4,020 articles mezi dny 1.12.2019 a 31.12.2019

Unearthing the mystery of the meaning of Easter Island's Moai

Based on a 5-year excavation of two Moai found within the Easter Island quarry called Rano Raraku, the Easter Island Statue Project released the first definitive study to reveal the quarry as a complex landscape and link soil fertility, agriculture, quarrying and the sacred nature of the Moai. Chemistry testing suggests the soil in the quarry itself was made more fertile by the act of quarrying,...

Why are giant pandas born so tiny?

Born pink, blind, and helpless, giant pandas typically weigh about 100 grams at birth -- the equivalent of a stick of butter. Their mothers are 900 times more massive than that. That raises a question that has vexed biologists: why the disparity? No one knows the answer, but by comparing bone growth across newborn bears, dogs and other animals, scientists find that one idea doesn't hold up.

Nanoscience breakthrough: Probing particles smaller than a billionth of a meter

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have developed a new methodology that allows researchers to assess the chemical composition and structure of metallic particles with a diameter of only 0.5 to 2 nm. This breakthrough in analytical techniques will enable the development and application of minuscule materials in the fields of electronics, biomedicine, chemistry, and more.

The Annual Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks This Weekend. Here’s How to See it

The Geminid meteor shower is one of the most visible atmospheric phenomenons that occur every year. The shower is expected to peak late tonight into the midnight hours. During peak hours, 120 meteors per can possibly be seen. Here is everything you need to know about the solar activity. What is the Geminids Meteor Shower? According to the American Meteor Society, the Geminid meteor shower is...

Waiting area entertainment and co-opetition between brick-and-mortar stores boosts profit

With the popularity of online shopping, it's no secret brick-and-mortar stores are fighting to stay relevant. Waiting area entertainment is one way they are standing out, because no one likes to wait. New research in the INFORMS journal Manufacturing & Service Operations Management says funding entertainment is no easy task, but one way to offset the price and increase customer experience and...

Colliding molecules and antiparticles

A new theoretical study of the interaction between positrons and simple tetrahedral and octahedral molecules agrees with experimental work and could have useful implications for PET scanning techniques.

Colliding molecules and antiparticles

Antiparticles—subatomic particles that have exactly opposite properties to those that make up everyday matter—may seem like a concept out of science fiction, but they are real, and the study of matter-antimatter interactions has important medical and technological applications. Marcos Barp and Felipe Arretche from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil have modelled the interaction...

Better studying superconductivity in single-layer graphene

Made up of 2-D sheets of carbon atoms arranged in honeycomb lattices, graphene has been intensively studied in recent years. As well as the material's diverse structural properties, physicists have paid particular attention to the intriguing dynamics of the charge carriers its many variants can contain. The mathematical techniques used to study these physical processes have proved useful so far,...

Researchers create synthetic nanopores made from DNA

In 2015, the first commercial nanopore DNA sequencing device was introduced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Based on a synthetically engineered transmembrane protein, nanopore sequencing allows long DNA strands to be channelled through the central lumen of the pore where changes in the ionic current work as a sensor of the individual bases in the DNA. This technique was a key milestone for DNA...