Science

Massive study provided localized advice to boost crop yield and reduce fertilizer usage

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A decade-long study involved 21 million smallholders shows how evidence-based approaches could improve food security. More than 1,000 researchers across China worked with 65,000 bureaucrats and technicians at provincial or county agricultural agencies and with 140,000 representatives from agriculture businesses. The project’s success highlights the importance of the vast social networks, Nature – Millions of …

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Claimed evidence for Dark Matter in galactic core is explained by millisecond pulsar stars

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The Fermi Large Area Telescope previously detected excess gamma-ray emission in the center of the Galaxy. Several theories have been proposed for this ‘Galactic center excess’. They included * self-annihilation of dark-matter particles, * an unresolved population of millisecond pulsars, * an unresolved population of young pulsars, * or a series of burst events. New …

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Physicist Stephen Hawking has died

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Legendary Physicist Stephen Hawking has died at the age of 76. He did ground-breaking work on Black holes, space-time and cosmology. He became well known to the public with the best selling book “A Brief History of Time”. This was made into a movie by Stephen Spielberg. Hawking had a rare early-onset, slow-progressing form of …

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Proto-molecular nanotechnology – Programmable Molecular Fabrication of trillions of functionalized carbon nanotubes

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New York-based Mattershift has managed to create large-scale carbon nanotube (CNT) membranes that are able to combine and separate individual molecules. Mattershift designs and manufactures nanotube membranes for carbon-zero fuels, health and performance optimized air and water, and precision medicine. The startup was founded in 2013 to realize the potential of molecular factories, with the …

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SpaceX Payload Efficiency is Superior

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SpaceX has superior payload to orbit efficiency than competing rockets. SpaceX has made advancements in rocket efficiency and has used some lighter weight materials. In aerospace engineering, payload fraction is a common term used to characterize the efficiency of a particular design. Payload fraction is calculated by dividing the weight of the payload by the …

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Better insulation with nanowood, Transparent wood and solar devices made from wood

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Engineers at the University of Maryland have created a new nanowood material that’s as insulating as Styrofoam, but stronger and much more environmentally friendly and 30 times stronger. There has been a growing interest in thermal management materials due to the prevailing energy challenges and unfulfilled needs for thermal insulation applications. We demonstrate the exceptional …

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Progress to more salt resistant rice

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87-year-old Chinese scientist Yuan Longping is developing a new high-yield strain of rice that grows in saltwater.A Swamps, bogs, and clay-like or salty coastal waters make up roughly a third of the total arable land in China. Growing rice in these locales is nearly impossible because salt stresses plants’ water-absorption process. Specifically, saltwater makes photosynthesis …

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Superconductors used as an experimental model for blackholes

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University of Rochester researchers are using superconductor-metal interfaces to model and learn the quantum physics of a black hole. They show that the metal-superconductor interface can be thought of as an event horizon and Andreev reflection from the interface is analogous to the Hawking radiation in black holes, giving a unitary description of black hole …

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