high-resolution survey of star-forming fuel ever conducted in galaxy clusters, writes Amy Oliver of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. More important, they are tackling a long-standing mystery in astrophysics: What is killing galaxies? The research, which provides the clearest evidence to date that extreme environments in space have severe impacts on the galaxies within them, will...
A team of researchers from Samoa, New Zealand, and the U.S. has found that the leaves of Samoan tree matalafi are as good at relieving inflammation as ibuprofen, reports Medical Xpress. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how they first studied the plant leaves and then tested them with mammalian immune cells. For hundreds of years, natives of Samoa have been using the leaves of the matalafi tree to...
New Cornell University research shows how to make offshore wind farms more efficient in the face of impending rapid expansion – crucial information as the U.S. Department of the Interior affirmed White House plans to lease federal waters for several giant arrays of wind turbines along the East Coast. "Massive upscaling of wind turbine deployments offshore is critical to achieving global and national goals to decarbonize the electricity supply," said Sara Pryor, professor of...
A team of researchers has developed a model that shows that a hypothetical device that uses solar power to pull water from the air could potentially serve a billion people across the world, reports Tech Xplore. In a paper published in the journal Nature, a group of researchers from X–Alphabet's "moonshot factory," Google and the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme, Division of Data, Analytics, Planning and Monitoring, UNICEF, describes the factors that went into their...
Medicines come from chemical reactions, and better chemical reactions lead to better medicines. Yet, the most popular reaction used in drug discovery, called the amide coupling, makes an inherently unstable amide bond. Because the body excels at metabolizing medication, one of the most important and difficult goals of drug research is to invent metabolically stable molecules, so we can take one pill a day instead of every 15 minutes. Researchers at the University of...
Researchers in the U.S. and Japan have demonstrated the first experimental cross-sectional medical image that doesn't require tomography, a mathematical process used to reconstruct images in CT and PET scans. The work, published in Nature Photonics, could lead to cheaper, easier, and more accurate medical imaging. The advance was made possible by development of ultrafast photon detectors, said the paper's senior author Simon Cherry, professor of biomedical engineering and radiology at the University of...
A novel approach to treating type 2 diabetes is being developed at the American Technion Society. The disease, caused by insulin resistance and reduction of cells' ability to absorb sugar, is characterized by increased blood sugar levels. Its long-term complications include heart disease, strokes, damage to the retina that can result in blindness, kidney failure, and poor blood flow in the limbs that may lead to amputations. It is currently treated by a combination...
