Synopsis: Physics & astronomy:


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which is part of the National Center for Earth and Space science Education (NCESSE) in the U s. and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education internationally.


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The findings of the study led by Edwin van Leeuwen of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in The netherlands are published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition.


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but also makes it less ductile--meaning it can't be stretched very far without breaking says Xiaolei Wu a professor of materials science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences'Institute of Mechanics


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if decision-makers pay attention to ecosystem structure composition and dynamics. They shouldnâ##t base everything on a single statistic such as the total land area occupied by forest especially


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and can occur from sunlight radiation or from errors in copying DNA Scott said. They happen by chance he said.


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MIRO is a small and lightweight spectrometer instrument the first of its kind launched into deep space.

The other two are an ultraviolet spectrometer called Alice and the Ion and Electron Sensor (IES.

NASA also provided part of the electronics package for the Double Focusing Mass spectrometer which is built part of The swiss Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) instrument.

NASA's Deep space Network is supporting ESA's Ground Station Network for spacecraft tracking and navigation.

Hardware subsystems for MIRO were provided by the Max-Planck Institute for Solar system Research and the Laboratoire d'Etudes du Rayonnement et de la Matiere en Astrophysique of the Observatoire de Paris. The consortium also includes the Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales ed

Max Planck Institute for Solar system Research Go? ttingen; French National Space agency Paris; and the Italian Space agency Rome.


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The potential consequences of warming in the Arctic include changes in freshwater runoff and atmospheric water vapor and decreases in salinity that can affect marine biology and seawater circulation dynamics.


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The pellets impacted an aluminum target in a vacuum chamber at about 15000 miles per hour. When they inspected the resulting carbon rubble they found nanotubes that smashed into the target end first


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The above story is provided based on materials by Institute of Physics. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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A model for Bluetongue disease dynamics in cattlein a paper recently published in the SIAM Journal on Mathematical analysis authors Stephen Gourley Gergely RÃ st


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#Straw albedo mitigates extreme heatfields that are tilled not after crop harvesting reflect a greater amount of solar radiation than tilled fields.

This effect was addressed in a recent study conducted by researchers at ETH Zurich led by Edouard Davin senior lecturer at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science and Sonia Seneviratne professor of land-climate dynamics

and reflects more solar radiation than tilled surfaces. Measurements taken show that approximately 30%of sunlight is reflected back due to the albedo effect--the albedo is a measure of the reflectance capacity of reflective surfaces.

Ploughed fields reflect only 20%of incoming solar radiation. Model simulations have shown that this difference results in a 50%higher level of reflection in unploughed fields

and that this in turn has a significant effect in extreme heat. In the event of a heat wave such as the one in Europe in 2003 unploughed farm fields could reduce the local temperature by as much as 2 °C. Regional effectthe hotter it becomes the greater the albedo effect and the resulting temperature reduction.

and more radiation can be reflected back into space says first author Edouard Davin. However this effect is only short term and local--perhaps at the most regional but never trans-regional.

and French scientists Davin analysed solar radiation measurements on farmland near the southern French city of Avignon.


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and the Synchrotron's small angle X-ray scattering beam showed that when digested the by-products of milk become highly organised.


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because physics will win every time. Human-caused environmental change is nothing new Kidder said.


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#Livestock gut microbes contributing to greenhouse gas emissionsincreased to levels unprecedented is how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described the rise of carbon dioxide methane and nitrous oxide emissions in their report on the physical science basis


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and Space science Fellowship to support his research on deforestation in West Africa. Using satellite imagery Dwomoh will examine the effect of human encroachment climate change


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Now for the first time Ralph Bock's group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology could show that new species can be generated in an asexual manner As well as in previous studies Bock's group at the Max Planck Institute

The above story is provided based on materials by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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Furthermore the Canadian government has adopted cryogenic preservation as one of its policies for preserving threatened species like the whitebark pine.


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It accounts for the role of ecological dynamics in shaping the future direction of natural capital stocks


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and of course there were no sunscreens so there was no blocking of the solar radiation that produces Vitamin d in our skin.


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#Flowers polarization patterns help bees find foodbees use their ability to'see'polarized light when foraging for food researchers based at the University of Bristol have discovered.

Like many other insect pollinators bees find their way around by using a polarization sensitive area in their eyes to'see'skylight polarization patterns.

and find food a non-navigation function for polarization vision has never been identified in bees--until now.

whether bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) can learn the polarization patterns of artificial'flowers 'in order to obtain a food reward.

They found that freely foraging bumblebees soon learnt to differentiate between rewarding (sucrose solution providing) and aversive (quinine solution providing) artificial'flowers'with two different polarization patterns.

Polarization patterns occur on the petals of real flowers but are invisible to us and thus may be overlooked a hitherto component of floral signalling.

Around 53 per cent of flower species face downwards and thus their polarization patterns are presented in such a way as to be visually accessible to the region of the bee's eye

which includes the polarization sensitive Dorsal Rim Area. Light reflected from downward facing flowers also has the potential to contrast with skylight polarization patterns potentially helping the bee to detect

and identify such flowers. Professor Partridge said: Both pollinator and plant fitness is greatly dependent on the ability of pollinators to discriminate flowers accurately

Our findings suggest polarisation vision may provide sensory access to an additional floral cue for bees.


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We won't be able to fully understand the extinction dynamics until we understand what normal ecological processes were going on in the background. says Larsson.


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But what we're looking to give us even more information is multispectral cameras that can give us imagery in other wavelengths such as near-infrared to help us identify areas of crop stress.

and equipped with an upgraded lens for infrared photography which will help the researchers identify plants in the South Farms'plots that appear to be absorbing


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Billups turned to Rice theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues at the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials in Moscow to explain what the chemists saw.

Stable nanodiamonds up to 20 nanometers in size can be formed in hydrogenated anthracite they found though the smallest nanodiamonds were continued unstable under electron-beam radiation.

Kvashnin is a former visiting student at Rice and a graduate student at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT.


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It's very rare in fluid mechanics to discover a new phenomenon like this Peacock says.


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Co-author of the study Professor David Dunstan from Queen Mary's School of Physics and Astronomy said:

We showed that the number of snails regularly or irregularly visiting a garden is many times greater than the number actually present at any one time in the garden.


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The company is using new technologies such as infrared detectors to monitor power lines for preventative maintenance.


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Trees near the edge of forest fragments are subjected to more solar radiation lower humidity and stronger winds.


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This reformed surface becomes even more susceptible to future melting due to the surface's reduced reflectance.


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By performing experiments in the precisely controlled environment of the CLOUD CHAMBER the project's scientists can change the concentrations of chemicals involved in nucleation


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and less expensive it will encourage greater natural gas consumption and less of fuels such as coal renewables and nuclear power.

But natural gas production and consumption has higher emissions than renewables and nuclear power. Over the range of scenarios that we examine abundant natural gas by itself is neither a climate hero nor a climate villain said Richard Newell Gendell Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics and director of the Duke university Energy Initiative.


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This is the first work putting together a physics-based estimate on the scale of one of these big rivers looking at the net effect of nitrate removal in big river systems.


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Novel lung cancer treatment meets with successan old idea of retreating lung tumors with radiation is new again especially with the technological advances seen in radiation oncology over the last decade.

For these patients hope lies in a second course of treatment â#repeat radiation. Two complementary papers published back-to-back recently in the journal Radiotherapy

when the cancer comes back in an area thatâ##s been treated previously with radiation treatmentâ#said James J. Urbanic M d. lead author of the studies

and a radiation oncologist at Wake Forest Baptist. â#oewith some of the technological advances in radiation treatments that have occurred in the last five to 10 years weâ##re beginning to re-look at the issue

and ask â#can we target the radiation precisely enough and with a high enough dose to knock the cancer back?

and radiation or radiation alone for a lung cancer that couldnâ##t be removed surgically. Theyâ##ve returned for a checkup

If the cancer is just in one spot the patients get retreated with 10 radiation treatments done with the SBRT technique

I think itâ##s going to allow radiation oncologists to reassess their ability so that maybe they can take risks they werenâ##t willing to take before.


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Optimizing the degradation kinetics is nontrivial and may be suited better for a biotech company he said.


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lentivirus de pequeã os rumiantes Role of the mannose receptor and the polarization of macrophages due to lentivirus infection in small ruminants.

(which is known as polarisation) so that they can adapt their function to the one-off needs of the organism

Furthermore it was observed that the infection induces M2 polarisation which favours the establishing and evolution of the disease opening up the possibility of identifying new therapeutic targets to combat lentiviral infections.


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There are still experiments the team would like to do to further understand the ecosystem dynamics that lead to the marsh die off


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Co-author of the report Prof Mark Sutton an Environmental Physicist at the UK's Centre for Ecology


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Decreased cloudiness allowed more solar radiation to reach the plants which typically promotes photosynthesis but in this case it likely posed an extra stress on the plants from the resulting depletion of soil moisture.


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When pumped out of a production well the particles can be analyzed with a spectrometer to determine the level of contamination This paper is a big step


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and radiation as well as elements that enable wireless connectivity between the greenhouse and mobile devices like cell phones.


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Using a laser beam instead of radio frequency could improve communication data rates by a factor of 10 to 100.

and OPALS will downlink a laser beam with a formatted video to the ground. It's like trying to use a laser to point to an area that's the diameter of a human hair from 20-to-30 feet away

The cameras are enclosed in a temperature-specific case and exposed to the harsh radiation of the space environment.


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and space sciences suggested that comparing amounts of the two stable forms of nitrogen--nitrogen-15


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Infrared images show that the temperature of the foam reaches 80 degrees. Just as in nature very little mechanical energy is required in the laboratory to release a much greater amount of chemical energy--quite similar to a fuse


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In her paper Dynamics of Boreal Birds at the Edge of Their Range in the Adirondack Park NY author

or upward some not) suggesting that over this small window of time other factors may be playing a larger role in controlling these species'dynamics.

WCS Adirondack Program Director Zoe Smith said Understanding the processes that drive the dynamics of boreal birds in the Adirondacks can enhance the ability of land managers to influence their long-term conservation.


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An international research team including scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany has counted now chimpanzees and other large mammals living in Liberia.

To close this data gap researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany The Wild Chimpanzee Foundation in Abidjan CÃ'te d'Ivoire

Our survey makes it clear that this action has saved also a large number of West african chimpanzees says co-author Menladi Lormie Max Planck researcher and FDA ecologist of the President's decision.

The above story is provided based on materials by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length g


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In solid-state physics electron mobility refers to how quickly electrons pass through a metal or semiconductor in the presence of an electric field.

because they have an atomic structure similar to graphene the pure carbon wonder materials that attracted the 2010 Nobel prize in physics.


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To trace the sugars the scientists first had to add a radioactive tag to these molecules.

When they administered this labeled CO2 to plant leaves the plants incorporated the radioactive carbon into sugars via photosynthesis. The scientists then tracked the labeled sugars throughout the plant using detectors placed along the plant stem.


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Ecological restoration initiatives are being undertaken around the world attracting investment of $us billions annually explained Professor Adrian Newton.

To address this knowledge gap Professor Newton and fellow BU researchers analysed 89 different types of restored ecosystem sites across the world.

%What's unique about Professor Newton's research is that it also provides one of the first evidence-based assessments of how cost-effective ecological restoration initiatives actually are.

Professor Newton developed this method as part of the Reforlan research project in the dryland forests of Latin america.

and refined by Professor Newton during the Reforlan project. We examined how Forest Landscape Restoration may be implemented in practice

Professor Newton has demonstrated that at the heart of successful forest landscape restoration is a flexible and adaptive approach.

This initiative directly employs the Forest Landscape Restoration approach that we researched developed tested and refined explains Professor Newton.


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and joint space width was measured by x-ray to evaluate OA progression. Subjects included 888 men and 1260 women who had follow-up at 12 24 36 and 48 months As the intake of milk increased from none to less than 3 4-6


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Poplar is a potential energy crop for the biofuel industry because the tree grows quickly and on marginal farmland.


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OCO-2's scientific instrument uses spectrometers which split sunlight into a spectrum of component colors or wavelengths.

The intensity of the dark features increases as the number of carbon dioxide molecules increases in the air that the spectrometer is looking through.

OCO-2's spectrometers can detect changes of one or two carbon dioxide molecules out of the 400--an unprecedented level of precision and one that scientists think will be adequate to detect changes in natural sources


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but using 13 percent less water and reflecting 34 percent more radiation back into space by breeding for slightly different leaf distribution angles and reflectivity.

And changing the angle of the leaves can let the plant reflect back more solar radiation to offset climate change.


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Published this month in the journal Climate Dynamics the study estimates that 12 percent of land will be subject to drought by 2100 through rainfall changes alone;

We know from basic physics that warmer temperatures will help to dry things out said the study's lead author Benjamin Cook a climate scientist with joint appointments at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth

The IPCC also predicts a strong chance of soil moisture drying in the Mediterranean southwestern United states and southern African regions consistent with the Climate Dynamics study.


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Brownian motion and nanoparticle/fluid interactions play an important role Taha-Tijerina said. We observed enhancement in thermal conductivity with incremental changes in temperature and the amount of nanodiamonds used.

The temperature-dependent variations told us the changes were due not just to the percolation mechanism but also to Brownian motion.

and Rice alumna Karen Lozano a professor of mechanical engineering and Mircea Chipara an assistant professor of physics and geology both of the University of Texas Pan American Edinburg Texas. Ajayan is Rice


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In a paper titled Exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation is associated with decreased folate status in women of childbearing age published in the Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology B:


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The above story is provided based on materials by Institute of Physics. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


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#Radiation damage at the root of Chernobyls ecosystemsradiological damage to microbes near the site of the Chernobyl disaster has slowed the decomposition of fallen leaves

The resulting buildup of dry loose detritus is a wildfire hazard that poses the threat of spreading radioactivity from the Chernobyl area.

which exploded and released large quantities of radioactive compounds in the Ukraine region of the Soviet union in 1986.

They set out to assess the rate at which plant material decomposed as a function of background radiation placing hundreds of samples of uncontaminated leaf litter (pine needles and oak maple and birch leaves) in mesh bags throughout the area.

The locations were chosen to cover a range of radiation doses and the samples were retrieved after nine months outdoors.

A statistical analysis of the weight loss of each leaf litter sample after those nine months showed that higher background radiation was associated with less weight loss.

The response was proportional to radiation dose and in the most contaminated regions the leaf loss was 40 percent less than in control regions in Ukraine with normal background radiation levels.

They also measured the thickness of the forest floor in the same areas where samples were placed.

They found that it was thicker in places with higher background radiation. The team concluded that the bacteria

and fungi that decompose plant matter in healthy ecosystems are hindered by radioactive contamination. They showed a smaller effect for small invertebrates such as termites that also contribute to decomposition of plant biomass.

which he says likely results both from direct radiation effects and indirect effects such as reduced nutrient supply.

It's another facet of the impacts of low-dose-rate radioactive contaminants on the broader ecosystem Mousseau says.

The results also show the potential for further spread of radioactivity. There's been growing concern by many different groups of the potential for catastrophic forest fires to sweep through this part of the world

and redistribute the radioactive contamination that is in the trees and the plant biomass Mousseau says.


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The study How fragmentation and corridors affect wind dynamics and seed dispersal in open habitats was published in the March 4 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United states of america and referenced in the February 27 issue of Nature.


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considering temporal dynamics when assessing management system effects on ecosystem services. Trade-offs occurred between economic metrics


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#Astronomers complete cosmic dust censusan international team of astronomers has completed a benchmark study of more than 300 galaxies producing the largest census of dust in the local Universe the Herschel Reference Survey.

and can thus be seen only at far-infrared/sub-millimetre wavelengths. The two cameras on board the Herschel satellite SPIRE and PACS allowed astronomers to probe different frequencies of dust emission

which bear imprints on the physical properties of the grains and therefore were critical for this study.

will help astronomers to further unveil the mystery of cosmic dust in galaxies in the years to come.


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The Rice team of biological physicist Josã Onuchic and postdoctoral researchers Biman Jana and Faruck Morcos published a new paper on the work this month for a special issue of the Royal Society

of Chemistry journal Physical chemistry Chemical Physics. The special issue edited by Rice biophysicist Peter Wolynes

Ultimately understanding these machines will help researchers design drugs to treat diseases like cancer the focus of Rice's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics.

Structural techniques like X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance have worked quite well to help us understand how smaller proteins function Onuchic said.

but to understand the full dynamics of these large proteins where a lot of the interesting biology takes place we have to supplement them with more information he said.

Through DCA Faruck uses a lot of physics to understand when two amino acids can act directly or indirectly and separate the two.

Advances in the century-old art of crystallography are making better structure-based models available as well.

and we had crystallographic data for this motor protein in the 1990s there weren't enough sequences available until the 2000s Morcos said.

The research was supported by the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics the Welch Foundation the National Science Foundation

and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. Onuchic is the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Chair of Physics and Professor of Physics and Astronomy.


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Foster and Higham's findings were published March 12 in The british biology journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B a journal from the same publisher that featured papers by Isaac newton and Charles darwin.

In their study Context-dependent changes in motor control and kinematics during locomotion: modulation and decoupling Foster surgically inserted electrodes into the forelimbs and hind limbs of seven male green anole lizards.


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they provide a new extremely powerful tool for the study of the dynamics of solids and for the materials sciences in general.

Consideration of disclinations should provide scientists with a new tool to explain many phenomena related to the mechanics of solids.


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Metaboliteswith colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (Germany) the KU Leuven researchers identified the metabolites that kill the nematodes.


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Researchers begin by using satellite derived evapotranspiration estimates at thermal infrared bands to deduce the amount of moisture being transpired by plants.


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and chroma researchers use data from an instrument that can detect reflected light at different wavelengths--a spectrometer.

Using a spectrometer a specimen is exposed to full white light and the reflected light waves are displayed as a curve on a graph.

The size and shape of the curve called a reflectance curve is unique to each color.

With red to violet wavelengths on the x-axis and 0-100%reflectance on the y-axis a higher curve at a particular wavelength signifies an increased amount of light reflected at that portion of the spectrum.

Researchers use mathematical formulas to calculate values for chroma hue and brightness from the reflectance curves.


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As natural lizard color reflects ultraviolet (UV) light the researchers used specialized UV-reflecting paints to accurately mimic female coloration.


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and Physical sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have been placed on the ice shelf surrounding Pine Island by University college London (UCL) and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists to record changes of the Antarctic ice

The above story is provided based on materials by Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council (EPSRC. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h


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In this case gases are converted into particles that reflect solar radiation or act as nuclei for cloud droplets.

and subsequently transported as an electrically charged ELVOC-molecule into the sensor (mass spectrometer) where the detection takes place.


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But blasting these secret-suitor insects with radiation via electron beams X-rays or gamma-rays tends to make them weaker than typical males

They suspected and found that under the low-oxygen conditions the insects'cells would produce antioxidants that can help better protect them from the off-target radiation damage.


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The research team confirmed in other studies that eating strawberries also protects against ultraviolet radiation reduces the damage that alcohol can have on the gastric mucosa strengthens erythrocytes


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X-ray crystallography of the protein coded by the gene illustrated exactly how the mutation conferred resistance by opening up the'active site'where DDT molecules bind to the protein so more can be broken down.


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synthesizing this literature can provide generality in identifying traits that mediate plant-pathogen dynamics. From the pollinator's perspective there has been surprisingly little work elucidating the role of flowers and floral traits for pathogen transmission.


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whose group studies the geometry and dynamics of densely packed objects such as particles. Torquato then worked with the paper's first author Yang Jiao who received his Ph d. in mechanical


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and keep the corn cubs for food we have come a long way says Per Morgen professor at the Institute of Physics Chemistry and Pharmacy University of Southern Denmark.


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and Vaughn Smider used x-ray crystallography to determine the ball and chain structure of the bovine antibodies


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Theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson and his Rice colleagues found through exhaustive analysis that those who wish to control the chirality of nanotubes--the characteristic that determines their electrical properties--would be wise to look at other aspects of their growth.

In the study by Yakobson research scientist Evgeni Penev and postdoctoral researcher Vasilli Artyukhov that was published recently by the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano the Rice researchers found that the elastic energy landscapes


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