A first-ever global analysis of cave drip waters has shown where stalagmites can provide vital clues towards understanding past rainfall patterns.
In a study published recently in Nature Communications, UNSW Sydney scientists led an international group of researchers to amass the data of 163 drip sites in 39 caves on five continents.
They found that in…
Scientists have developed a new method for detecting traces of primordial life in ancient rock formations using potassium.
The method relies on searching for high concentrations of potassium in ancient sedimentary rocks, rather than traditional methods that look for carbon, sulfur, or nitrogen—which can appear in ancient rocks through processes unrelated to ancient life.
“Our…
Every type of atom in the universe has a unique fingerprint: It only absorbs or emits light at the particular energies that match the allowed orbits of its electrons. That fingerprint enables scientists to identify an atom wherever it is found. A hydrogen atom in outer space absorbs light at the same energies as one…
New work from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Florida is showing that artificial neural nets can be trained to encode quantum mechanical laws to describe the motions of molecules, supercharging simulations potentially across a broad range of fields.
"This means we can now model…
In a major collaborative effort, researchers at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) have for the first time eliminated replication-competent HIV-1 DNA -- the virus responsible for AIDS -- from the genomes of living animals. The study, reported online July 2 in the journal Nature…
An ingenious new solution being engineered at the University of Canterbury (UC) aims to turn food waste into valuable chemical components that could be used to make bioplastics.
An ingenious new solution being engineered at the University of Canterbury (UC) aims to turn food waste into valuable chemical components that could be used to make bioplastics.…
UNESCO on Friday added Iceland's Vatnajokull National Park, Europe's largest with a landscape of "fire and ice," to its World Heritage List.
Shaped by volcanoes and surrounded by lava fields, the park is also home to the largest glacier in Europe, after which it is named.
The protected area of some 14,500 square kilometres (around…
A satellite built by the National University of Singapore (NUS) entered orbit in June carrying both a high-tech quantum device from the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) and a quotation from a play written for the NUS Arts Festival.
SpooQy-1, as the satellite is known, is testing a quantum light source that could enable…
Self-assembling materials called block copolymers, which are known to form a variety of predictable, regular patterns, can now be made into much more complex patterns that may open up new areas of materials design, a team of MIT researchers say.
The new findings appear in the journal Nature Communications, in a paper by postdoc Yi…
Next time you listen to a favorite tune or wonder at the beauty of a natural sound, you might also end up pondering the math behind the music.
You will, anyway, if you spend any time talking with Jesse Berezovsky, an associate professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University. The longtime science researcher and…