That’s a choice drivers could make at the pump one day. But for algal biofuels to compete with petroleum, farming algae has to become less expensive. Toward that goal, Sandia National Laboratories is testing strains of algae for resistance to a host of predators and diseases, and learning to detect when an algae pond is about to crash.

Consumer drones conquered the sky. Now they look to the sea.

A study published in the journal Health Communications shows that women at high risk for breast cancer who received a letter informing them of their options for additional imaging with contrast-enhanced MRI of the breast (in addition to a letter sent to their primary care physician) were more likely to return to the center for additional screening with MRI. The letter, which is included in the published paper, may help breast imaging centers navigate the complex legal, ethical and institutional landscapes in a way that increases the likelihood that women will follow through with American Cancer Society breast cancer screening recommendations for adjunct breast screening in women at elevated risk. 

Salt, snowflakes and diamonds are all crystals, meaning their atoms are arranged in 3-D patterns that repeat. Today scientists are reporting in the journal Nature on the creation of a phase of matter, dubbed a time crystal, in which atoms move in a pattern that repeats in time rather than in space.

Tropical Cyclone Enawo was battering the northeastern region of Madagascar when NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed overhead on March 7. Enawo strengthened to the equivalent of a Category 4 or major hurricane and made landfall.

Detecting and predicting lightning just got a lot easier. The first images from a new instrument onboard NOAA’s GOES-16 satellite are giving NOAA National Weather Service forecasters richer information about lightning that will help them alert the public to dangerous weather.

Understanding how the structural and chemical makeup of the material changes during the charge/discharge process could help scientists advance battery design for future energy storage needs

Sometimes understanding how a problem arises in the first place is key to finding its solution. For a team of scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, taking this approach led them to the cause of degraded performance in an operating sodium-ion battery.

The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species disappeared and, up until now, scientists have linked this extinction to a significant rise in Earth temperatures. But researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, working alongside the University of Zurich, discovered that this extinction took place during a short ice age which preceded the global climate warming. It’s the first time that the various stages of a mass extinction have been accurately understood and that scientists have been able to assess the major role played by volcanic explosions in these climate processes. This research, which can be read in Scientific Reports, completely calls into question the scientific theories regarding these phenomena, founded on the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere, and paves the way for a new vision of the Earth’s climate history.

At high latitudes, such as near Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, the ocean’s surface waters are cooled by frigid temperatures and become so dense that they sink a few thousand meters into the ocean’s abyss.

Ocean waters are thought to flow along a sort of conveyor belt that transports them between the surface and the deep in a never-ending loop. However, it remains unclear where the deep waters rise to the surface, as they ultimately must. This information would help researchers estimate how long the ocean may store carbon in its deepest regions before returning it to the surface.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is coordinating the BALANCE project, which brings together leading European research institutes in the field of electrochemical conversion. The project aims to demonstrate a technology that enables flexible storage of large amount of renewable power. Such technologies are needed for the further integration of additional wind and solar power. The European Commission funds the project by 2.5 million euros.