Camera bumps on smartphones may soon go away thanks to a team of researchers at the University of Utah who’ve developed a radically thin camera lens. Gizmodo reports: For comparison, the lens elements used in today’s smartphone cameras, which gather and focus light onto a tiny sensor, are a few millimeters thick. It might not sound like much, but the best…
Tag: National Academy of Sciences
Ocean Plastic Waste Probably Comes From Ships, Report Says
Most of the plastic bottles washing up on the rocky shores of Inaccessible Island, aptly named for its sheer cliffs rising from the middle of the South Atlantic, probably come from Chinese merchant ships, a study published this week said. From a report: The study offers fresh evidence that the vast garbage patches floating in the middle of oceans, which have…
Observations of Rydberg exciton polaritons and their condensate in a perovskite cavity
In quantum physics, Rydberg excitons with high principal value can exhibit strong dipole-dipole interactions. However, polaritons (quasiparticles) with an excitonic constituent in an excited state, known as Rydberg exciton polaritons (REPs) remain to be experimentally observed. In a recent study now published on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS). Wei Bao and…
Tsunamis, wildfires followed dinosaur-killing impact
A new study that analyzed rock from deep within the Chicxulub impact crater helps reveal what happened within the first 24 hours after the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs. Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/tsunamis-wildfires-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-impact…
Chemists Discover Water Microdroplets Spontaneously Produce Hydrogen Peroxide
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Stanford researchers report Aug. 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that microscopic droplets of water spontaneously produce hydrogen peroxide. The discovery could pave the way for greener ways to produce the molecule, a common bleaching agent and disinfectant, said Richard Zare, the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and…
CEOs Who Cheat In Bedroom Will Cheat In Boardroom, Study Shows
Finance professors at the University of Texas at Austin and Emory University found a strong correlation between adultery and workplace misconduct by corporate executives and financial advisers. “[The researchers] were able to examine customers of Ashley Madison, a dating site for married people looking to have affairs, or ‘discreet encounters’ as it puts it,” reports Bloomberg. “That’s because a computer hack…
Glacial Melting In Antarctica May Become Irreversible, NASA-Funded Study Suggests
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A Nasa-funded study found instability in the Thwaites glacier meant there would probably come a point when it was impossible to stop it flowing into the sea and triggering a 50cm sea level rise. Other Antarctic glaciers were likely to be similarly unstable. The Thwaites glacier, part of the West Antarctic ice…
Researchers Identify the Origins of Metabolism
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: A Rutgers-led study sheds light on one of the most enduring mysteries of science: How did metabolism — the process by which life powers itself by converting energy from food into movement and growth — begin? To answer that question, the researchers reverse-engineered a primordial protein and inserted it into a living bacterium,…
Amount of Floating Antarctic Ice Plunges To Record Lows
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Time: The amount of ice circling Antarctica is suddenly plunging from a record high to record lows, baffling scientists. Floating ice off the southern continent steadily increased from 1979 and hit a record high in 2014. But three years later, the annual average extent of Antarctic sea ice hit its lowest mark, wiping out…
How Information is Like Snacks, Money, and Drugs To Your Brain
A new study by researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business has found that information acts on the brain’s dopamine-producing reward system in the same way as money or food. From a report: “To the brain, information is its own reward, above and beyond whether it’s useful,” says Assoc. Prof. Ming Hsu, a neuroeconomist. “And just as our brains like…