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 The smell of old books could help preserve them
Old books give off a complex melange of odors, ranging from pleasant (almonds, caramel and chocolate) to nasty (formaldehyde, old clothes and trash). Detecting early signs of paper degradation could help guide preservation efforts, but most techniques destroy the very paper historians want to save. Now, researchers have developed an electronic nose that can non-destructively sniff out odors emitted by books of different paper compositions, conditions and ages.
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Perovskite solar cells: Possible aspects of high efficiency uncovered
A team has demonstrated that hybrid halide perovskites crystallize without an inversion center. Interactions between the organic molecules and adjacent iodine atoms can lead to the formation of ferroelectric domains, which, indirectly, can result in higher solar-cell efficiencies. The formation of these ferroelectric domains cannot occur in purely inorganic perovskites.
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World's oldest glue used from prehistoric times till the days of the Gauls
By studying artefacts that date back to the first 6 centuries AD through the lens of chemistry, archaeology, and textual analysis, researchers have discovered birch tar was being used right up to late antiquity, if not longer. The artefacts in question -- found in a region where birch is scarce, thus raising the question of how it was procured -- are testimony to the strength of tradition among the Gauls.
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Researchers capture moving object with ghost imaging
Researchers have developed a way to capture moving objects with the unconventional imaging method known as ghost imaging. The new method could make the imaging technique practical for new applications such as biomedical imaging, security checks and video compression and storage.
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Research to make (fun) multi-player gaming an educational experience
A new video game framework brings together two well-studied approaches to educational software in order to keep multiple players engrossed in the learning experience while fostering collaboration and problem solving. The framework is one of the first to integrate narrative-centered learning and collaborative learning techniques, laying the groundwork for future efforts in the field.
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Urban development reduces flash flooding chances in arid Western US
Urban development in the eastern United States results in an increase in flash flooding in nearby streams, but in the arid West, urbanization has just the opposite effect, according to a researcher, who suggests there may be lessons to be learned from the sharp contrast.
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Artificial intelligence to run the chemical factories of the future
A new proof-of-concept study details how an automated system driven by artificial intelligence can design, build, test and learn complex biochemical pathways to efficiently produce lycopene, a red pigment found in tomatoes and commonly used as a food coloring, opening the door to a wide range of biosynthetic applications, researchers report.
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Distant worlds under many suns
An astrophysicist has discovered many new multiple star systems that contain exoplanets. For this, he searched more than 1,300 exoplanet host stars. He found that 15 per cent of those stars have at least one companion star, which is only about half the frequency expected for solar like stars. This could indicate that the influence of several stars in a system disrupts the process of planet formation.
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Insulin can increase mosquitoes' immunity to West Nile virus
A discovery has the potential to inhibit the spread of West Nile virus as well as Zika and dengue viruses. The researchers demonstrated that mammalian insulin activated an antiviral immunity pathway in mosquitoes, increasing the insects' ability to suppress the viruses. Since mosquito bites are the most common way humans are infected with West Nile, stopping the virus among the insects would protect human health.
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Novel mathematical framework provides a deeper understanding of how drugs interact
Researchers have developed a new methodology characterizing more precisely how drugs influence each other when combined during treatment. Their analysis of over 30k drug pairs applied to cell lines identified 1,832 interactions between 242 different drugs and sheds new light on how drugs perturb the underlying molecular networks.
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Could cytotoxic T-cells be a key to longevity?
Scientists have used single-cell RNA analysis to find that supercentenarians -- meaning people over the age of 110 -- have an excess of a type of immune cell called cytotoxic CD4 T-cells.
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System by which plants have formed secondary buds since ancient times illuminated
A collaborative research group has succeeded in identifying an important transcription factor, GCAM1, which allows liverwort plants to asexually reproduce through creating clonal progenies (vegetative reproduction). Furthermore, this transcription factor was revealed to have the same origin as those which regulate secondary bud formation in angiosperms. It is hoped that these discoveries will lead to the development of technologies to increase the cultivation rate of a variety of plants in agric
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The effects of a mock shelter environment on sleep
Researchers conducted an experiment on the nature of sleep in an evacuation shelter environment. This experiment was performed by creating a mock shelter in the university's gymnasium with four of the emergency blankets as well as a standard futon set. The results showed that the low temperature (5°C) inside the gymnasium affected subjects' sleep and body temperature regulation, reducing sleep efficiency by 10% and increasing fatigue.
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Study finds links between early screen exposure, sleep disruption and EBD in kids
A new study has found that first exposure earlier than 18 months of age to screen devices -- such as smartphones, tablets, videogame consoles, television etc -- and the presence of multiple screen devices in the bedroom are associated with elevated sleep disruption and emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) in preschool children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs)
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AI to determine when to intervene with your driving
Can your AI agent judge when to talk to you while you are driving? According to a research team, their in-vehicle conservation service technology will judge when it is appropriate to contact you to ensure your safety.
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Environmental cost of cryptocurrency mines
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero - the names of digital-based 'cryptocurrencies' are being heard more and more frequently. But despite having no physical representation, could these new methods of exchange actually be negatively impacting our planet? It's a question being asked by researchers who are investigating the environmental impacts of mining cryptocurrencies.
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Stretchable, degradable semiconductors
To seamlessly integrate electronics with the natural world, materials are needed that are both stretchable and degradable -- for example, flexible medical devices that conform to the surfaces of internal organs, but that dissolve and disappear when no longer needed. However, introducing these properties to electronics has been challenging. Now, researchers have developed stretchable, degradable semiconductors that could someday find applications in health and environmental monitoring.
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Climate impact of hydropower varies widely
Hydropower is broadly considered to be much more environmentally friendly than electricity generated from fossil fuels, and in many cases this is true. However, a new study reveals that the climate impact of hydropower facilities varies widely throughout the world and over time, with some facilities emitting more greenhouse gases than those burning fossil fuels.
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 Satellite and reanalysis data can substitute field observations over Asian water tower
Beijing, China (SPX) Nov 13, 2019
The Tibetan Plateau (TP), known as the "Asian water tower" because of its huge storage of glacier, has a profound impact on local and downstream ecosystems. However, it is a challenge to establish and maintain in situ observations there due to the complex terrain. Scientists have found substitutes, thanks to satellite technology.
"Both satellite and reanalysis data sets are reliable to be
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NanoAvionics to build 12U Nano-satellite for Singapore's CaLeMPSat research mission
Midland TX (SPX) Nov 12, 2019
Nano-satellite mission integrator NanoAvionics received a contract to build a 12U nano-satellite bus for the Singaporean research mission "Cathode-Less Micro Propulsion Satellite" (CaLeMPSat). Developed by SpaceSATS, Plasma Innovation Labs (PILS) and the Plasma Source and Application Center (PSAC) at National Institute of Education (an autonomous institute of Nanyang Technological University), C
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Thuraya and eSAT Global complete tests of pioneering satellite IoT tech
San Diego CA (SPX) Nov 13, 2019
Thuraya, the mobile satellite services subsidiary of the Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat), the leading UAE-based global satellite operator, and eSAT Global, a pioneer in low cost Satellite IoT connectivity, has announced the completion of successful tests validating eSAT's revolutionary Global LPWAN (Low Power Wide Area Network) communications technology over Thuraya's satellite
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A runaway star ejected from the galactic heart of darkness
Pittsburgh PA (SPX) Nov 13, 2019
Astronomers have spotted an ultrafast star, traveling at a blistering 6 million km/h, that was ejected by the supermassive black hole at the heart at the Milky Way five million years ago.
The discovery of the star, known as S5-HVS1, was made by Carnegie Mellon University Assistant Professor of Physics Sergey Koposov as part of the Southern Stellar Stream Spectroscopic Survey (S5). Located
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Commerce leaders introduce the NASA Authorization Act of 2019
Washington DC (SPX) Nov 13, 2019
U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, chairman of the Subcommittee on Aviation and Space, along with ranking member Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sens. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, introduced the NASA Authorization Act of 2019.
This bill expands and improves upon the bipartisan legisl
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EU must boost spending in space or be squeezed out: experts
Brussels (AFP) Nov 13, 2019
The EU needs to boost space funding and improve its strategy to compete with military superpowers and smaller upstarts, a panel of experts told MEPs on Tuesday.
The experts, including from the UN and the European Commission, said an estimated 60 percent of the world's economy depends directly or indirectly on "space tools" like satellite imaging, tracking and internet connectivity.
The E
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SSTL Ships Target Satellite to Tokyo for Astroscale's ELSA-d Mission
Guildford UK (SPX) Nov 11, 2019
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) has shipped a 16kg Target satellite for Astroscale's End-of-Life Services by Astroscale demonstration (ELSA-d) mission to Tokyo, where it will be bolted to the Chaser satellite for environmental testing ahead of launch in 2020.
The ELSA-d mission is designed to simulate capture of orbital debris and validate key technologies for end-of-life spacecraft
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GenDyn nets $783M for next-gen Navy MUOS operations
Washington (UPI) Nov 11, 2019
General Dynamics Mission Systems has been awarded a $783 million contract for sustainment of the Navy's next-generation satellite communications system.
The contract, announced Friday by the Department of Defense, covers ground system sustainment of the Mobile User Objective System for the next decade, through 2029.
MUOS uses a constellation of five satellites in global connectiv
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F-35 to Space? US Air Force looks to connect stealth fighters to X-37B Spacecraft
Washington DC (Sputnik) Nov 12, 2019
In an effort to improve combat effectiveness, the US Air Force may embark on a new mission that would allow its F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and F-22 Raptor aircraft to share information with the top-secret X-37B space plane.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein announced last week to attendees of the Air Force Association breakfast series that the service's efforts to improve the tra
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NASA renames faraway ice world 'Arrokoth' after backlash
Washington (AFP) Nov 13, 2019
Ultima Thule, the farthest cosmic body ever visited by a spacecraft, has been officially renamed Arrokoth, or "sky" in the Native American Powhatan and Algonquian languages, following a significant backlash over the old name's Nazi connotations.
The icy rock, which orbits in the dark and frigid Kuiper Belt about a billion miles beyond Pluto, was visited by the NASA spaceship New Horizons in
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NASA's Mars 2020 will hunt for microscopic fossils
Pasadena CA (JPL) Nov 13, 2019
Scientists with NASA's Mars 2020 rover have discovered what may be one of the best places to look for signs of ancient life in Jezero Crater, where the rover will land on Feb. 18, 2021.
A paper published in the journal Icarus identifies distinct deposits of minerals called carbonates along the inner rim of Jezero, the site of a lake more than 3.5 billion years ago. On Earth, carbonates hel
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Climate change expected to shift location of East Asian Monsoons
More than a billion people in Asia depend on seasonal monsoons for their water needs. The Asian monsoon is closely linked to a planetary-scale tropical air flow which, according to a new study, will most likely shift geographically as the climate continues to warm, resulting in less rainfall in certain regions.
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Visualizing heat flow in bamboo could help design more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings
Modified natural materials will be an essential component of a sustainable future, but first a detailed understanding of their properties is needed. The way heat flows across bamboo cell walls has been mapped using advanced scanning thermal microscopy, providing a new understanding of how variations in thermal conductivity are linked to the bamboo's elegant structure. The findings will guide the development of more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings, made from natural materials, in the fut
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Driver found for more deadly prostate cancer
A transcription factor that aids neuron function also appears to enable a cell conversion in the prostate gland that can make an already recurrent cancer even more deadly, scientists say.
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Light at the end of the nanotunnel for future catalysts
Using a new type of nanoreactor, researchers have succeeded in mapping catalytic reactions on individual metallic nanoparticles. Their work could help improve chemical processes, and lead to better catalysts and more environmentally friendly chemical technology.
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 Aversion to Broccoli May Have Genetic Roots
Study subjects with a gene variant that heightened their sensitivity to bitterness tended to eat fewer vegetables than people who didn't mind bitter flavors. Christopher Intagliata reports.
-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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 This Spacecraft Will Detect if Exoplanet Skies are Cloudy, Hazy or Clear
NASA is adding an instrument to the European Space Agency's ARIEL spacecraft.(Credit: ESA/STFC RAL Space/UCL/Europlanet-Science Office)
NASA announced last week that it will contribute to a European Space Agency mission scheduled to launch in 2028. The spacecraft, called ARIEL (for Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey), will be the first space mission dedicated to studying exoplanet atmospheres.Â
During its primary mission lasting some four years, ARIEL wil...
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SpaceX Launches 60 more Starlink Satellites to Orbit
The Falcon 9 rocket taking off for the Starlink mission on November 11. (Credit: SpaceX/Flickr)
On November 11, SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying another 60 Starlink satellites, which will eventually provide internet service worldwide. The launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station made history by reusing a record number of rocket parts. But even with that feat in aerospace design, the launch wasn't celebrated by everyone.
According to SpaceX's plans, Star...
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How Could We Find a Wormhole Hiding in the Milky Way?
A new study outlined a possible method to search for a wormhole at the center of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole, like the one seen in this artist's concept, resides. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
If there was a wormhole in the center of our galaxy, how could we tell? Two physicists propose that carefully watching the motions of a star orbiting the Milky Way's supermassive black hole might help scientists start to check. The researchers published the idea in a recent paperÂ...
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Who
Two Swiss astronomers got a well-deserved Nobel for finding an exoplanet, but there’s an intriguing backstory
-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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AI Doesn't Actually Exist Yet
Many businesses claim they’re using it, but they’re kidding themselves—and they’re kidding you, too
-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com
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Deep neural networks speed up weather and climate models
A team of environmental and computation scientists is using deep neural networks, a type of machine learning, to replace the parameterizations of certain physical schemes in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model, an extremely comprehensive model that simulates the evolution of many aspects of the physical world around us.
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Why only some post-stroke survivors can 'copy what I say'
Researchers report that the left lateral temporal cortex must be intact in stroke patients with aphasia if they are to have their speech entrained. In speech entrainment, stroke survivors practice fluent speech production by following along with another speaker.
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Some hoppy news: Hops don't need to go dormant in order to flower
In a study that wraps up three years and 13 growth cycles of several popular hop varieties, researchers are upending conventional wisdom hop growers have followed for decades to coax their plants to flower. His results open up new possibilities for indoor, sustainable, local production of hops.
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Detecting tiny amounts of fentanyl
Researchers have designed a promising new tool that can identify smaller concentrations of drug powders than any other device. Portable, simple to use, and cost effective, the technology could provide law enforcement officers and forensic chemists a quick and accurate way to identify unknown, potentially dangerous, substances.
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Half of Piedmont drinking wells may exceed NC's hexavalent chromium standards
A new study which combines measurements from nearly 1,400 drinking water wells across North Carolina estimates that more than half of the wells in the state's Piedmont region contain levels of cancer-causing hexavalent chromium in excess of state safety standards. The prediction is based on a model of geology and chemistry.
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Cells control their dance of death
Researchers have revealed for the first time how white blood cells control the final moments of their death, helping their own removal from the human body.
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Iron-based solar cells on track to becoming more efficient
An international study shows that 30% of the energy in a certain type of light-absorbing iron molecule disappears in a previously unknown manner. By closing this loophole, the researchers hope to contribute to the development of more efficient solar cells using this iron-based solar cell.
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Good noise, bad noise: White noise improves hearing
White noise is not the same as other noise -- and even a quiet environment does not have the same effect as white noise. With a background of continuous white noise, hearing pure sounds becomes even more precise, as researchers have shown. Their findings could be applied to the further development of cochlear implants.
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A milestone in ultrashort-pulse laser oscillators
With the demonstration of a sub-picosecond thin-disk laser oscillator delivering a record-high 350-W average output power, physicists set a new benchmark and pave the path towards even more powerful lasers.
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Widespread misinterpretation of gene expression data
Reproducibility is a major challenge in experimental biology. New research identifies a frequent technical bias in data generated by RNA-seq technology, which allows in a single test the simultaneous measurement of the expression level of all the genes in a given sample. This bias recurrently leads to false results.
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Songbirds sing species-specific songs
The generation of species-specific singing in songbirds is associated with species-specific patterns of gene activity in brain regions called song nuclei, according to a new study. According to the authors, the findings could be a promising step toward a better understanding of the contribution of multiple genes to the evolution of behaviors.
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Carbon nanotubes show a love/hate relationship with water
New research reveals that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a coating can both repel and hold water in place, a useful property for applications like printing, spectroscopy, water transport, or harvesting surfaces. When water is dropped on a CNT forest, the CNTs repel the water, and it forms a sphere. However, when flipped over, the drop does not fall to the ground but rather clings to the surface.
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Low-cost, portable system takes OCT beyond ophthalmology
Researchers have developed a way to perform optical coherence tomography (OCT) in hard-to-reach areas of the body such as joints. The advance could help bring this high-resolution biomedical imaging technique to new surgical and medical applications.
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leukemia diagnostics: AI-driven single blood cell classification
For the first time, researchers show that deep learning algorithms perform similar to human experts when classifying blood samples from patients suffering from acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Their proof of concept study paves the way for an automated, standardized and on-hand sample analysis in the near future.
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Scientists advance citrus greening research efforts
To facilitate the scientific community's ability to use L. crescens in citrus greening research, scientists have published an article that outlines, step-by-step, highly reproducible and detailed protocols that they have standardized for culturing L. crescens.
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More Americans struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep
If you have trouble sleeping, you're not alone. New research finds more Americans have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. The difficulties were most prevalent in people with healthy sleep length.
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New pathways in brain's amygdala
Researchers are pioneering an innovative brain study that sheds light on how the amygdala portion of the brain functions and could contribute to a better understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and Alzheimer's disease.
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New exploration method for geothermal energy
Where to drill? This is the basic question in the exploration of underground energy resources, such as geothermal energy. A research team presents a new method for locating potential drilling sites that are covered by water. The new approach combines bathymetry measurements with geochemical profiles.
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