Featured Posts

To top

Category: Education

1 Oct

Changes in marine ecosystems going undetected

by TMR Desk
Education
Existing ways of calculating biodiversity dynamics are not very effective in detecting wholesale species community change due to the effects of ocean acidification. University of Adelaide research shows that in cases where biodiversity metrics show no change or little change, there may still be reorganisation of ecological communities in our oceans. "The belief that climate change will alter global marine biodiversity is one of the most widely accepted," said Professor Ivan Nagelkerken from the University of Adelaide's Environment Institute and Southern Seas Ecology Laboratories. "Commonly used biodiversity measures don't pick up reorganisation of marine communities due to ocean acidification because new species replace species that are lost. "Little or no biodiversity change is detected when one community of marine species is replaced by another...
Continue reading
0 Comments
1 Oct

No environmental justice, no positive peace — and vice versa

by TMR Desk
Education
Peace and environmental sustainability -- two lofty but vital goals for all countries -- are known to be intrinsically related, according to Dahlia Simangan, associate professor at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hiroshima University. However, researchers still tend to investigate them separately, and, when they are viewed together, it is often with broad strokes, with little examination into the nuances of either peace or environmental sustainability. Parsing out the specifics of these categories could provide insights into what specific elements of peace influence what specific elements of environmental sustainability, and vice versa, which could then better inform policy and decision making. A team of researchers from Hiroshima University that includes Simangan has explored the nuances and found...
Continue reading
0 Comments
1 Oct

Study links cold water shock to catastrophic coral collapse in the Eastern Pacific

by TMR Desk
Education
Marine heatwaves brought about by climate change are known to be responsible for mass mortality on some of the planet's most iconic coral reef systems. However, scientists have discovered that an extreme weather event that resulted in rapid sea temperature drops of up to 10 degrees was the primary cause of a catastrophic coral die-off event. Combined with widespread rise in harmful algal blooms, the extent of collapse of the reefs in Costa Rica's Eastern Tropical Pacific in 2009 was abnormally high. The two factors resulted in coral cover at some sites decreasing by between 20% and 100%, with the levels of recovery also varying significantly in the years since. In a new study, published in the journal PeerJ, researchers say their findings demonstrate the...
Continue reading
0 Comments
1 Oct

System to create bioplastics

by TMR Desk
Education
Method could reduce nondegradable plastics and greenhouse gas emissions A team of Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists has developed a system that uses carbon dioxide, CO2, to produce biodegradable plastics, or bioplastics, that could replace the nondegradable plastics used today. The research addresses two challenges: the accumulation of nondegradable plastics and the remediation of greenhouse gas emissions. Published Sept. 28 in Chem, the research was a collaboration of Susie Dai, Ph.D., associate professor in the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, and Joshua Yuan, Ph.D., formerly with the Texas A&M Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology as chair for synthetic biology and renewable products and now Lopata professor and chair in the Washington University in St. Louis Department of Energy, Environmental...
Continue reading
0 Comments
28 Sep

Layering, not liquid: Astronomers explain Mars’ watery reflections

by TMR Desk
Education
Astronomers explain mars' watery reflections Cornell astronomers believe bright reflections beneath the surface of Mars' South Pole are not necessarily evidence of liquid water, but instead geological layers. Researchers detail their alternative explanation in Nature Astronomy. "On Earth, reflections that bright are often an indication of liquid water, even buried lakes like Lake Vostok," said Dan Lalich, research associate. "But on Mars, the prevailing opinion was that it should be too cold for similar lakes to form." But the fact remains, Lalich said, that the bright reflection exists and requires an explanation. Lalich created simulations with layers composed of four materials -- atmosphere, water ice, carbon dioxide (CO2) ice and basalt -- and assigned each layer a corresponding permittivity, an intrinsic property of the material describing...
Continue reading
0 Comments
28 Sep

An ocean inside Earth? Water hundreds of kilometers down

by TMR Desk
Education, Oceans
The transition zone (TZ) is the name given to the boundary layer that separates the Earth's upper mantle and the lower mantle. It is located at a depth of 410 to 660 kilometres. The immense pressure of up to 23,000 bar in the TZ causes the olive-green mineral olivine, which constitutes around 70 percent of the Earth's upper mantle and is also called peridot, to alter its crystalline structure. At the upper boundary of the transition zone, at a depth of about 410 kilometres, it is converted into denser wadsleyite; at 520 kilometres it then metamorphoses into even denser ringwoodite. "These mineral transformations greatly hinder the movements of rock in the mantle," explains Prof. Frank Brenker from the Institute for Geosciences...
Continue reading
0 Comments
26 Sep

Reduced power consumption in semiconductor devices

by TMR Desk
Education, Engineering
Stepping stones are placed to help travelers to cross streams. As long as there are stepping stones that connect the both sides of the water, one can easily get across with just a few steps. Using the same principal, a research team at POSTECH has developed technology that cuts the power consumption in semiconductor devices in half by placing stepping stones. A research team led by Professor Junwoo Son and Dr. Minguk Cho (Department of Materials Science and Engineering) at POSTECH has succeeded in maximizing the switching efficiency of oxide semiconductor devices by inserting platinum nanoparticles. The findings from the study were recently published in the international journal Nature Communications. The oxide material with the metal-insulator phase transition, in which the phase of...
Continue reading
0 Comments
22 Sep

Food insecurity has lasting impacts on the brains and behavior of mice

by TMR Desk
Education
Results suggest young people may suffer long-term consequences, in particular in the area of cognitive flexibility While food insecurity is a problem for a growing segment of the U.S. population -- made even worse by the coronavirus pandemic -- few studies have looked at the effect that feast or famine has on the developing brain in isolation from other factors that contribute to adversity. A new study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, simulated the effects of food insecurity in juvenile mice and found lasting changes later in life. "We show that irregular access to food in the late juvenile and early adolescent period affects learning, decision-making and dopamine neurons in adulthood," said Linda Wilbrecht, UC Berkeley professor of psychology and...
Continue reading
0 Comments
21 Sep

Pando in pieces: Understanding the new breach in the world’s largest living thing

by TMR Desk
Education
It's ancient, it's massive, and it is faltering. It's ancient, it's massive, and it is faltering. The gargantuan aspen stand dubbed 'Pando,' located in south-central Utah, is more than 100 acres of quivering, genetically identical plant life, thought to be the largest living organism on earth (based on dry weight mass, 13 million pounds). What looks like a shimmering panorama of individual trees is actually a group of genetically identical stems with an immense shared root system. Now, after a lifetime that may have stretched across millennia, the 'trembling giant' is beginning to break up, according to new research. Paul Rogers, adjunct professor of ecology in the Quinney College of Natural Resources and director of the Western Aspen Alliance, completed the first comprehensive...
Continue reading
0 Comments
15 Sep

MOXIE experiment reliably produces oxygen on Mars

by TMR Desk
Education
Day and night, and across seasons, the instrument generates breathable oxygen from the Red Planet's thin atmosphere On the red and dusty surface of Mars, nearly 100 million miles from Earth, an instrument the size of a lunchbox is proving it can reliably do the work of a small tree. The MIT-led Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE, has been successfully making oxygen from the Red Planet's carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere since February 2021, when it touched down on the Martian surface as part of NASA's Perseverance rover mission. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers report that, by the end of 2021, MOXIE was able to produce oxygen on seven experimental runs, in a variety of atmospheric conditions, including during the...
Continue reading
0 Comments
Older posts