Climbers open Everest route past dangerous ice block
Nepali guides on Tuesday opened the route past the icefall on Mount Everest, which was blocked for two weeks by a large chunk of dangerous ice.
Nepali guides on Tuesday opened the route past the icefall on Mount Everest, which was blocked for two weeks by a large chunk of dangerous ice.
Every time you go for a swim, some of your sunscreen gets left behind. An estimated 25% of applied sunscreen washes off during recreational water activities, releasing some 5,000 tons annually in reef areas alone, according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives. That's equivalent to the weight of about 1,000 elephants, and many of those chemicals are toxic to corals. Some researchers argue that may be a low estimate, noting the experiment did not replicate the friction caused by swimming, which could cause more sunscreen to rub off.
Palmyra Atoll, a remote, uninhabited speck of land, coral and sea halfway between Hawaii and American Samoa, is one of the healthiest, intact atolls on the planet—so ecologically sensitive that visiting researchers freeze their clothes at night to kill invasive species.
In tissue engineering, the tiniest bit of improper force can harm a living culture. Spheroids—3D clumps of cells—can be used to model complex human tissues, because they can re-create specific cell-to-cell and cell-to-matrix interactions. But these spheroids are also fragile, and common techniques of moving them manually via suction can easily damage them.
From brightly colored birds to the much-loved sugar glider, Australia's native animals are a sight to behold. The island continent is home to nearly 600,000 plants, animals and insects, many of which are found nowhere else in the world.
Under a microscope, a bouquet of lollipop-like structures, each smaller than a grain of sand, waves gently in a Petri dish of liquid. Suddenly, they snap together, like the jaws of a Venus flytrap, as a scientist waves a small magnet over the dish. What was previously an assemblage of tiny passive structures has transformed instantly into an active robotic gripper. The lollipop gripper is one demonstration of a new type of soft magnetic hydrogel developed by engineers at MIT and their collaborators at EPFL and the University of Cincinnati.
Recycled polyester activewear and swimwear are now everywhere. Major global brands sell leggings, swimsuits and puffer jackets with labels that claim they're "made from recycled plastic bottles." Millions of people buy these products believing they're making a more sustainable choice.
The COVID-19 pandemic drew attention to how central supply chains are to the global economy. It also exposed the human rights abuses that can occur up and down supply chains before goods arrive in our hands.
Monitoring the sounds of an endangered dolphin species may provide clues to ensuring their survival, a new University of Otago—Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka study shows. Published in the New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research, the research is the first to use acoustic monitoring to study Hector's dolphins in Porpoise Bay, Southland, an important habitat for the species.
A University of Alberta study has whittled down climate-related reasons beavers are emerging earlier onto the ice from their lodges in the spring—a shift that helps them store more winter food but could also lead to more conflict with humans.