Seeing how ecosystems respond to rising temperatures often requires heating a research plot. Working in the Arctic and other remote areas, scientists often build structures that rely on passive warming from the sun. This ...
Environment
Mar 20, 2018
0
11
To convert plant matter to fuel and other sustainable bioproducts, it must first be broken into digestible sugars for microbes. Gamma-valerolactone (GVL) is a promising chemical solvent for biomass degradation. However, it ...
Biotechnology
Mar 20, 2018
0
11
There are many ways to calculate how plants take up carbon. The challenge, in part, is scaling these approaches to global levels. Why? Because of the hypotheses behind each approach. Often, the hypothesis relies on data at ...
Biotechnology
Mar 20, 2018
0
6
Why do some tropical trees survive extensive droughts and others do not? Scientists took up this question in a three-month study of various tropical saplings. Their results suggest that species that avoid dehydration have ...
Environment
Mar 20, 2018
0
22
High-bandwidth memory can improve a computer's performance. On-package memory (OPM) is a popular option in many commercial systems. Before this effort, little was known about OPM's implications on speed and power use. The ...
Computer Sciences
Mar 15, 2018
0
30
Scientists predicted a new phase of superionic ice, a special form of ice that could exist on Uranus, Neptune, and exoplanets. This new type of ice, called P21/c-SI phase, occurs at pressures greater than those found inside ...
Condensed Matter
Mar 15, 2018
2
20
A key challenge in fusion research is maintaining the stability of the hot, charged plasma that fuels fusion reactions inside doughnut-shaped facilities called "tokamaks." Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 14, 2018
0
8
Nanoparticles, superstrong and flexible structures such as carbon nanotubes that are measured in billionths of a meter—a diameter thousands of times thinner than a human hair—are used in everything from microchips to ...
Nanophysics
Mar 8, 2018
0
8
Physicians have long used CT scans to get 3-D imagery of the inner workings of the human body. Now, physicists are working toward getting their first CT scans of the inner workings of the nucleus. A measurement of quarks ...
General Physics
Mar 5, 2018
0
26
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have discovered key conditions that give rise to fast magnetic reconnection, the process that triggers solar flares, auroras, ...
Plasma Physics
Mar 2, 2018
19
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