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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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China Daily - Inicio
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Live from Space: Video Inside the SpaceX's Dragon Endeavour Spacecraft
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Luxury blue paint pigment catalyses its own ‘disease’ | Research | Chemistry World
Luxury blue paint pigment catalyses its own ‘disease’ | Research | Chemistry World
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Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, c.1658-60 (Art Images via Getty)
Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, c.1658-60 (Art Images via Getty)
How paintings got the blues — and lost them
A blue pigment popular with Renaissance artists catalyses a chemical reaction that dulls the intensity of paint colours. ‘Ultramarine sickness’ has long been known to affect paints that include this pigment, but researchers now say that the pigment itself could speed up the oxidation of the oil component of the paint. “If you look at the structure of ultramarine it makes complete sense it has catalytic activity, as it is a zeolite and analogous to commercial catalysts,” says chemist Katrien Keune. Until the early 1800s, ultramarine was made from lapis lazuli found in the mines of Afghanistan, which was pricier than gold. A synthetic version seems to have less catalytic activity.
Chemistry World | 4 min readSource: Journal of Cultural Heritage paper
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Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order | Quanta Magazine
Black Hole Paradoxes Reveal a Fundamental Link Between Energy and Order | Quanta Magazine
![How extremal black holes decay]()
An electrifying discovery about black holesThe physics of black holes has led to the discovery of a basic link between entropy and energy. The idea began when theoreticians spotted a paradox about Hawking radiation, Stephen Hawking’s calculation that black holes must lose mass over an extremely long time. But if a black hole is even slightly electrically charged, after shrinking for eons it will get to a point at which its electric charge is extremely concentrated — which should prevent it from shrinking further, and perhaps even lead it to split into two smaller black holes. While studying this problem, theoretical physicists stumbled on a formula linking any object’s energy to its entropy — a measure of the number of ways an object’s parts can be rearranged without changing its state. Co-author Garrett Goon says that with the latest calculations, black holes give us hints about the nature of quantum gravity. “But maybe even more interesting, you’re learning something about more everyday stuff.” Quanta | 12 min readSource: Physical Review Letters paper |
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Rehabilitating the Vandals, the bearded ladies of geology, and how to get a job in academia: Books in brief
Rehabilitating the Vandals, the bearded ladies of geology, and how to get a job in academia: Books in brief
![Book cover]()
Five best science books this week
Andrew Robinson’s pick of the top five science books to read this week includes rehabilitating the Vandals, the bearded ladies of geology and how to get a job in academia.
Nature | 3 min read
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Podcast: Super-efficient catalyst boosts hopes for hydrogen fuel
Podcast: Super-efficient catalyst boosts hopes for hydrogen fuel
Podcast: Hydrogen from water and lightAfter decades of research, scientists have managed to separate hydrogen from water with near perfect efficiency using a light-activated catalyst. Chemist Kazunari Domen and his colleagues fine-tuned the prototype system so that almost no energy from the absorbed photons is wasted — throwing open the door to producing clean, green hydrogen fuel from renewable solar energy. “I myself was actually surprised,” laughs Domen in the Nature Podcast. Nature Podcast | 20 min listenGo deeper with an analysis by materials scientist Simone Pokrant in the Nature News & Views article.Reference: Nature paper Subscribe to the Nature Podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts or Spotify. |
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Face to face with squat lobsters and swimming worms
Face to face with squat lobsters and swimming worms
![Andrew Hosie photographing a deep water sea creature]()
“When you’re collecting sea-floor creatures in the abyss off the coast of Western Australia, just about every find is worth a closer look,” says zoologist Andrew Hosie. Hosie shares some of the unexpected encounters from his last trip before it was cut short by the coronavirus. “This beautiful crustacean is a squat lobster — most likely Galacantha rostrata is my best guess,” says Hosie. (Nature | 2 min read) (Alex Ingle/SOI)
“When you’re collecting sea-floor creatures in the abyss off the coast of Western Australia, just about every find is worth a closer look,” says zoologist Andrew Hosie. Hosie shares some of the unexpected encounters from his last trip before it was cut short by the coronavirus. “This beautiful crustacean is a squat lobster — most likely Galacantha rostrata is my best guess,” says Hosie. (Nature | 2 min read) (Alex Ingle/SOI)
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Scientists find oldest fossil of a land animal | CBC News
Scientists find oldest fossil of a land animal | CBC News
![Millipede fossil]()
| Kampecaris obanensis was about 2.5 centimetres long with a segmented body. It resembled modern millipedes, but was a member of an extinct group and is not ancestral to millipedes alive today. (British Geological Survey) |
The oldest land animal ever foundAn inch-long critter similar to a millipede looks to be the oldest animal known to have lived on land. Fossil imprints of Kampecaris obanensis from the island of Kerrera in Scotland have been radiometrically dated to around 425 million years ago, in the Silurian period. The arthropod probably fed on decomposing plants on a lakeside. Even earlier land animals, from the Cambrian era, are known to have existed, but only indirectly, from their tracks. CBC | 3 min readSource: Historical Biology paper |
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Empire State, big New York City buildings aim to cut carbon footprints - Washington Post
Empire State, big New York City buildings aim to cut carbon footprints - Washington Post
If we can make it there, we’ll make it anywhere
In 2010, the century-old Empire State Building underwent a “deep energy retrofit” that cut its emissions by 40%. The US$31.1 million overhaul brought savings of more than $4 million per year. Owners aim to cut an additional 40% in the decade to come. “If we can prove it works here, then it can work anywhere,” says Dana Robbins Schneider, the building’s director of energy and sustainability. The Washington Post uses interactive graphics to break down exactly how they did it.
The Washington Post | 16 min read
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#BlackBirdersWeek aims to raise awareness, grow community - BirdWatching
#BlackBirdersWeek aims to raise awareness, grow community - BirdWatching
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#BlackBirdersWeek celebrates being #BlackInNature
People are coming together on Twitter and Instagram to boost the signal of Black scientists, birders and outdoor explorers in the United States. “For far too long, Black people in the United States have been shown that outdoor activities, such as birding, are not for us,” said naturalist Corina Newsome in a video announcing the project: “We’ve decided to change that narrative.”
BirdWatching Daily | 3 min read
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A Black Male Meteorologist On Racial Inequity And Action From The Weather Community
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2020/06/01/major-weather-society-speaks-out-on-racial-inequalityperspective-from-a-black-scientist-in-that-community/?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=32981e1f33-briefing-dy-20200601&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-32981e1f33-44992633#4bbd88735bcd
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The society’s statement is a heartfelt bridge from a science community to the broader community.”Meteorologist Marshall Shepherd, the former president of the American Meteorological Society, commends an anti-racism statement from the group and reflects on his experiences as an African American scientist. (Forbes | 6 min read)
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Remains of 60 Mammoths Discovered in Mexico | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
Remains of 60 Mammoths Discovered in Mexico | Smart News | Smithsonian Magazine
![An archaeologist works at the site where bones of about 60 mammoths were discovered at the old Santa Lucia military airbase just north of Mexico City.]()
The bones of roughly 60 mammoths were discovered north of Mexico City during the construction of a new airport. Here, an archaeologist works on one of the specimens. (INAH via AP/Shutterstock)
The bones of roughly 60 mammoths were discovered north of Mexico City during the construction of a new airport. Here, an archaeologist works on one of the specimens. (INAH via AP/Shutterstock)
Dozens of mammoths under new airportAt least 60 mammoth skeletons have turned up in excavations for a new airport north of Mexico City — and more are likely to come. “There are too many, there are hundreds,” says archaeologist Pedro Sánchez Nava. The site is on what used to be the shores of a lake called Xaltocan, where a military airport is now being converted to civilian use. The wealth of remains suggests that mammoths died after being chased by prehistoric humans some 15,000 years ago and getting stuck in the mud. Smithsonian | 5 min read |
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Topological insulators enter the fourth dimension – Physics World
Topological insulators enter the fourth dimension – Physics World
![A circuit diagram and a series of circuit boards stacked on top of each other]()
How circuits simulate hyperspace geometry
Physicists have created a virtual crystal with four spatial dimensions that acts as a topological insulator — a material that conducts electricity on only its outer boundary. To do so, the team wired up connections among electrical circuits to simulate those in a four-dimensional (4D) crystal. (Just as cubes have six square faces, hypercubes have eight cubic ‘faces’ — so when hypercubes are stacked in 4D, each one is in contact with eight neighbours.) A similar scheme could extend to even more dimensions of space, leading to the observation of new phenomena. “There are suggestions that some really cool things could happen in 5D and 6D,” says theoretical physicist Hannah Price. Exotic topological insulators could find applications in future quantum computers.
Physics World | 3 min readSource: Nature Communications paper
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