07/10/2020

Elusive eastern black rail threatened by rising sea levels

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern black rail a threatened species on Wednesday, but stopped short of the stronger protections some environmentalists were seeking for the elusive bird, now imperiled by ...

CRISPR: a tool to rewrite the code of life

CRISPR-Cas9, the gene-editing technique whose twin founders were honoured with the Chemistry Nobel on Wednesday, is a tool that can change the DNA of animals, plants and microorganisms with extreme precision.

Testing a fiery reentry

What would a satellite look like as it burns up in the atmosphere? Researchers attempted to duplicate this fiery fate for a bulky satellite electronics box using a plasma wind tunnel.

Quantum heat engine behaviour observed in a qubit

Although many of today's accepted theories of classical thermodynamics predate even the industrial revolution they helped to propel, many open questions remain around how these ideas translate to the level of single quantum ...

Job satisfaction decreases with digitization

This year's Swiss HR Barometer combines two major trends: digitization and an aging society. Almost 40 percent of those surveyed can imagine working beyond retirement age. Job satisfaction decreases as digitization of an ...

Catalyst for sustainable gas synthesis

ETH researchers have developed a catalyst that converts CO2 and methane efficiently into synthesis gas—a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. This could potentially help to produce sustainable fuels and plastics

The colorful walls of an exposed impact crater on Mars

Impact craters have been called the "poor geologists' drill," since they allow scientists to look beneath to the subsurface of a planet without actually digging down. It's estimated that Mars has over 600,000 craters, so ...

Extremely rare Higgs boson decay process spotted

The Higgs boson reached overnight fame in 2012 when it was finally discovered in a jumble of other particles generated at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery was monumental because the ...

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