Science News

One of the most promising applications of artificial intelligence technologies is the identification of tumors from high-resolution medical imagery. Can the same techniques be used to help paleontologists more quickly analyze similar scans of dinosaur fossils? Researchers reported some of the early answers—and remaining challenges—in a new paper published in Frontiers in Earth Science.

Researchers have discovered what appears to be the earliest known account of a rare weather phenomenon called ball lightning in England.

A collection of fossil shells from marine snails and clams is challenging a theory that says the world’s deadliest mass extinction was accompanied by severe ocean acidification.

Shown four images of hypothetical peers—a boy playing with cars and trucks, a girl playing with cars and trucks, a boy playing with a Barbie and dollhouse, and a girl playing with a Barbie and dollhouse—children from Thailand and China were then asked a simple question: Would you want to be their friend?

Imagine taking your favorite treat—a Mars bar or cream puff—and beaming it with X-rays to map out what makes it so delicious. Then, picture being able to transfer some of those magnificent qualities and tastes to healthier, more sustainable products.

Researchers including a postdoc at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have created a gear-shaped photonic crystal microring that increases the strength of light-matter interactions without sacrificing optical quality. The result is an on-chip microresonator with an optical quality factor 50 times better than the previous record in slow light devices that could improve microresonators used in a range of photonics applications, including sensing and metrology, nonlinear optics and cavity quantum electrodynamics.

To learn how ocean water is melting glaciers, NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland mission extensively surveyed the coastline of the world’s largest island.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has changed our lifestyle, and even the environment around us, such as the reduction of carbon dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions and the alleviation of water pollution. A more obvious change is that the production of waste related to pandemic prevention has increased significantly. For example, the main component of disposable masks we use every day is plastic fiber. It is estimated that hundreds of billions of masks are used every month around the world. As the largest producer of masks, China’s daily output in March 2020 has exceeded 100 million. Before the pandemic, the world produced more than 300 million tons of plastic every year, most of which eventually entered into nature and decomposed into small plastic particles.

Optical tweezers use light to immobilize microscopic particles as small as a single atom in 3D space. The basic principle behind optical tweezers is the momentum transfer between light and the object being held. Analogous to the water pushing on a dam that blocks the stream, light pushes onto and attracts objects that make the light bend. This so-called optical force can be designed to point to a certain point in space, where a particle will be held. In fact, the optical trapping technique has so far won two Nobel Prizes, one in 1997 for holding and cooling down single atoms, a second in 2018 for offering biologists a tool to study single biomolecules such as DNA and proteins.

A chunk of a SpaceX rocket that blasted off seven years ago and was abandoned in space after completing its mission will crash into the Moon in March, experts say.