Roadway-related incidents are a leading cause of flood fatalities nationwide, but limited flood-reporting tools make it difficult to evaluate road conditions in real time.
Breaking Open the AI Black Box, Team Finds Key Chemistry for Solar Energy and Beyond
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool for researchers, but with a significant limitation: The inability to explain how it came to its decisions, a problem known as the “AI black box.”
Prioritizing the unexpected: New brain mechanism uncovered
Researchers have discovered how two brain areas, neocortex and thalamus, work together to detect discrepancies between what animals expect from their environment and actual events. These prediction errors are implemented by selective boosting of unexpected sensory information. These findings enhance our understanding of predictive processing in the brain and could...
Love is blind for male fruit flies who will choose sex over safety
Male fruit flies will become oblivious to physical danger as they become more engaged in courtship and sex.
Rain or shine? How rainfall impacts size of sea turtle hatchlings
An internationally collaborative study delves into how fluctuating rainfall impacts the development of sea turtle hatchlings, revealing that it has a more profound effect than changes in air temperature. Regional weather influences incubation and hatchling development and the impact of rainfall varies between species. For loggerhead turtles, heavier rainfall results...
Thermochromic Material Could Make Indoor Temperature Control More Energy-Efficient
Rice University researchers have developed a smart material that adjusts its transparency with changes in temperature, outperforming similar materials in terms of durability, transparency and responsiveness.
This new technique for studying cell receptors could have sweeping implications for drug development
Researchers created a tool capable of comprehensively mapping crucial interactions underlying drug efficacy in one superfamily of cell receptors.
Work toward a cleaner way to purify critical metals
Over the past three years, a team of researchers has been pioneering an environmentally friendly method to separate critical rare-earth elements from watery mixtures.
Aoudad, bighorn sheep share respiratory pathogens
A team of researchers has discovered that aoudad -- an animal in the sheep and goat family -- can catch and spread many of the same respiratory pathogens that can impact desert bighorn sheep, a native species in Texas that often shares its habitat with aoudad.
How Much Microplastic are you Drinking? New UBC Tool Can Tell you in Minutes
Micro- and nanoplastics are in our food, water and the air we breathe.