Wind turbines in Midwestern farm fields may be doing more than churning out electricity. The giant turbine blades that generate renewable energy might also help corn and soybean crops stay cooler and drier, help them fend off fungal infestations and improve their ability to extract growth-enhancing carbon dioxide from the air and soil. (more…)
Web users around the globe will be able to help professional astronomers in their search for Earth-like planets thanks to a new online citizen science project called Planet Hunters that launched Dec. 16. at www.planethunters.org.
Planet Hunters, which is the latest in the Zooniverse citizen science project collection, will ask users to help analyze data taken by NASA’s Kepler mission. The space telescope has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system—called exoplanets—since its launch in March 2009. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new study finds strong associations between victims’ experiences—such as unwanted sexual activity, neglect and physical violence—and substance use disorders. (more…)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—There’s a whale of a new display at the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, a leviathan that represents a scientific saga of equally grand proportions. (more…)
An encounter with 35 young girls in Kenya prompted Margo Day to start a secondary school there. The school will also be a refuge for girls who fled their homes to avoid the traditional practice of female genital mutilation
REDMOND, Wash. — When Margo Day went on a safari last year in Africa, she more or less knew what to expect. She had traveled in Kenya and Tanzania 16 years earlier, where she had what she calls a life-changing experience watching lions, elephants and wildebeests roam the plains. She returned to Kenya last fall to share that experience with her 19-year-old niece, Gail. (more…)
A new study from researchers at North Carolina State University sheds light on how a technique that is commonly used for making single-metal nanoparticles can be extended to create nanoparticles consisting of two metals – and that have tunable properties. The study also provides insight into the optical properties of some of these nanoparticles.
Tuning the optical properties of nanoparticles is of interest for applications such as security technology, and for use in making chemical reactions more efficient – which has multiple industrial and environmental applications. (more…)
SAN FRANCISCO — The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling. (more…)
Researchers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and Bennett Aerospace Inc., a North Carolina advanced-technology company, have won a contract to develop the capability for testing a new type of radar jammer for the U.S. Navy. Called the Next Generation Jammer, this novel device will utilize phased-array radar technology in ways that could provide U.S. military aircraft greater protection from ground-to-air missiles. (more…)
