Friday, November 1

SCIENCE

A Small And Shrinking Number Of The World’s Computer Chips Are Made In The US – A Global Semiconductor Shortage Highlights A Troubling Trend
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SCIENCE

A Small And Shrinking Number Of The World’s Computer Chips Are Made In The US – A Global Semiconductor Shortage Highlights A Troubling Trend

President Joe Biden’s executive order calling for a review of supply chains for critical products put a spotlight on the decades-long decline in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing capacity. Semiconductors are the logic and memory chips used in computers, phones, vehicles and appliances. The U.S. share of global semiconductor fabrication is only 12%, down from 37% in 1990, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.   CC BY-ND It might not seem important that 88% of the semiconductor chips used by U.S. industries, including the automotive and defense industries, are fabricated outside the U.S. However, three issues make where they are made critical to the U.S. as the global leader in electronics: lower capability, high global demand and limited investment. Lower capability The ...
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Frozen Wind Turbines – The Science Behind Them And How To Keep Them Spinning Through The Winter
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SCIENCE

Frozen Wind Turbines – The Science Behind Them And How To Keep Them Spinning Through The Winter

Winter is supposed to be the best season for wind power – the winds are stronger, and since air density increases as the temperature drops, more force is pushing on the blades. But winter also comes with a problem: freezing weather. Even light icing can produce enough surface roughness on wind turbine blades to reduce their aerodynamic efficiency, which reduces the amount of power they can produce, as Texas experienced in February. Frequent severe icing can cut a wind farm’s annual energy production by over 20%, costing the industry hundreds of millions of dollars. Power loss isn’t the only problem from icing, either. The uneven way ice forms on blades can create imbalances, causing a turbine’s parts to wear out more quickly. It can also induce vibrations that cause the turbines to shut ...
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Scientist Are Tracking The Epic Journeys Of Migratory Birds In Northwest Mexico
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SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

Scientist Are Tracking The Epic Journeys Of Migratory Birds In Northwest Mexico

One morning in January, I found myself 30 feet (9 meters) up a tall metal pole, carrying 66 pounds (35 kilograms) of aluminum antennas and thick weatherproofed cabling. From this vantage point, I could clearly see the entire Punta Banda Estuary in northwestern Mexico. As I looked through my binoculars, I observed the estuary’s sandy bar and extensive mudflats packed with thousands of migratory shorebirds frenetically pecking the mud for food. In winter, more than 1 million shorebirds that breed in the Arctic will visit and move throughout the coastline of northwest Mexico. It’s possible they are tracking rare superabundant seasonal resources like fish spawning events. Or maybe they are scouting for sites with better habitat to spend their nonbreeding season. The truth is, researchers don’...
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A Quantum Technology Speed Boost And The Search For Dark Matter
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SCIENCE

A Quantum Technology Speed Boost And The Search For Dark Matter

Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what it’s made of. Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named HAYSTAC. But despite decades of experimental effort, scientists have yet to identify the dark matter particle. Now, the search for dark matter has received an unlikely assist from technology used in quantum computing research. In a new paper published in the journal Nature, my colleagues on the HAYSTAC team and I describe how we used a bit of quantum trickery to double the rate at which our detector can search for dark matter. Our result adds a much-needed speed bo...
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Filling Research Gaps Created By The Pandemic – Citizen Scientists
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SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

Filling Research Gaps Created By The Pandemic – Citizen Scientists

The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted field research and environmental monitoring efforts worldwide. Travel restrictions and social distancing forced scientists to cancel studies or pause their work for months. These limits measurably reduced the accuracy of weather forecasts and created data gaps on issues ranging from bird migration to civil rights in U.S. public schools. A volunteer looks for waterbirds at Point Reyes National Seashore in California during the National Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count. Kerry W/Flickr, CC BY Our work relies on this kind of information to track seasonal events in nature and understand how climate change is affecting them. We also recruit and train citizens for community science – projects that involve amateur or volunteer scientists...
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A Black Hole, Could A Human Enter One To Study It
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SCIENCE

A Black Hole, Could A Human Enter One To Study It

To solve the mysteries of black holes, a human should just venture into one. A person falling into a black hole and being stretched while approaching the black hole’s horizon. Leo Rodriguez and Shanshan Rodriguez, CC BY-ND   Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Could a human enter a black hole to study it? – Pulkeet, age 12, Bahadurgarh, Haryana, India However, there is a rather complicated catch: A human can do this only if the respective black hole is supermassive and isolated, and if the person entering the black hole does not expect to report the findings to anyone in the entire universe. We are both physicists who study black holes, albeit from a very safe d...
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We’re Studying Natural Anti-Freezes Produced By Fish To Make Less-Harmful Road Salts
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SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

We’re Studying Natural Anti-Freezes Produced By Fish To Make Less-Harmful Road Salts

Many people associate a fresh snowfall with pleasures like hot chocolate and winter sports. But for city dwellers, it can also mean caked-on salt that sticks to shoes, clothing hems and cars. That’s because as soon as the mercury dips below freezing and precipitation is in the forecast, local governments start spreading de-icing salts to keep roads from freezing over. These salts are typically a less-refined form of table salt, or sodium chloride, but can also include other compounds, such as magnesium chloride and potassium chloride. They work by lowering the freezing point of water. De-icing salts also do extensive damage to autos, infrastructure and the environment. And cities use them in enormous quantities – nearly 20 million tons per year in the U.S. Snowbelt cities in Canada, Euro...
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Scholars Explain – Why The US Rejoining The Paris Climate Accord Matters At Home And Abroad
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SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

Scholars Explain – Why The US Rejoining The Paris Climate Accord Matters At Home And Abroad

The United States helped bring the world into the Paris climate accord, the groundbreaking global agreement reached in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to slow climate change. Under Donald Trump, the U.S. became the only country to withdraw. Now, the U.S. is coming back. On his first day as president, Joe Biden formally started the 30-day process to rejoin the Paris Agreement, effective Feb. 19. We asked five scholars to describe what U.S. involvement in the Paris Agreement means for the nation and the rest of the world, and for food security, safety and the future warming of the planet. What rejoining Paris means for America’s place in the world Morgan Bazilian, Public Policy Professor and Director of the Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines Amanda Gorman, the ...
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Sensors Monitor And Measure Our Bodies And The World Around Us
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, SCIENCE

Sensors Monitor And Measure Our Bodies And The World Around Us

Sensors are all around. They are in automatic doors, at cash registers, in doctors’ offices and hospitals. They are used inside the body and outside. Sensors detect aspects of the physical world – matter, energy, force – similarly to a person’s or animal’s senses. But instead of translating the information into nerve impulses, sensors translate them into electrical signals. The signals can be stored, processed on a computer or displayed on a screen. They can be a current or voltage that is constant or varying with time. Sensors answer many important questions such as how well-inflated are a car’s tires, whether ice is building up on an airplane’s wings, whether carbon monoxide is in the air and how much oxygen is in your blood. As an electrical engineer, I work with sensors all the time...
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UFO Sightings Aren’t Persuasive – But I’m An Astronomer And I Think Aliens May Be Out There
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IN OTHER NEWS, SCIENCE, VIDEO REELS

UFO Sightings Aren’t Persuasive – But I’m An Astronomer And I Think Aliens May Be Out There

If intelligent aliens visit the Earth, it would be one of the most profound events in human history. Surveys show that nearly half of Americans believe that aliens have visited the Earth, either in the ancient past or recently. That percentage has been increasing. Belief in alien visitation is greater than belief that Bigfoot is a real creature, but less than belief that places can be haunted by spirits. Scientists dismiss these beliefs as not representing real physical phenomena. They don’t deny the existence of intelligent aliens. But they set a high bar for proof that we’ve been visited by creatures from another star system. As Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” I’m a professor of astronomy who has written extensively on the search for life in the...
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