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A teeny device can measure subtle shifts in Earth's gravitational field - 0 views

www.sciencenews.org/...fts-earth-gravitational-fields physics HSR HSR-2025 science engineering astronomy gravity
shared by ethanlawr on 07 May 24 - No Cached
  • Called gravimeters, such devices can detect tectonic plates shifting, sense the movement of underground water, reveal hidden oil and gas reserves, and track magma within volcanoes to provide data for predicting eruptions, along with many other applications.
    • ethanlawr
      ethanlawr on 07 May 24
       
      How is a Gravimeter able to detect the movement of tectonic plates shifting, does it detect sound waves or vibrations?
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Science: Crayfish Can Be Calmed With Anti-Anxiety Medication | American Association for... - 0 views

www.aaas.org/...calmed-anti-anxiety-medication HSR HSR-2025 behavior biology environmental potential research idea science crayfish
shared by emmarrogers on 07 May 24 - No Cached
  • "There have been very few studies of the crayfish brain,"
  • crayfish normally prefer darkness,
  • non-shocked, non-stressed crayfish did.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • chlordiazepoxide
    • emmarrogers
      emmarrogers on 21 May 24
       
      Do other drugs also work to calm the crayfish's anxiety. Also, in the future, could tests on crayfish be used to find more/ different anxiety medicines in humans. Also, do they show side affects just like humans, or similar that we could document the side affects?
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What the Heck Is Seaweed Mining? | Hakai Magazine - 6 views

hakaimagazine.com/...hat-the-heck-is-seaweed-mining remediation minerals rareearthelements seaweed mining geology ecology environment science Hakai kelp reclamation magazine HSR-2025 HSR environmental questions chemistry biology potential research idea botany
shared by Sean Nash on 29 Apr 24 - No Cached
  • “It’s pure chemistry,” Umanzor says. “Positive with negative, and then it just collects.”
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 03 May 24
       
      For those interested in chamistry topics, this looks really interesting.
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Foraging ants navigate more efficiently when given energy-drink-like doses of caffeine ... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240523112447.htm ants learning memory caffeine navigation poison bait uptake efficiency invasive insects zoology HSR HSR-2025 science behavioralscience biology potential research idea
shared by Sean Nash on 01 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • Ants who receive a caffeine-laced sugary reward become more efficient at navigating back to the reward's location compared to ants that only receive sugar. Researchers report on May 23 in the journal iScience that caffeinated ants move toward the reward via a more direct path but do not increase their speed, suggesting that caffeine improved their ability to learn.
  • "The idea with this project was to find some cognitive way of getting the ants to consume more of the poisonous baits we put in the field,"
  • it pushes them into having straighter paths and being able to reach the reward faster
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Control efforts, which focus on using poisonous baits, have proven ineffective, likely due to low bait uptake and bait abandonment. The researchers wanted to test whether using caffeine, which has been shown to improve learning in honeybees and bumblebees, might improve the ants' ability to learn the bait location and guide their nestmates back there
  • The ants walked down a Lego drawbridge onto a testing platform -- an A4 sheet of paper overlaying an acrylic surface -- on which the researchers had placed a drop of sucrose solution laced with 0, 25 ppm, 250 ppm, or 2,000 ppm of caffeine
  • The lowest dose we used is what you find in natural plants, the intermediate dose is similar to what you would find in some energy drinks, and the highest amount is set to be the LD50 of bees -- where half the bees fed this dose die -- so it's likely to be quite toxic for them," says Galante.
  • Overall, they tested 142 ants, and each ant was tested four times
  • Foraging time dropped by 28% per visit for ants that received 25 ppm of caffeine and by 38% per visit for ants that received 250 ppm of caffeine, meaning that if an ant took 300 s in its first visit, by the final trial, it would be expected to take 113 s at the low caffeine dose and 54 s at the intermediate dose. This effect was not seen at the highest caffeine dose.
  • The researchers showed that caffeine lowered the ants' foraging times by making them more efficient, not by making them speedier. There was no effect of caffeine on the ants' pace at any dosage, but ants that received low to intermediate doses of caffeine trips traveled by less tortuous paths. "What we see is that they're not moving faster, they're just being more focused on where they're going," says Galante. "This suggests that they know where they want to go, therefore, they have learned the locations of the reward."
  • Henrique Galante, Massimo De Agrò, Alexandra Koch, Stefanie Kau, Tomer J. Czaczkes. Acute exposure to caffeine improves foraging in an invasive ant. iScience, 2024; 109935 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109935
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Wear it, then recycle: Designers make dissolvable textiles from gelatin | ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240617173521.htm HSR-2025 HSR inventions
shared by Kylie John on 16 Jul 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • A T-shirt that you can wear a few times, then, when you get bored with it, dissolve and recycle to make a new shirt.
    • Kylie John
      Kylie John on 16 Jul 24
       
      What happens when it rains
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Common plastics could passively cool and heat buildings with the seasons | ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240627172053.htm HSR HSR-2025 materials heat climatechange science engineering physics chemistry potential research idea
shared by Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Researchers at Princeton and UCLA have developed a passive mechanism to cool buildings in the summer and warm them in the winter.
  • coatings engineered from common materials can achieve energy savings and thermal comfort that goes beyond what traditional building envelopes can achieve
  • "With the increase in global temperatures, maintaining habitable buildings has become a global challenge,"
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  • "In recent years there has been massive interest in cool roof coatings that reflect sunlight. But cooling walls and windows is a much more subtle and complex challenge."
  • "By coating walls and windows with materials that only radiate or absorb heat in the atmospheric window, we can reduce broadband heat gain from the ground in the summer, and loss in the winter, while maintaining the cooling effect of the sky. We believe that this idea is unprecedented, and beyond what traditional roof and wall envelopes can achieve."
  • The findings' impact is significant for two important reasons. First, the researchers show in the article that many common and low-cost building materials radiate heat in the narrowband and block broadband heat. Material such as polyvinyl fluoride, already used as siding material, could be adapted for the purpose, as could even more common plastics.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24
       
      Smells like feasibility....
  • "We were really excited when we found that materials like Polypropylene, which we sourced from household plastics, selectively radiate or absorb heat in the atmospheric window." Raman noted. "These materials border on the mundane, but the same scalability that makes them common also means that we could see them thermoregulating buildings in the near future."
  • The second reason for optimism is that the potential energy impacts at the building scale are substantial. The researchers noted that seasonal energy savings with their mechanism are comparable to the benefits of painting dark roofs white. This could be useful as air conditioning cost and heat related casualties continue to soar worldwide. Mandal and Raman plan to continue this research further.
  • "The mechanism we proposed is completely passive, which makes it a sustainable way to cool and heat buildings with the seasons and yield untapped energy savings."
  • Journal Reference: Jyotirmoy Mandal, Jyothis Anand, Sagar Mandal, John Brewer, Arvind Ramachandran, Aaswath P. Raman. Radiative cooling and thermoregulation in the earth’s glow. Cell Reports Physical Science, 2024; 102065 DOI: 10.1016/j.xcrp.2024.102065
  • Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24
     
    Don't know if you're following changes in climate, but... this might be an area for some engineering. What are the other problems involved with this field of study? Interesting to anyone?
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New fabric cools people in sweltering cities - 0 views

www.anthropocenemagazine.org/...ople-cool-in-sweltering-cities HSR HSR-2025 science statistical analysis engineering physics chemistry potential research idea
shared by Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • researchers have designed a new wearable fabric to help people beat the heat in urban settings. The material, reported in the journal Science, could find use in clothing, cooling facades for buildings and cars, and for food storage and transport.
  • Existing cooling fabrics reflect sunlight and also wick away sweat to cool a person via evaporation. More recently, researchers have designed cooling fabrics that rely on the principle of radiative cooling: the natural phenomenon in which objects radiate heat through the atmosphere straight into outer space.
  • But radiative cooling fabrics made so far are designed to work when laid horizontally as opposed to vertically, as they would be when worn.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • researchers at the University of Chicago made a new three-layer fabric. Its wool bottom layer wicks heat from the skin to the middle layer, which is made of silver nanowires that block heat from coming in. The top layer selectively emits heat into the atmosphere.
  • In tests conducted in the urban heat island of Chicago and under blistering Arizona sun, the material stayed 2.3°C cooler than sports cooling fabrics and 8.9°C cooler than commercial silk used for summer clothing.
  • Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24
     
    Materials science is certainly a nifty bit of engineering. This is the second time I've seen this study mentioned. Look interesting enough to dig into various materials and how they might be combined to serve a key purpose?
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Ignoring Noise Pollution Harms Public Health - 1 views

undark.org/...-pollution-harms-public-health HSR HSR-2025 noise
shared by Kylie John on 01 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 01 Jul 24
     
    I think this shows tons of promise for feasibility- especially since we have an international airport nearby, and measuring sound is straightforward. Acquiring the data acquisition probes to do this is certainly feasible. A lot of room for creativity here. If this is interesting, also dig into ARC-GIS as a tool to geographically map out the sound data generated.
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Tools to illustrate your scientific works! (open source web-based) | by Dr. Veronica Es... - 0 views

medium.com/...-source-web-based-c5bd12aaec5b GoOpen CC creativecommons HSR HSR-2025 science illustration images art illustrations modeling models diagrams free opensource
shared by Sean Nash on 01 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • 1.-ChemixChemisc is an educational app that lets you easily draw lab diagram setups and explain your experiments. It has a large library of highly customisable apparatus and various features to help you draw diagrams with ease [3].
  • 2.-SmartSince its launch in 2001, Servier Medical Art is a trusted and internationally recognized resource used in respected journals, textbooks, online resources, and more. [ In this website you will find 3000 Free medical images to illustrate your publications and Powerpoint presentations!
  • 3.-BioiconsBioicons is a free library of open source icons for scientific illustrations using vector graphics software
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 01 Jul 24
       
      This one I already knew of and used. Several students made use of this resource last year.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • 4.-Health IconsHealth Icons is a volunteer effort to create a ‘global good’ for health projects all over the world. These icons are available in the public domain for use in any type of project.
  • 5.-SciDrawSciDraw is a free repository of high quality drawings of animals, scientific setups, and anything that might be useful for scientific presentations and posters [9].
  • 5.-Draw.ioDraw.io is a free, online diagramming tool that allows you to create flowcharts, diagrams, mind maps, organisation charts, and much more. A web-based application, Draw.io is fully integrated with Google Drive. This means that you can automatically save the results of your work in your Google Workspace or Gmail account [10].
  • Sean Nash on 01 Jul 24
     
    Save these for later this year. You will likely use resources like this to aid in your diagrams/models for your display.
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Wooden surfaces may have natural antiviral properties | ScienceDaily - 1 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240619143702.htm HSR HSR-2025 science environmental potential research idea biology microbiology
shared by emmarrogers on 20 Jun 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • yet to be explored
  • Sean Nash on 01 Jul 24
     
    Super interesting, and relatively simple topic. If this was looking at bacteria normally found environmentally in the kitchen, we could easily get approved. We could even culture those. The thing that makes this difficult to do at school is the fact that this is all about viruses. Detecting these in our lab would be super difficult. I'm also not sure if we could even get a culture of virally-infected cells to perform controlled studied. This one is a "maybe."
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Simple new process stores CO2 in concrete without compromising strength - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...240626173558.htm HSR HSR-2025 concrete materials science engineering physics chemistry potential research idea
shared by Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • By using a carbonated -- rather than a still -- water-based solution during the concrete manufacturing process, a Northwestern University-led team of engineers has discovered a new way to store carbon dioxide (CO2) in the ubiquitous construction material.
  • Not only could the new process help sequester CO2 from the ever-warming atmosphere, it also results in concrete with uncompromised strength and durability.
  • "The cement and concrete industries significantly contribute to human-caused CO2 emissions,"
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • instead of injecting CO2 while mixing all the ingredients together, they first injected CO2 gas into water mixed with a small amount of cement powder. After mixing this carbonated suspension with the rest of the cement and aggregates, they achieved a concrete that actually absorbed CO2 during its manufacturing
  • After analyzing their carbonated concrete, Rotta Loria and his colleagues found its strength rivaled the durability of regular concrete.
  • based on our experiments, we show the strength might actually be even higher. We still need to test this further
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24
       
      It is a good sign when you read: "We still need to test this further!"
  • It could be used in beams, slabs, columns, foundations -- everything we currently use concrete for."
  • "The findings of this research underline that although carbonation of cement-based materials is a well-known reaction, there is still room to further optimize the CO2 uptake through better understanding of the mechanisms tied to materials processing,"
  • Journal Reference: Xiaoxu Fu, Alexandre Guerini, Davide Zampini, Alessandro F. Rotta Loria. Storing CO2 while strengthening concrete by carbonating its cement in suspension. Communications Materials, 2024; 5 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s43246-024-00546-9
  • Sean Nash on 02 Jul 24
     
    Know anyone who works with concrete that might let you experiment? I had a student back in the day who did this. They incorporated plastic polymer beads into standard concrete molds for strength testing.
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Groundbreaking Discovery: How Zinc Could Change Farming Forever - 0 views

scitechdaily.com/c-could-change-farming-forever biology environmental botany questions HSR-2025 HSR science potential research idea
shared by emmarrogers on 02 Jul 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • Sean Nash on 03 Jul 24
     
    I saw this one. It is definitely interesting.
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Microscopic fungi enhance soil carbon storage in new landscapes created by shrinking Ar... - 1 views

phys.org/...fungi-soil-carbon-storage.html biology environmental botany questions HSR-2025 HSR science potential research idea
shared by emmarrogers on 02 Jul 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • Sean Nash on 03 Jul 24
     
    Fungi as a soil conditioner is an interesting topic. This is something Eli Jenkins was looking into last year, although his attempts at growing the plants he wanted (he got started very late) kept him from really testing the product he wanted to test. I have also seen other commercial soil treatments meant to break down clay soils and keep water from pooling at the top of the soil.
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Does this wolf want to play-or attack? Take a close look at its face | Science | AAAS - 0 views

www.science.org/...ttack-take-close-look-its-face HSR-2025 HSR environmental behavioralscience
shared by Kylie John on 16 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Many contemporary studies have used methods designed to study dogs—a poor proxy, as our furry friends have fewer facial expressions than their ancestors.
  • (These techniques have previously been used to study facial expressions in cats.)
  • These expressions were common to all of the gray, arctic, and Canadian wolf packs the researchers observed.
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