Solar Power

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  1 minutes  |  42 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Air Pollution May Make Solar Panels Less Efficient

By Jasmin Malik Chua published 30 June 17

From inefficient grids, shortfalls in policy, and even an eclipse, solar-energy collection faces no shortage of hurdles. Scientists have discovered another stumbling block: air pollution. 

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Soleus Go: Fitness Tracker Review

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  8 minutes  |  1520 words  |  Trudie Dory

The Go is a new fitness tracker from watch maker Soleus, and it tracks many of the standard metrics seen in fitness trackers today, including your daily steps, calories burned, distanced traveled and how much you sleep. But unlike some fitness trackers, the Go also tracks your workout time and pace, and it includes a few smartwatch features, such as alerts when you get a call or text, and even shows you the weather. [Read More]

Star 'DNA' Survey Could Reunite the Sun with Its Long-Lost Siblings

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  576 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

Is the sun due for a cosmic family reunion? A new survey of 1 million stars in the Milky Way galaxy could help astronomers link our sun to its long-lost siblings. The survey will identify stellar "DNA": the amounts of chemical elements — such as iron, aluminum and oxygen — that the stars contain. Astronomers could then use this data to find stars that emerged from the same birth clusters in galaxies' stellar nurseries, thereby matching stars to their " [Read More]

The Real Crime: 1,000 Errors in Fingerprint Matching Every Year

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  2 minutes  |  319 words  |  Fernande Dalal

Nobody knows how many people sit wrongfully convicted in prison due to errors in fingerprint matching. But a new study suggests there could be a thousand or more unknown identification errors a year in the United States. Criminologist Simon Cole of the University of California at Irvine examined all 22 known cases of fingerprint mistakes made since 1920. Most of the 22 cases were revealed only through "extremely fortuitous circumstances," such as a post-conviction DNA test, the intervention of foreign police and in one case a deadly lab accident that led to the re-evaluation of evidence, Cole said today. [Read More]

World's first nuclear bomb test created rare, otherworldly crystal

 Posted on May 12, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  605 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

On July 16, 1945, the U.S. Army detonated the world's first nuclear test weapon over the New Mexico desert. In an instant, a metal-coated plutonium device named "Gadget" imploded, creating a gargantuan fireball that rose high into the sky, vaporizing everything it touched. Sand melted into radioactive glass, and a crater nearly as wide as a football field dented the planet. The test — codenamed Trinity — was a success. [Read More]

'Hobbit' Shrimp with Hairy Feet Discovered Living Inside Hole in Sea Squirt

 Posted on May 11, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  435 words  |  Trudie Dory

Scientists have discovered a new species of "hobbit shrimp" that shares more than a feature or two with the protagonist of J.R.R. Tolkien's 1937 children's fantasy novel. The diminutive size and eight hairy limbs of the critter, dubbed Odontonia bagginsi, recall Bilbo Baggins, the reluctant halfling hero who found a magical ring, dueled giant spiders and plundered the hoard of a centuries-old dragon in Tolkien's "The Hobbit," according to Werner de Gier, a biology student at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and his supervisor, Charles H. [Read More]

500 million-year-old creature with mashup of bizarre features could be arthropod 'missing link'

 Posted on May 11, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  659 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A shrimp-like animal that paddled around the ocean hundreds of millions of years ago peered through the water with five eyes mounted on stalks. But that wasn't even the weirdest thing about it, researchers recently discovered. Those stalks supported compound eyes, mounted on a semi-circular fused head shield; the tiny sea beast also had an articulated upper body, 15 jointed and spine-tipped limbs, and large, upward-curving "arms" that were likely used to snap up prey. [Read More]

6,500 medieval coins and rare gold rings unearthed in Polish cornfield

 Posted on May 11, 2023  |  4 minutes  |  798 words  |  Mittie Cheatwood

A medieval hoard brimming with silver ingots, gold rings and thousands of silver coins was recently discovered in a Polish cornfield by an archaeologist, with the help of a priest and local firefighters.  The nearly 900-year-old hoard, found in Słuszków, a village in west-central Poland, held a one-of-a-kind treasure — a gold ring etched with a Cyrillic inscription that translates to: "Lord, may you help your servant Maria." That ring may have belonged to a princess; the coin stash was certainly fit for one. [Read More]

Battling the Boys: Educators Grapple with Violent Play

 Posted on May 11, 2023  |  9 minutes  |  1717 words  |  Arica Deslauriers

In her 30 years as a kindergarten teacher in Illinois and Massachusetts, Jane Katch has watched graham crackers, a pretzel, celery, tree bark and fingers all become transformed into imaginary guns and other weapons. And she has learned to work with, rather than against, the violent boyhood fantasies that accompany these transformations. "When you try to ignore it, it doesn't go away. And when you try to oppress it, it comes out in sneaky ways," [Read More]

Brain Candy: Chemical Turns Rats into M&M Eating Machines

 Posted on May 11, 2023  |  3 minutes  |  609 words  |  Trudie Dory

A part of the brain usually associated with movement may also control our responses to rewards, according to new research that finds stimulation of the region with an opium-like chemical can make rats gorge on M&M candies. The brain naturally produces opioids, or chemicals with similarities to the drug. One of these, enkephalin, induced hungry rats to pounce on chocolate treats faster the more of the chemical they produced, researchers report online today (Sept. [Read More]