SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Prized worldwide for its high-quality wood and rich flavor of delicious nuts, the Persian walnut (Juglans regia) is an important economic crop. The Persian walnut is one of 22 species in the genus Juglans, which includes black and white walnuts and butternuts, grown across Europe, the Americas and Asia. China leads world production, followed by California, … Read more
3D printers can be used to make a variety of useful objects by building up a shape, layer by layer. Scientists have used this same technique to “bioprint” living tissues, including muscle and bone. Bioprinting is a relatively new technology that has advanced mostly by trial and error. Scientists are now using the laws of … Read more
When hurricanes strike, loss of electricity ranks as one of the top concerns for relief workers. Blackouts lasting a week or more can hamper recovery efforts, shutter hospitals, threaten public health and disrupt transportation. The monthslong effort to restore power to Puerto Rico following the 2017 hurricane season has led to renewed interest in finding … Read more
They discovered that an actors’ most productive year, defined as the year with the largest number of credited jobs, is towards the beginning of their career. Clear signals preceding and following this ‘annus mirabilis’ enable them to predict with around 85 per cent accuracy if it has passed or not. The study, published in the … Read more
The actinides – those chemical elements on the bottom row of the periodic table – are used in applications ranging from medical treatments to space exploration to nuclear energy production. But purifying the target element so it can be used, by separating out contaminants and other elements, can be difficult and time-consuming. Now researchers at … Read more
When poisonous heavy metals like lead and cadmium escape from factories or mines, they can pollute the nearby soil. With no easy ways to remove these contaminants, fields must be cordoned off to prevent these toxins from entering the food chain where they threaten human and animal health. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, heavy … Read more
‘Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa aren’t interested in planting trees, and we need to educate them and persuade them to do so.’ This is what Seline Meijer was told was the case, when she announced that she was embarking on a study to explore why agroforestry (tree planting) rates in Sub-Saharan Africa are so low. [rand_post] … Read more
Analysis by the researchers of early stone age sites, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that stone tools may have been invented many times in many ways before becoming an essential part of the human lineage. The excavation site, known as Bokol Dora 1 or BD 1, is close … Read more
A large-scale program to deliver water filters and portable biomass-burning cookstoves to Rwandan homes reduced the prevalence of reported diarrhea and acute respiratory infection in children under 5 years old by 29 percent and 25 percent, respectively, according to new findings published today in the journal PLOS Medicine. The results suggest that programmatic delivery of household … Read more
Astronomers have directly imaged two exoplanets that are gravitationally carving out a wide gap within a planet-forming disk surrounding a young star. While over a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged, this is only the second multi-planet system to be photographed. (The first was a four-planet system orbiting the star HR 8799.) Unlike HR 8799, … Read more