Monday 17 June 2019

Wheat myth debunked by a major new study

The myth that modern wheat varieties are more heavily reliant on pesticides and fertilisers is debunked by new research published in Nature Plants today.

* This article was originally published here

Taking a city's pulse with movable sensors

Suppose you have 10 taxis in Manhattan. What portion of the borough's streets do they cover in a typical day?

* This article was originally published here

Do video games drive obesity?

A chubby teen lolling on the sofa for hours on end, the game controller in one hand, a bag of crisps at his side and a bottle of coke on the coffee table. This is the mental picture many people have of the typical gamer. Along with this goes the widespread notion that frequent gaming contributes to obesity. Is this justified?

* This article was originally published here

Magnetism: An unexpected push for the hydrogen economy

Humankind has entered uncharted territory: atmospheric CO2 levels have soared to a record-breaking 415 ppm for the first time in human history. The need to find a sustainable alternative to CO2-producing fuels is urgent. One of the most promising and environmentally friendly energetic sources is hydrogen generated via water splitting, the reaction in which water is broken down into oxygen and hydrogen. Now, researchers from the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia are bringing this hydrogen economy one step closer in an unexpected way.

* This article was originally published here

Europe takes new step toward future combat jet

France, Germany and Spain on Monday unveiled a next-generation combat jet for European air forces, an ambitious project aimed at bringing together the continent's disparate military forces while offering an alternative to American planes.

* This article was originally published here

Spintronic memory cells for neural networks

In recent years, researchers have proposed a wide variety of hardware implementations for feed-forward artificial neural networks. These implementations include three key components: a dot-product engine that can compute convolution and fully-connected layer operations, memory elements to store intermediate inter and intra-layer results, and other components that can compute non-linear activation functions.

* This article was originally published here

SMOS joins forces with top weather forecasting system

As of 11 June 2019, measurements from ESA's SMOS mission are being fully integrated into ECMWF's forecasting system, allowing for a more accurate description of water content in soil.

* This article was originally published here

Hypertension drug may hold promise for Alzheimer's disease

Seeking new treatments to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease, researchers found the blood pressure drug nilvadipine increased blood flow to the brain's memory and learning center among people with Alzheimer's disease without affecting other parts of the brain, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension.

* This article was originally published here

Samsung patent talk reveals smartphone designs on rollable

Samsung watchers are buzzing around over a discovered patent filing with the World Intellectual Property Office. Topic in hand: a design for some kind of rollable device.

* This article was originally published here