Lifeboat Foundation

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Microplastics have been steadily increasing in freshwater environments for decades and are directly tied to rising global plastic production since the 1950s, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers. The findings provide insight into how microplastics move and spread in freshwater environments, which could be important for creating long-term solutions to reduce pollution, the researchers said.

The work is available online now and will be published in the December issue of Science of the Total Environment.

“Few studies examine how microplastics change over time,” said Nathaniel Warner, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and the corresponding author on the paper. “Ours is one of the first to track microplastic levels in freshwater sediment from before the 1950s to today, showing that concentrations rise in line with plastic production.”

An astronaut captured an enthralling image of Onekotan Island from the International Space Station, showcasing the Krenitsyna Volcano of the Kuril Islands chain.

This remarkable photo highlights geographical features like the Tsar-Rusyr caldera and its deep, reflective Kol’tsevoye Lake, which is among Russia’s deepest. The volcano’s last eruption in 1952 adds a historical layer to the viewing experience, juxtaposing the rugged terrain against the caldera’s lush, vegetated landscape.

Capturing onekotan: a stunning image from space.

A decade after the discovery of the “amplituhedron,” physicists have excavated more of the timeless geometry underlying the standard picture of how particles move.

Evolution has always been seen as a complex, random, and unpredictable process, shaping life on Earth in ways we could hardly anticipate.

But what if there’s more order to it than chaos? That’s exactly what a team of scientists is suggesting in a new study.

This research, led by Professor James McInerney and Dr. Alan Beavan from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham, hints that evolution might not be as random as we’ve long thought.

Why human attempts to mechanize logic keep breaking down.

Optical computing aims to replace electricity with light to achieve faster, energy-saving computing.

Researchers have now developed an optical programmable logic array (PLA) that overcomes key hurdles, running advanced logic operations like Conway’s Game of Life. This breakthrough showcases optical computing’s future potential.

For years, researchers have explored ways to use light for computing, seeking faster speeds and reduced energy consumption compared to conventional electronic systems. Optical computing, which relies on light instead of electricity for calculations, offers promising advantages like high parallelism and efficiency. However, implementing complex logic functions with light has been challenging, limiting its practical applications.

Astronomers have observed Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises — especially when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope takes a close-up look at it.

Hubble’s new observations of the famous red storm, collected 90 days between December 2023 to March 2024, reveal that the GRS is not as stable as it might look. The recent data show the GRS jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The combined Hubble images allowed astronomers to assemble a time-lapse movie of the squiggly behavior of the GRS.

“While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn’t expect to see the size oscillate. As far as we know, it’s not been identified before,” said Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, lead author of the science paper published in The Planetary Science Journal. “This is really the first time we’ve had the proper imaging cadence of the GRS. With Hubble’s high resolution we can say that the GRS is definitively squeezing in and out at the same time as it moves faster and slower. That was very unexpected, and at present there are no hydrodynamic explanations.”

Researchers tracked the health of nearly one thousand mice on a variety of diets to see if these diets would extend the mice’s lifespan. The study was designed to ensure that each mouse was genetically distinct, which allowed the team to better represent the genetic diversity of the human population. By doing so, the results are made more clinically relevant, elevating the study to one of the most significant investigations into aging and lifespan to date.

For nearly a century, laboratory studies have shown consistent results: eat less food, or eat less often, and an animal will live longer. But scientists have struggled to understand why these kinds of restrictive diets work to extend lifespan, and how to best implement them in humans. Now, in a long-awaited study to appear in the Oct. 9 issue of Nature, scientists at The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) and collaborators tracked the health of nearly one thousand mice on a variety of diets to make new inroads into these questions.

The study was designed to ensure that each mouse was genetically distinct, which allowed the team to better represent the genetic diversity of the human population. By doing so, the results are made more clinically relevant, elevating the study to one of the most significant investigations into aging and lifespan to date.

A recently developed electronic tongue is capable of identifying differences in similar liquids, such as milk with varying water content; diverse products, including soda types and coffee blends; signs of spoilage in fruit juices; and instances of food safety concerns. The team, led by researchers at Penn State, also found that results were even more accurate when artificial intelligence (AI) used its own assessment parameters to interpret the data generated by the electronic tongue.

The researchers published their results today (Oct. 9) in Nature.

According to the researchers, the electronic tongue can be useful for food safety and production, as well as for medical diagnostics. The sensor and its AI can broadly detect and classify various substances while collectively assessing their respective quality, authenticity and freshness. This assessment has also provided the researchers with a view into how AI makes decisions, which could lead to better AI development and applications, they said.