Sitting atop the highest slopes in western North America, the whitebark pine has adapted to the continent’s harshest growing conditions.
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Self-Powered Sensor Automatically Harvests Magnetic Energy
MIT researchers have developed a battery-free, self-powered sensor that can harvest energy from its environment.
Knowing what dogs like to watch could help veterinarians assess their vision
A veterinary ophthalmologist wanted to determine factors, including age and vision, that influence a dog's interest in interacting with video content. Ultimately, the goal of the study, which launched two years ago, was to support development of more sensitive ways to assess canine vision -- something that has been sorely...
Sea otters helped prevent widespread California kelp forest declines over the past century
The study reveals dramatic regional kelp canopy changes along the California coast over a 100-year period. During this time there was a significant increase in kelp forest canopy along the central coast, the only region of California where southern sea otters survived after being hunted nearly to extinction for their...
Butterflies could lose spots as climate warms
Female meadow brown butterflies have fewer spots if they develop in warmer weather -- so climate change could make them less spotty, new research shows.
The First Assessment of Toxic Heavy Metal Pollution in the Southern Hemisphere Over the Last 2,000 Years
An international team of scientists led by DRI found evidence of Southern Hemisphere heavy metal pollution preserved in Antarctic ice cores from early Andean cultures and Spanish Colonial mining that predates the Industrial Revolution by centuries.
A New, Rigorous Assessment of OpenET Accuracy for Supporting Satellite-Based Water Management
A new study offers a comprehensive multi-model, large-scale accuracy assessment of an operational satellite-based data system to compute evapotranspiration.
Stalagmites as Climate Archive
When combined with data from tree-ring records, stalagmites can open up a unique archive to study natural climate fluctuations across hundreds of years, a research team including geoscientists from Heidelberg University and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have demonstrated.
Ancient ‘chewing gum’ reveals stone age diet
What did people eat on the west coast of Scandinavia 10,000 years ago? A new study of the DNA in a chewing gum shows that deer, trout and hazelnuts were on the diet. It also shows that one of the individuals had severe problems with her teeth.
Efficiently moving urea out of polluted water is coming to reality
Researchers have developed a material to remove urea from water and potentially convert it into hydrogen gas. By building these materials of nickel and cobalt atoms with carefully tailored electronic structures, the group has unlocked the potential to enable these transition metal oxides and hydroxides to selectively oxidize urea in...