Research shows black licorice packs a potent punch

Black licorice. You either love it – or you hate it. But one Western researcher is offering a reason to pass the next time you think about reaching for that black licorice jelly bean, twist or whip – your health.

Fifty years ago, a historic balloon launch that changed the way we see the ozone layer

From atop this grassy mesa in 1967, scientists with the federal Environmental Science Services Agency carefully launched a weather balloon carrying a new instrument that could measure ozone levels from the ground to the very edge of outer space -- and radio the data back to a ground receiver.

When bridges collapse: Stanford researchers study whether we're underestimating the risk

The United States is considering a $1 trillion budget proposal to update infrastructure, including its crumbling bridges. An obstacle to spending the money wisely is that the current means of assessing bridges may underestimate their vulnerability, according to a new study published in the Journal of Infrastructure Systems. 

Case in point is a bridge along California’s iconic Big Sur coast, which collapsed in March, isolating communities and costing local businesses millions of dollars. Although California’s recent unprecedented rains were likely to damage infrastructure, standard risk assessments made it hard to identify which bridges were most vulnerable.

Hybrid Digital-Analog Circuits Can Increase Computational Power of Chaos-Based Systems

New research from North Carolina State University has found that combining digital and analog components in nonlinear, chaos-based integrated circuits can improve their computational power by enabling processing of a larger number of inputs. This “best of both worlds” approach could lead to circuits that can perform more computations without increasing their physical size.

Computer scientists and designers are struggling to keep up with Moore’s law, which states that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every two years in order to meet processing demands. They are rapidly reaching the limits of physics in terms of transistor size – it isn’t possible to continue shrinking the transistors to fit more on a chip.

Long-term fate of tropical forests may not be so dire

Tropical rainforests are often described as the “lungs of the earth,” able to essentially inhale carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and exhale oxygen in return. The faster they grow, the more they mitigate climate change by absorbing CO2.

This role has made them a hot research topic, as scientists question what will happen to this vital carbon sink long-term as temperatures rise and rainfall increases.

Conventional wisdom has held that forest growth will dramatically slow with high levels of rainfall. But CU Boulder researchers this month turned that assumption on its head with an unprecedented review of data from 150 forests that concluded just the opposite.

Ultracold atom waves may shed light on rogue ocean killers

By precisely controlling the quantum behavior of an ultracold atomic gas, Rice University physicists have created a model system for studying the wave phenomenon that may bring about rogue waves in Earth’s oceans.

The research appears this week in Science. The researchers said their experimental system could provide clues about the underlying physics of rogue waves — 100-foot walls of water that are the stuff of sailing lore but were only confirmed scientifically within the past two decades. Recent research has found rogue waves, which can severely damage and sink even the largest ships, may be more common than previously believed.

Wildfire in a Warming Climate Could Relegate Some Forests to Shrubland

The ability of some Western conifer forests to recover after severe fire may become increasingly limited as the climate continues to warm, according to a new study published today in Global Change Biology, by ?HF Senior Ecologist Jonathan Thompson and fellow scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) and UVA.

Although most of the evergreen trees in the study region are well adapted to fire, the study examined whether two likely facets of climate change — hotter, drier conditions and larger, more frequent and severe wildfires — could potentially transform landscapes from forested to shrub-dominated systems.

Another good year for Bay's underwater grasses

An annual survey led by researchers at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science shows the abundance of underwater grasses in Chesapeake Bay increased 8% between 2015 and 2016, continuing an upward trend initiated in 2012.

The increase makes 2016 the second consecutive year since VIMS began its aerial survey in 1984 that the baywide acreage of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) has reached a new high. A total of 97,433 acres of SAV were mapped in Chesapeake Bay during 2016.

Modern Metabolic Science Yields Better Way to Calculate Indoor CO2

The air we breathe out can help us improve the quality of the air we breathe in.

Measurements of indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations are used to evaluate indoor air quality, which is strongly linked to the levels of contaminants, such as gases and particles, circulating about with CO2. This information also can be used to control ventilation, which helps clean the air, and reduce the need for heating and cooling, which saves energy. However, according to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) mechanical engineer Andrew Persily and George Mason University nutrition professor and human metabolism scientist Lilian de Jonge, the formula that’s been used since the early 1980s to estimate an integral part of those calculations—the amount of CO2 generated by building occupants—relies on old data and a method lacking scientific documentation. This means current estimates of CO2 generation rates may be off by as much as 25 percent.

NASA Sees Vertical Wind Shear Affecting Tropical Storm Muifa

Vertical wind shear can weaken a tropical cyclone and that's what's happening to the now weaker Tropical Depression Muifa in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. NASA gathered rainfall information about the storm as wind shear continued to weaken it.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite again passed over Tropical Storm Muifa in the western Pacific Ocean on April 26, 2017 at 0721 UTC (3:21 a.m. EDT). GPM data revealed that there was very little precipitation around Muifa's low level center of circulation. A red tropical storm symbol shows the approximate location of tropical storm Muifa's center. Rain was measured by GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) falling at a rate of over 193 mm (7.6 inches) per hour in storms located well to the east of the tropical cyclone's center.