grass

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain More should be done to break the "grass ceiling" of hidden school underachievement in rural areas, a new study warns. The research is published in the journal Education Sciences. Traditional narratives are that urban pupils do less well compared to those living in the countryside, and exam performance data shows rural…

As 2023 comes to an end, it is only natural to reflect on what happened in the markets we cover. But when it comes to cannabis, the answer is “not much,” which won’t help cannabis startups that are already facing a challenging funding environment. Namely, 2023 wasn’t the year that Germany legalized adult recreational cannabis use. That matters because that’s not what the legal cannabis market once anticipated, and whenever there is misalignment between reality and what investors expected,…

Credit: Science of The Total Environment (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.166769 Perennial grass cover significantly reduces nitrogen leaching from cultivated peatlands, according to a recent study published in Science of The Total Environment. In measurements of Ruukki NorPeat field, the least amount of nitrogen was leached from field blocks covered with grass and thin peat layer. The largest nitrogen leaching came from…

Credit: Delft University of Technology Dimitris Dermentzoglou, PhD student in Coastal Engineering, is investigating whether salt marshes can serve as a natural solution for coastal protection. It is why he mimics salt marsh vegetation at the TU Delft Waterlab. He hopes his research will yield a more sustainable alternative to the repeated raising of dikes. …

When a hurricane blows over a sandy shore, dunes take the brunt of the waves. That’s why land managers hoping to prevent damage farther onshore often embrace planting grasses and other vegetation to boost dune strength. But now a massive laboratory experiment, described in Science Advances this week, suggests those grasses may accelerate erosion of dunes during severe storms. The finding “is quite controversial,” says Sierd de Vries, an expert in coastal…

Have you ever wondered why your dog is eating your beautifully cropped lawn or nibbling at the grass at the dog park?Eating grass is a common behavior in pet dogs. Some surveys show up to 80 percent of guardians notice their dog regularly snacking on the grass.Grass-eating isn't a new behavior either, or only done by our new designer dog breeds. Studies in Yellowstone National Park show plant matter (mostly grass) is found in up to 74 percent of wolf scats, suggesting the behavior is possibly inherited from the beginning…

Image via Warner Bros. The DCU seems to be on an upswing with the summer’s slated movie releases. James Gunn himself has declared The Flash one of the best superhero movies he has ever seen, and Blue Beetle surpassed its DC brethren’s likes in a matter of days. With all the good in the future of DC it seems only pertinent to take a look back at how far the superhero genre has come in the last 20 years. Halle Berry’s Razzie award winning flick Catwoman has made its way back to streaming and the film has…

Here’s a fun challenge: teaching a quadrupedal robot to successfully dribble a soccer ball. It is, in essence, a core component of RoboCup, the big international competition founded all the way back in 1996. Soccer is a great way to put a robot’s locomotion, agility and decision making to the test. Two key differences with MIT’s Dribblebot: First, the RoboCup robots are generally bipeds. Second, and more importantly, this robot is designed to perform the complex task on uneven and changing terrain, adding yet another…

Along its 18,000 kilometers of coastline, China has been taken over by a green invader. Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) grows tall and thick across tidal mudflats, depriving endangered migratory birds of habitat, clogging shipping channels, and ruining clam farms. Now, China aims to beat back 90% of the weed by 2025. “This is a mammoth undertaking,” says Steven Pennings, a coastal ecologist at the University of Houston. “It’s audacious.” The nationwide…

EA Sports has announced all 30 courses that will be included in EA Sports PGA Tour when it launches this March and also provided some insight into the lengths the developer went to as part of its effort to accurately depict courses and make them true-to-life.The roster of 30 courses available at launch includes 28 real-life tracks and two fantasy setups. The real courses include iconic ones like Augusta National, St. Andrews, Pebble Beach, and TPC Sawgrass. The fantasy courses are Wetlands and Lighthouse…