fields

Pollinators Flock to Flower-Filled Solar Panel FieldsSolar farms seeded with wildflowers can boost pollinator populationsBy Syris Valentine Credit: Frederick Bass/Getty ImagesSprawling plains of solar panels can help nature more than just by providing clean energy: As populations of crucial pollinators decline, developers have been seeding the grounds of their solar arrays with native wildflowers. Now a five-year study published in Environmental Research Letters confirms that this approach boosts the pollinators’…

Incorporating crushed volcanic rocks into agricultural fields can significantly contribute to carbon dioxide reduction, with tropical regions offering the most promise for this climate mitigation strategy. Credit: SciTechDaily.com Adding crushed volcanic rocks to agricultural fields can both improve the soil and suck down carbon dioxide. Doing so in the hot, humid tropics would be most efficient, a new study finds.Enhanced rock weathering makes use of a natural geologic process to store carbon long-termApplying 10 tons of…

Collisions of heavy ions generate an immensely strong electromagnetic field. Scientists investigate traces of this powerful electromagnetic field in the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state where quarks and gluons are liberated from the colliding protons and neutrons. Credit: Tiffany Bowman and Jen Abramowitz/Brookhaven National LaboratoryData from heavy ion collisions give new insight into electromagnetic properties of quark-gluon plasma.A new analysis by the STAR collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC),…

There are places in the Universe where matter becomes so wildly distorted that magnetism grows into an unimaginable force. Known as magnetars, the gravitationally compacted cores of these highly dynamic neutron stars concentrate magnetic fields to a strength of around 100 trillion gauss.Yet there could be zones here on Earth where tiny pockets of magnetism flicker with strengths that far exceed even these cosmic monstrosities.An analysis of particle interactions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the US…

Vaccines don’t cause autism. Vaccines don’t put a protective bubble around you guaranteeing you will never fall ill again. Vaccines don’t contain microchips and nanobots. Vaccines DO lessen the severity of infectious disease and shorten the length of illness. Vaccines prime your immune system to fight the disease using its natural functions. Vaccines require over 95% coverage in the population to protect vulnerable people who can’t be vaccinated. Vaccines save lives. Get your flu shot. Actually_zoohiggle ,…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The few glaciers in Africa have long since become an important indicator of how rapidly and severely climate change is changing our planet. The ice on the high summits of the continent is rapidly disappearing, and Africa may lose its white peaks by the middle of our century. Master's student Anne Hinzmann and her…

Comparison of innovation front number n(0) approximations. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2312468120 In Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice, "It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." The race between innovation and obsolescence is like this. …

At the dawn of human history, when our distant ancestors lived in caves, and every saber-toothed tiger could theoretically cause the extinction of the human race, everything was quite simple. Women gave birth and raised kids – because the survival of the entire tribe depended on it. The men, in turn, took spears and went hunting – because survival again depended on this as well.Now, many thousands of years later, the question of human survival is no longer a question (or rather, it is – but in a completely different…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In recent years, the hydrothermal alteration of olivine has attracted the attention of geologists, biologists, and chemists. It significantly influences the physical and chemical properties of the oceanic lithosphere, and it plays an important role for the recycling of volatiles (such as water and carbon) in subduction zones. In…

A cautionary note on how NLP papers are drawing proportionally less from other fields over time“The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1490–1510). This triptych, painted in the early 16th century, is renowned for its complex and imaginative imagery, interpreted in various ways, including as a representation of the intermingling of diverse ideas and entities.Natural Language Processing (NLP) is poised to substantially influence the world. However, significant progress comes hand-in-hand with substantial…