Category Environment/Geology

Although unappetizing in this lab shot, these creatures are already used for many other purposes, including as an ingredient in Asian cuisine. Credit: Johan Foster

A NIST team has measured the best wood-to-pest ratio for the design of new composites. Tunicates are slimy invasive exotic pests that some people like to eat. Now they may be used to make UV-reflective, flexible construction materials. They have combined derivatives of two surplus materials – wood pulp and dried-up pieces of an invasive exotic pest – to form a new composite material that is flexible, sustainable, nontoxic and UV light-reflective. The material could soon be used in a wide variety of applications, including food packaging, biomedical devices, building construction and the design of cars, trucks and boats.

The key ...

CuOx/3A2S selectively produces N2 and H2O from NH3 through a two-step reaction. Credit: Dr. Satoshi Hinokuma

Ammonia (NH3) has attracted attention in recent years as a carbon-free fuel that does not emit carbon dioxide. For use as a fuel, it should have a lower combustion temperature and produce only nitrogen (N2) and water. Now, researchers have succeeded in developing a new catalyst that burns NH3 at a low temperature and produces N2. The results are expected to contribute to climate change countermeasures and increased renewable energy use.

NH3 is a combustible gas that can be widely used in thermal power generation and industrial furnaces as an alternative to gasoline and light oil...

Inside the target chamber at the University of Rochester’s Omega Facility, a team of researchers including Princeton University’s Thomas Duffy and June Wicks use lasers to compress iron-silicon samples to the ultrahigh pressures found in the cores of super-Earths. Credit: Photo courtesy of Laboratory for Laser Energetics

How researchers are using lasers to recreate the extreme pressures of exoplanet interiors. Using high-powered laser beams, researchers have simulated conditions inside a planet three times as large as Earth. Scientists have identified more than 2,000 of these “super-Earths,” exoplanets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, the next-largest planet in our solar system...

Dinosaur fossil (stock image). Credit: © ramirezom / Fotolia

It is commonly understood that the dinosaurs disappeared with a bang – wiped out by a great meteorite impact on the Earth 66 million years ago. But their origins have been less understood. In a new study, scientists from MUSE – Museum of Science, Trento, Italy, Universities of Ferrara and Padova, Italy and the University of Bristol show that the key expansion of dinosaurs was also triggered by a crisis – a mass extinction that happened 232 million years ago. evidence is provided to match the two events – the mass extinction, called the Carnian Pluvial Episode, and the initial diversification of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs had originated much earlier, at the beginning of the Triassic Period, some 245 million years ago, but they remained...