70342375
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Based on 1.5 million hours of acoustical monitoring from places as remote as Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and as urban as New York City, scientists have created a map of noise levels across the country on an average summer day. After feeding acoustic data into a computer algorithm, the researchers modeled sound levels across the country including variables such as air and street traffic. Deep blue regions, such as Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming and the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, have background noise levels lower than 20 decibels — a silence likely as deep as before European colonization, researchers say. That's orders of magnitude quieter than most cities, where noise levels average 50-60 decibels. The National Park Service is using the map to identify places where human-made noise is affecting wildlife.
70316873
submission
sciencehabit writes:
What do the Sahara desert and the Amazon rainforest have in common? Until recently, archaeologists would have told you they were both inhospitable environments devoid of large-scale human settlements. But they were wrong. Here today at the annual meeting of the AAAS, two researchers explained how remote sensing technology, including satellite imaging and drone flights, is revealing the traces of past civilizations that have been hiding in plain sight.
70316843
submission
sciencehabit writes:
If we came across alien life, would we even know it was alive? All known life on Earth fits a particular mold, but life from other planets break might free from that mold, making it difficult for us to identify. We could even be oblivious to unfamiliar forms of life right under our noses. Scientists are now proposing some new things we should look for when it comes to identifying life in a “shadow biosphere”—an undiscovered group of living things with biochemistry different from what we’re used to.
70316809
submission
sciencehabit writes:
How can you visualize a 4D object in our 3D world? The answer involves some tricky projections and a 3D printer. One method you could use is to shine a light above the cube, projecting a shadow onto a 2D surface. Now imagine doing this with a hypercube instead of a cube, projecting it into three dimensions, and 3D printing the result.
70316773
submission
sciencehabit writes:
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is back, and it’s better than ever. The particle accelerator, located at CERN, the European particle physics lab near Geneva, shut down in February 2013, and since then scientists have been upgrading and repairing it and its particle detectors. The LHC will be back up to full speed this May. What might we find with the new-and-improved machine? Here are five questions scientists hope to answer.
70195951
submission
sciencehabit writes:
The green-eyed wasp Dinocampus coccinellae turns ladybugs into zombie babysitters. Three weeks after a wasp lays its egg inside the hapless beetle, a wasp larva bursts from her belly and weaves itself a cocoon between her legs. The ladybug doesn’t die, but becomes paralyzed, involuntarily twitching her spotted red carapace to ward off predators until the adult wasp emerges a week later. How D. coccinellae enslaves its host at just the right time had been a mystery, but now researchers believe the insect has an accomplice: a newly identified virus that attacks the beetle’s brain. The findings raise questions about whether other parasites also use viruses as neurological weapons.
70195931
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Researchers know why popcorn kernels burst open, but they’ve long puzzled over the source of the "pop" sound. When popcorn heats up, the moisture inside turns into steam, building up pressure until the hull splits and fluffy white corn bursts out, often as the kernel sails into the air. The pop, slow-motion videos reveal, happens out of sync with the hull's rupture and the corn's launch into the air, eliminating two possible explanations for the noise. That left one remaining cause: The sound comes from the release of water vapor as the kernel opens.
70170209
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Sure, solar panels are good for the environment, but they’re so boring. Now scientists have found a way to spice things up. In a study published online this month in Nano Letters, researchers describe making solar cells in several colors that still perform efficiently. The team hopes that the colorful cells could win over people averse to solar panels and boost solar adoption on buildings and other structures.
70159061
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Scientists have measured positivity bias--a tendency to describe things in positive terms--in the 100,000 most frequently used words from 10 different languages, including English, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. Every word was scored for its emotional resonance by 50 different native speakers. Graphs of the data show that Spanish has the most positive words, while Chinese has the least. What remains to be seen is whether using a different language can actually make you happier.
70152675
submission
sciencehabit writes:
In a 2012 episode of the TV series Homeland, Vice President William Walden is assassinated by a terrorist who hacks into his Internet-enabled heart pacemaker and accelerates his heartbeat until he has a heart attack. A flight of fancy? Not everyone thinks so. Internet security experts have been warning for years that such devices are open to both data theft and remote control by a hacker. Now manufacturers are starting to wake up to the issue and are employing security experts to tighten up their systems.
70152615
submission
sciencehabit writes:
A team of researchers that the measured speeds and calculated speeds of stars near the center of our galaxy don't agree. This suggests that there is dark matter in the Milky Way's core that is affecting the motion of these suns. The researchers hope their studies will help narrow down searches for the nature of dark matter as well as aid the understanding of galaxy formation.
, demonstrating that dark matter does indeed play a role in the inner galaxy. The researchers hope their studies will help narrow down searches for the nature of dark matter as well as aid the understanding of galaxy formation.
70083325
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Usually the launch of a spacecraft marks the beginning of its journey, but for NASAâ(TM)s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), this weekendâ(TM)s planned liftoff may feel more like a conclusion. Since the satellite was literally dreamt up by thenâ"Vice President Al Gore one night in 1998, it has been constructed, canceled, shelved, politicized, demonized, revived, renamed, and repurposed. Now, after a 17-year odyssey, the spacecraft formerly known as Triana, and widely referred to as Goresat, is scheduled to leave Earth at 6:10 p.m. EST on 8 February from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida
70049113
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Lately, drones seem to be everywhere. They're monitoring endangered wildlife, launching missiles, mapping rainforests, and filming athletes. They can fly high above a neighborhood or just hover outside a bedroom window. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has already built robotic fliers not much larger than an insect; once batteries become small enough, they may become quite literally a fly on the wall. The opportunities—and potential violations of privacy—seem endless. But current and new laws may offer some protection.
70025087
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Researchers have built contraption from LEGOs that can move and rotate insects every which way while keeping them stable and positioned under a microscope. The design improves on previous insect manipulators because it's cheap, customizable, and easy to build. As natural history museums work on digitizing their voluminous collections—taking high-resolution photographs of each precious beetle, bee, and dragonfly in their possession—they have to handle insects repeatedly. Now the job will be easier on the entomologists, and more insect specimens will be able to hang on to their wings—all thanks to Legos.
70021931
submission
sciencehabit writes:
If you want your new business to be successful, make sure to set up shop in one of about a dozen ZIP codes around San Francisco. That finding, published online today in Science, may not be a revelation, but the study does have its surprises. Researchers found that companies with short names—think Google and Facebook versus long-named failures like Cryptine Networks—are 50% more likely to succeed. Having a trademark boosts a firm’s chances by a factor of 5. Having patents multiplies the chances 25 times. And if a patent-holding company is also incorporated in Delaware—home to an extremely high concentration of corporate lawyers and an efficient corporate court system—it boosts the chances of success a whopping 200-fold. Businesses founded in Silicon Valley are 20 times more likely to succeed on average than those in the median Californian city.
