Author: Ranveer Kumar
A survey recently mapped over 27,000 barrels of industrial waste and DDT. The sea bottom near southern California has been hiding a very dirty secret: decades of discarded chemicals in thousands of barrels. And the toxic debris field is even bigger than anyone expected, containing at least 27,000 drums of DDT and industrial waste, scientists recently discovered. High concentrations of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, an insecticide that was widely used for pest control during the 1940s and 1950s) were previously detected in ocean sediments between the Los Angeles coast and Catalina Island, in 2011 and 2013. At the time, scientists who searched…
Scientists develop new type of artificial muscle for use in miniature robots University of Wollongong (UOW) researchers have mimicked the supercoiling properties of DNA to develop a new type of artificial muscles for use in miniature robot applications. Their research is published today (Thursday 29 April AEST) in Science Robotics. One of the challenges to the miniaturisation of robotics technology – such as developing micro-tools for remote robotic surgery – is that conventional mechanical drive systems (or “actuators”) are difficult to downsize without loss of performance. Artificial muscles that generate large and reversible movement, high mechanical work output, respond quickly and…
Perhaps because there are no chimney stacks belching smoke, the contribution of the world’s farms to climate change seems somehow remote. But agriculture accounts for a staggering 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Tractors running on diesel release carbon dioxide (CO₂) from their exhausts. Fertilisers spread on fields produce nitrous oxide. And cattle generate methane from microbes in their guts. Even tilling the soil – breaking it up with ploughs and other machinery – exposes carbon buried in the soil to oxygen in the air, allowing microbes to convert it to CO₂. Farmers usually do this before sowing crops, but what…
A new study has found that people who experience bullying in late adolescence and early adulthood are significantly more likely to have violent daydreams or fantasies that involve hurting even killing people. The study, led by University of Cambridge criminology professor Manuel Eisner, appeared on April 27 in the journal Aggressive Behavior. Tracking violent thoughts Eisner and his team tracked the self-reported thoughts and experiences of 1,465 young people from schools across the Swiss city of Zurich. They were studied at the ages of 15, 17, and 20. The researchers recorded whether the participants had had violent thoughts in the past 30 days, and…
The tucuxi (Sotalia fluviatilis), a river dolphin endemic to the Amazon, has been declared endangered on the IUCN Red List, meaning all the world’s freshwater dolphins are now at threat of extinction. The species faces the same threats as another Amazonian cetacean, the pink river dolphin (Inia geoffrensis), ranging from hydropower dams, to bycatch, to mercury poisoning. Researchers warn that if these threats intensify, the Amazon’s dolphins could go the way of the baiji (Lipotes vexillifer) in China, which is now considered extinct following a dam-building spree along the Yangtze. Researchers across South America are collaborating through the River Dolphins…
Researchers from North Carolina State University and Virginia Commonwealth University say they found that having a high level of national nostalgia predicted both positive attitudes toward former President Donald Trump and racial prejudice. In previous studies, nostalgia, or feeling a fondness and longing for the past, has been shown to increase feelings of social connectedness, personal meaning, and self-continuity. However, in this recent study published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology, researchers say these same feelings of sentimentality may have negative consequences on the perception and acceptance of others. While results showed national nostalgia to be a significant predictor for positive…
A new study by Simon Fraser University historical ecologists finds that Indigenous-managed forests—cared for as “forest gardens”—contain more biologically and functionally diverse species than surrounding conifer-dominated forests and create important habitat for animals and pollinators. The findings are published today in Ecology and Society. According to researchers, ancient forests were once tended by Ts’msyen and Coast Salish peoples living along the north and south Pacific coast. These forest gardens continue to grow at remote archaeological villages on Canada’s northwest coast and are composed of native fruit and nut trees and shrubs such as crabapple, hazelnut, cranberry, wild plum, and wild cherries.…
UCI environmental engineers analyzed a century’s worth of the Golden State’s blazes Irvine, Calif., April 22, 2021 — California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century. Researchers in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Irvine have conducted a thorough analysis of California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection wildfire statistics from 2000 to 2019, comparing them with data from 1920 to 1999. They learned that the annual burn season has lengthened…
Living in an area with a television news station owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the U.S.’s second-largest local TV company, makes viewers less likely to vote for Democratic presidential candidates and lowers their approval of Democratic presidents, according to new research. The paper, published April 14 in Political Communication, adds to researchers’ understanding of how the insertion of partisan national political coverage into local TV news broadcasts can influence viewers. “When Sinclair buys a station, they substitute local news for national news and unbiased coverage for more pro- Republican coverage,” said author Matthew Levendusky, a professor of political science and…
A new study published today in Science finds that children whose parents were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident in 1986 had no more germline mutations than the general population. Effects of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which occurred at a power plant in Ukraine in April 1986, remain a topic of interest. The Chernobyl accident exposed millions of people in the surrounding region to radioactive contaminants. The study investigated the long-standing question of whether radiation exposure results in genetic changes that can be passed from parent to offspring. This effect has been suggested by some studies in animals. But to date, no major…