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One of the oldest tools in computational physics — a 200-year-old mathematical technique known as Fourier analysis — can reveal crucial information about how a form of artificial intelligence called a deep neural network learns to perform tasks involving complex physics like climate and turbulence modeling, according to a new study.

The discovery by mechanical engineering researchers at Rice University is described in an open-access study published in the journal PNAS Nexus, a sister publication of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is the first rigorous framework to explain and guide the use of deep neural networks for complex dynamical systems such as climate,” said study corresponding author Pedram Hassanzadeh. “It could substantially accelerate the use of scientific deep learning in climate science, and lead to much more reliable climate change projections.”

Studying Our Ocean’s History To Understanding Its Future — Dr. Emily Osborne, PhD, Ocean Chemistry & Ecosystems Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Dr Emily Osborne, Ph.D. (https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/people/emily-osborne/) is a Research Scientist, in the Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division, at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

Continue reading “Dr. Emily Osborne Ph.D. — Research Scientist — Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division — NOAA/AOML” »

This process of harvesting energy from rain is new.

Researchers in Italy have engineered an artificial leaf that can be embedded within plants to create electricity from raindrops or wind. It functions extremely well under rainy or windy conditions to light up LED lights and power itself, according to a report by IEEE Spectrum.

Fabian Meder, a researcher studying bioinspired soft robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, Italy, told the science news outlet that the system could be practical for agricultural applications and remote environmental monitoring in order to observe plant health or monitor climate conditions.

Continue reading “Artificial leaf can produce 40 volts of electricity from wind or rain” »

Social insects like bees demonstrate a remarkable range of behaviors, from working together to build structurally complex nests (complete with built-in climate control) to the pragmatic division of labor within their communities. Biologists have traditionally viewed these behaviors as pre-programmed responses that evolved over generations in response to external factors. But two papers last week reported results indicating that social learning might also play a role.

The first, published in the journal PLoS Biology, demonstrated that bumblebees could learn to solve simple puzzles by watching more experienced peers. The second, published in the journal Science, reported evidence for similar social learning in how honeybees learn to perform their trademark “waggle dance” to tell other bees in their colony where to find food or other resources. Taken together, both studies add to a growing body of evidence of a kind of “culture” among social insects like bees.

“Culture can be broadly defined as behaviors that are acquired through social learning and are maintained in a population over time, and essentially serves as a ‘second form of inheritance,’ but most studies have been conducted on species with relatively large brains: primates, cetaceans, and passerine birds,” said co-author Alice Bridges, a graduate student at Queen Mary University of London who works in the lab of co-author Lars Chittka. “I wanted to study bumblebees in particular because they are perfect models for social learning experiments. They have previously been shown to be able to learn really complex, novel, non-natural behaviors such as string-pulling both individually and socially.”

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Companies could one day make superconductive quantum computer chips that function at room temperature thanks to a new material from researchers in the US. Ranga Dias from the University of Rochester and colleagues made a material superconductive at 21°C and pressures less than 1% of those used for existing high-temperature superconductors. ‘The most exciting part is the pressure,’ Dias tells Chemistry World. ‘Even I didn’t think this was possible.’

Together with Ashkan Salamat’s team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the scientists say that electrical resistance in their nitrogen-doped lutetium hydride falls to zero at room temperature. Making room-temperature zero-resistance materials is a chemistry ‘holy grail’ and could fight climate change by reducing the 5% of electricity lost as heat while flowing through the grid.

However, Dias and Salamat’s team hasn’t been able to fully confirm the new material’s structure. As hydrogen atoms are so small they don’t easily diffract the x-rays used to work out the material’s composition. And this is an important reservation, considering the publisher of the team’s previous high-temperature superconductor paper retracted it.

New research sheds lights on the resilient and technologically advanced Gravettian culture, which dominated Ice Age Europe and left a 20,000-year mark.

Climate, tectonics and time combine to create powerful forces that craft the face of our planet. Add the gradual sculpting of the Earth’s surface by rivers and what to us seems solid as rock is constantly changing.

However, our understanding of this dynamic process has at best been patchy.

Scientists today have published new research revealing a detailed and dynamic model of the Earth’s surface over the past 100 million years.

The new supercomputer system can predict the occurrence of linear rainbands, which are clouds that trigger heavy rain, leading to natural disasters.

Trust Japan to get a supercomputer to predict heavy rain and other natural disasters like landslides and flooding.

Japan has always had to deal with natural disasters as the island is located along an area where several tectonic plates meet. The country is highly vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and natural disasters. These have only been exacerbated due to climate change.