Snippets from Nature’s past.

Radar images reveal clues to the history of a largely unexplored region.

Policy debates concerning transgender people are embroiled in the culture wars. Let data and science — not politicians — guide laws.

Distantly related plants have structurally similar immune receptors.

NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose. Plus, Germany has placed a big bet on biodiversity and a plant beloved by the ancient Greeks and Romans might have been rediscovered at last.

One in eight US professors trained at just five universities. Plus, the Webb space telescope’s stunning images of Neptune and the winners of this year’s Breakthrough prizes.

In this paper, a new combined cooling and power (CCP) system, based on ammonia-water absorption refrigeration cycle, is proposed to utilize low-temperature heat sources effectively. The system is characterized by that an ejector is introduced to lower the turbine back pressure by the evaporated ammonia vapor used for cooling, and is appropriate for the working scenarios needing much cooling capacity

In this work, an Hybrid Renewable Energy System (HRES) based on microgrid power is proposed and optimized to meet the electric demand of a sustainable multi-family buildings with possible generation of clean hydrogen. Hourly building simulation is carried out based on meteorological data to predict the year-round electrical consumption of the designed buildings. The proposed hybrid system includes

The adaptation of annular thermoelectric generator (ATEG) to cylindrical heat sources exhibits a better performance compared to widely studied flat plate type thermoelectric generator (FTEG). To enhance heat transfer and improve the overall performance, a novel structure of the heat exchanger of the twisted-tape annular thermoelectric generator (TT-ATEG) is proposed in this paper. A three-dimensional

This paper describes a newly proposed viscoelastic–viscoplastic constitutive model that is used to characterize the effective mechanical behaviors of fiber-reinforced composites based on micromechanical modeling. A homogenization approach is developed in which the effective stress of the fiber-reinforced composite is decomposed into an elastoplastic component and a viscous component. For the elastoplastic

Conservation scientist Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka looks after the health of mountain gorillas and livestock in southwest Uganda and teaches local residents how to avoid illness.

Quantum platform combines optical lattices with optical tweezers.

Researchers are hunting through waste water for heavily mutated SARS-CoV-2 variants that could be the next Omicron.

But urgent progress is needed to secure the global deal to save the environment.

US institutions and states are revamping hiring practices in an attempt to increase transparency about past misconduct in academia.

Evidence that settlers, not invaders, transformed the genetic make-up of people in early medieval England. Plus, the first drones with onboard 3D printers, and how birds and bats boost chocolate production.

The leakage, caused by design problems, pipe breakage, and fittings' failure, is a critical challenge that the beneficiaries face in the water distribution networks (WDNs). Control and management of the network pressure have always been considered helpful solutions to reduce the leakage in these systems. In the present study, locating and setting of the five pressure reducer valves (PRVs) have been

The water competitions between human and nature pose a health problem of the water ecosystem. The relationship and health level of a water ecosystem, which are an important basis, are explored to formulate the sustainable development strategy of human society and natural ecology. The study proposes a new water ecology emergy (WEE) analytic system that comprises five main components: input module, storage

In many actual technological problems the system response is dictated by multi-physics events, which occur at different space–time-scales. Energy storage systems or active polymers are two illustrative real-life applications: they involve diffusion of chemically active species concurrent to mechanical deformations that take place in the same spatial domain. An abundant literature exists nowadays for

An absent copy of one gene results in brain-cell changes that greatly improve a mouse’s ability to distinguish between tones of different frequency.

A method that adds a heat treatment after 3D printing of titanium alloys could allow for fast fabrication of strong parts.

NASA’s DART mission is on course to slam into the asteroid Dimorphos on Monday.

Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are state-of-the-art devices that generate electricity through the coupling effect of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction by harvesting mechanical energy. This study aims to boost the electrical performance of a TENG that harvests biomechanical energy to power wearable and portable electronic devices by employing a simple and inexpensive method based

Blade shape has a significant effect on the wind-capturing ability of the Savonius wind turbine. This paper proposes an intelligent optimization method for optimizing the shape of the blade of the Savonius wind turbine. This method firstly uses the cubic Bezier curve with four design parameters (x1, y1, x2, y2) to characterize the complex blade shape, and then uses the Latin hypercube sampling method

This article investigated an economical hybrid solution while meeting the residential community load for the best storage technology in the backward regions of India. In this way, the financial and technical aspects of standalone hybrid renewable energy system are analysed, considering the environmental benefits of standalone PV/WT/DG/BS configurations. Lead-Acid Flow (LAF) based technology is found

A protein that boosts energy metabolism in immune cells might help to prevent tuberculosis infections taking hold.

The text-analysis tool could be used to help detect bogus research submitted to journals.

A new centre will invest in shots for a range of infectious diseases so the country is ready for future outbreaks.

Survey finds that students and postdocs report verbal and sexual abuse, unpaid labour and dangerous work conditions.

Primeval droppings show that some animals that lived in what is now Greenland do not appear in the fossil record.

Imaging technique shows in 3D how bees build out a comb’s elaborate hexagonal cells.

Judge acquits Feng ‘Franklin’ Tao on three of four charges — another blow for the US government’s former China Initiative programme.

President Jair Bolsonaro is up for re-election, but his policies failed to slow the coronavirus’s spread.

Ambitious decarbonization pathways to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2 °C will require large-scale CO2 removal from the atmosphere. One promising avenue for achieving this goal is hydrogen production from biomass with CO2 capture. The present study investigates the techno-economic prospects of a novel biomass-to-hydrogen process configuration based on the gas switching integrated gasification

DeepMind’s system for predicting the 3D structure of proteins is among five recipients of science’s most lucrative awards.

The ability to programme new modes of catalysis into proteins would allow the development of enzyme families with functions beyond those found in nature. To this end, genetic code expansion methodology holds particular promise, as it allows the site-selective introduction of new functional elements into proteins as non-canonical amino acid side chains.1-4 Here, we exploit an expanded genetic code to

Naturally evolved enzymes, despite astonishingly large variety and function diversity, operate predominantly through thermochemical activation. Integrating prominent photocatalysis modes into proteins such as triplet energy transfer could create artificial photoenzymes that expand the scope of natural biocatalysis.1-3 Here, we exploit genetically reprogrammed, chemically evolved photoenzymes embedded

Hear the biggest stories from the world of science | 21 September 2022

Teams of aerial robots mounted with 3D printers could work together to build emergency shelters and greener homes.