Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) are adding tiny, Swiss-cheese-style holes to components to improve the harvesting of fusion energy from the sun, reports Tech Xplore. New computer simulations show that placing porous, sponge-like covers that cap reservoirs of liquid lithium around the inner walls of doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion facilities can absorb damaging excess heat inside the facilities. The heat can then be moved to generators to help produce electricity. Fusion...
Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden may have agreed to develop a cyber-security arrangement, but progress is likely to be complex after both sides disagreed about who was to blame for the growing problem of ransomware. Biden says he gave Putin a list of 16 specific critical entities that should be considered "off-limits" from future cyber-attacks. However, Putin told reporters that the Colonial Pipeline attack and others have "nothing to do with Russian...
An underwater robot known as Mesobot is providing researchers with deeper insight into the vast mid-ocean region known as the "twilight zone", Tech Xplore reports. Capable of tracking and recording high-resolution images of slow-moving and fragile zooplankton, gelatinous animals, and particles, Mesobot greatly expands scientists' ability to observe creatures in their mesopelagic habitat with minimal disturbance. This advance in engineering will enable greater understanding of the role these creatures play in transporting carbon dioxide...
Researchers at Stanford University recently conducted a study aimed at investigating the prevalence and locations of surveillance cameras in large cities in the U.S. and in other countries, Tech Xplore reports. Their paper introduces a computer vision algorithm that can estimate the spatial distribution of surveillance cameras by analysing Google street view and other street-view images. First, the researchers extracted street-view images of 100,000 randomly sampled locations in each of the cities they examined. They focused on 10...
Yulia Puskhar, a biophysicist and professor of physics in Purdue's College of Science, may have a way to harness energy by mimicking plants, reports Tech Xplore. Photosynthesis is a complex dance of processes in which plants convert the sun's radiance and water molecules into usable energy in the form of glucose. To do this, they use a pigment, usually chlorophyll, as well as proteins, enzymes and metals. "With artificial photosynthesis, there are not fundamental physical limitations,"...
Florida International University marine scientist Yannis Papastamatiou and a team of researchers have found that hundreds of gray reef sharks are surfing the slope in the southern channel of Fakarava Atoll in French Polynesia by floating on the updrafts from currents. The team used acoustic tracking tags, animal-borne cameras and their own underwater observations to monitor the behaviour. They were able to calculate energy usage of those that stayed in the channel surfing and those that left the channel. By...
A googly eyed hero with millions of followers is cleaning up Baltimore's waterways. He's a big wheel, and it's going to his head. Meet Mr. Trash Wheel, the brainchild of logistics company Clearwater Mills founder John Kellet. He said he got the idea for the wheel after being dismayed at the glut of trash flowing into the harbor after it rained, reports CNET. Mr. Trash Wheel is a large garbage interceptor that works nonstop to clean rubbish in the Jones...
NASA has announced two missions to the planet next door, CBC Radio reports. The first mission, VERITAS, is an orbiter that will help scientists such as Suzanne Smrekar, VERITAS's principal investigator and geochemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, get radar images that can penetrate Venus's clouds and look for chemical signatures. The second mission DAVINCI+ is a chemistry lab probe that will ingest gases on its way to the surface to help unravel the mystery of the key constituents of...
Researchers have observed that workers in a species of honeybee found in South Africa reproduce by making near-perfect clones of themselves, phys.org reports. A team from the University of Sydney, the ARC-Plant Protection Research Institute, and York University found that South African Cape honeybee queens reproduce sexually, but the workers reproduce asexually. They affixed tape to the reproductive organs of a queen, preventing males from mating with her, then allowed both her and the worker bees in the...
Astronomers have spotted a giant 'blinking' star toward the centre of the Milky Way, more than 25,000 light years away, phys.org reports. An international team observed star VVV-WIT-08 decreasing in brightness by a factor of 30, nearly disappearing from view. While many stars change in brightness because they pulsate or are eclipsed by another star in a binary system, it is very rare for a star to become fainter over a period of several...
