Human eye spots single photons

Human eyes are capable of detecting a single photon — the tiniest possible speck of light — new research suggests.

The result, published July 19 in Nature Communications, may settle the debate on the ultimate limit of the sensitivity of the human visual system, a puzzle scientists have pondered for decades. Scientists are now anticipating possibilities for using the human eye to test quantum mechanics with single photons.

Researchers also found that the human eye is more sensitive to single photons shortly after it has seen another photon. This was “an unexpected phenomenon that we just discovered when we analyzed the data,” says physicist Alipasha Vaziri of Rockefeller University in New York City.

Previous experiments have indicated that humans can see blips of light made up of just a few photons. But there hasn’t been a surefire test of single photons, which are challenging to produce reliably. Vaziri and colleagues used a quantum optics technique called spontaneous parametric down-conversion. In this process, a high-energy photon converts into two low-energy photons inside of a crystal. One of the resulting photons is sent to someone’s eye, and one to a detector, which confirms that the photons were produced.

During the experiment, subjects watched for the dim flash of a photon, which arrived at one of two times, with both times indicated by a beep. Subjects then chose which beep they thought was associated with a photon, and how confident they were in their decision.

In 2,420 trials, participants fared just slightly better than chance overall. That seemingly unimpressive success rate is expected. Because most photons don’t make it all the way through the eye to the retina where they can be seen, in most trials, the subject wouldn’t be able to see a photon associated with either beep. But in trials where the participants indicated they were most certain of their choice, they were correct 60 percent of the time. Such a success rate would be unlikely if humans were unable to see photons — the chance of such a fluke is 0.1 percent.

“It’s not surprising that the correctness of the result might rely on the confidence,” says physicist Paul Kwiat of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was not involved with the research. The high-confidence trials may represent photons that made it through to the retina, Kwiat suggests.

Additionally, the data indicate that single photons may be able to prime the brain to detect more dim flashes that follow. When participants had seen another photon in the preceding 10 seconds, they had better luck picking out the photon.

Scientists hope to use the technique to test whether humans can directly observe quantum weirdness. Photons can be in two places at once, a state known as a quantum superposition. The technique could be adapted to send such quantum states to a subject’s eye. But, says Leonid Krivitsky, a physicist at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore, “I’m pretty skeptical about this idea of observing quantumness in the brain.” The signals, he suggests, will have lost their quantum properties by the time they reach the brain.

Whether humans can see individual photons may seem to be a purely academic question. But, Vaziri says, “If you are somewhere outside of a city in nature and on a moonless light and you have only stars to navigate, on average the number of photons that get into your eye is approaching the single photon regime.” So, he says, having eyes sensitive enough to see single photons may have some evolutionary advantage.

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/

How dinosaurs hopped across an ocean

Two land bridges may have allowed dinosaurs to saunter between Europe and North America around 150 million years ago.

The bridges would explain how dinosaurs, mammals and other animals were able to hop from one continent to the other after the Atlantic Ocean formed during the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent. Some species of Stegosaurus, for instance, appear in the fossil record on both sides of the Atlantic.

Leonidas Brikiatis, an independent biogeographer in Palaio Faliro, Greece, proposes that two strips of land bridged North America and Europe during the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods. One bridge spanned from eastern Canada to the Iberian Peninsula, where Spain is today, and lasted from around 154 million to 151 million years ago. The other linked North America and Scandinavia from around 131 million to 129 million years ago, Brikiatis reports in the August Earth-Science Reviews.

The routes allowed dinosaurs to “foil plate tectonics’ plan to break up the world,” says Paul Sereno, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Chicago who was not involved in the study, which reviewed recent studies of vertebrates in the fossil record appearing on opposite sides of the Atlantic. “A continent can’t contain a dinosaur; they’ll escape. This work highlights two of the routes they took.”

A LINK BETWEEN WORLDS A land route may have connected eastern Canada and the Iberian Peninsula around 150 million years ago. That bridge would have allowed animals to hop between Europe and North America

L. BRIKIATIS/EARTH-SCIENCE REVIEWS 2016

Dinosaurs, including species of Supersaurusand Allosaurus,probably made the transatlantic trek alongside turtles, lizards and early mammals. While the Atlantic Ocean was narrower back then, it was probably too wide to swim across. Brikiatis used the dates of the relocations to establish a potential window of time when the bridges existed and considered potential crossings that might have existed at the time. The best contenders are patches of relatively shallow water called ocean shelves. Tectonic activity could have lifted these shelves above sea level, creating narrow strips of land around 80 to 160 kilometers across, Brikiatis says. Over time, the bridges may have sunk back below the sea.

Those land routes would have been somewhat similar to other ocean crossings, such as the Bering land bridge humans traversed around 23,000 years ago between Asia and North America (SN: 8/22/15, p. 6) and the modern Isthmus of Panama that links North and South America (SN: 5/2/15, p. 10).

The ancient bridge connecting North America and Scandinavia may have coexisted with another land route that connected Europe and what would later become Russia, allowing migrations across much of the world, Brikiatis proposes.

While the routes proposed in the work are plausible, the dates might be off, says Octávio Mateus, a paleontologist at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Caparica, Portugal. Species may have migrated earlier than evidenced in the fossil record, he says. “Just because you find them then doesn’t mean they came then. They could have come millions of years before, but just didn’t leave fossils.”

The bridges may also have been more like stepping stones than an unbroken migration highway, says vertebrate paleontologist Anne Schulp of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands. “A narrow body of water is not impenetrable,” he says. “You don’t need a full bridge.”

Source: https://www.sciencenews.org/

Scientists unlock 'green' energy from garden grass

Garden grass could become a source of cheap and clean renewable energy, scientists have claimed.

A team of UK researchers, including experts from Cardiff University's Cardiff Catalysis Institute, have shown that significant amounts of hydrogen can be unlocked from fescue grass with the help of sunlight and a cheap catalyst.

It is the first time that this method has been demonstrated and could potentially lead to a sustainable way of producing hydrogen, which has enormous potential in the renewable energy industry due to its high energy content and the fact that it does not release toxic or greenhouse gases when it is burnt.

Co-author of the study Professor Michael Bowker, from the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, said: "This really is a green source of energy.

"Hydrogen is seen as an important future energy carrier as the world moves from fossil fuels to renewable feedstocks, and our research has shown that even garden grass could be a good way of getting hold of it."

The team, which also includes researchers from Queen's University Belfast, have published their findings in the Royal Society journal Proceedings A.

Hydrogen is contained in enormous quantities all over in the world in water, hydrocarbons and other organic matter.

Up until now, the challenge for researchers has been devising ways of unlocking hydrogen from these sources in a cheap, efficient and sustainable way.

A promising source of hydrogen is the organic compound cellulose, which is a key component of plants and the most abundant biopolymer on Earth.

In their study, the team investigated the possibility of converting cellulose into hydrogen using sunlight and a simple catalyst -- a substance which speeds up a chemical reaction without getting used up.

This process is called photoreforming or photocatalysis and involves the sunlight activating the catalyst which then gets to work on converting cellulose and water into hydrogen.

The researchers studied the effectiveness of three metal-based catalysts -- Palladium, Gold and Nickel.

Nickel was of particular interest to the researchers, from a practical point of view, as it is a much more earth-abundant metal than the precious metals, and is more economical.

In the first round of experiments, the researchers combined the three catalysts with cellulose in a round bottom flask and subjected the mixture to light from a desk lamp. At 30 minutes intervals the researchers collected gas samples from the mixture and analysed it to see how much hydrogen was being produced.

To test the practical applications of this reaction, the researchers repeated the experiment with fescue grass, which was obtained from a domestic garden.

Professor Michael Bowker continued: "Up until recently, the production of hydrogen from cellulose by means of photocatalysis has not been extensively studied.

"Our results show that significant amounts of hydrogen can be produced using this method with the help of a bit of sunlight and a cheap catalyst.

"Furthermore, we've demonstrated the effectiveness of the process using real grass taken from a garden. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that this kind of raw biomass has been used to produce hydrogen in this way. This is significant as it avoids the need to separate and purify cellulose from a sample, which can be both arduous and costly."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Cardiff University.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

New light harvesting potentials uncovered

Researchers for the first time have found a quantum-confined bandgap narrowing mechanism where UV absorption of the grapheme quantum dots and TiO2 nanoparticles can easily be extended into the visible light range.

Such a mechanism may allow the design of a new class of composite materials for light harvesting and optoelectronics.

Dr Qin Li, Associate Professor in the Environmental Engineering & Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre, says real life application of this would be high efficiency paintable solar cells and water purification using sun light.

"Wherever there is abundant sun we can brush on this nanomaterial to harvest solar energy to create clean water," she says.

"This mechanism can be extremely significant for light harvesting. What's more important is we've come up with an easy way to achieve that, to make a UV absorbing material to become a visible light absorber by narrowing the bandgap."

Visible light makes up 43 per cent of solar energy compared to only 5 per cent possessed by UV light.

Major efforts have been made to improve titania's absorption of visible light or develop visible-light sensitive materials in general.

Methods used for titania, including metal ion doping, carbon doping, nitrogen doping and hydrogenation usually require stringent conditions to obtain the modified TiO2 such as elevated temperature or high pressure.

In their innovative paper published in Chemical Communications, a Royal Society of Chemistry journal, the researchers observed that when TiO2 particles are mixed with graphene quantum dots, the resulting composite absorbs visible light by a quantum-confined bandgap narrowing mechanism.

"We were really excited to discover this: when two UV absorbing materials, namely TiO2 and graphene quantum dots, were mixed together, they started to absorb in the visible range, more significantly, the bandgap can be tuned by the size of graphene quantum dots," says Dr Li.

"We named the phenomenon 'quantum-confined bandgap narrowing' and this mechanism may be applicable to all semiconductors, when they are linked with graphene quantum dots. Flexible tuning of bandgap is extremely desirable in semiconductor-based devices."

This work has been selected to feature in the front inside cover of Chemical Communications. The team's work on the fluorescence mechanism of graphene quantum dots recently has also been featured in Nanoscale.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Griffith University.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Shujun Wang, Ivan S. Cole, Qin Li. Quantum-confined bandgap narrowing of TiO2nanoparticles by graphene quantum dots for visible-light-driven applications. Chem. Commun., 2016; 52 (59): 9208 DOI: 10.1039/C6CC03302D

Happy cows make more nutritious milk

Daily infusions with a chemical commonly associated with feelings of happiness were shown to increase calcium levels in the blood of Holstein cows and the milk of Jersey cows that had just given birth. The results, published in the Journal of Endocrinology, could lead to a better understanding of how to improve the health of dairy cows, and keep the milk flowing.

Demand is high for milk rich in calcium: there is more calcium in the human body than any other mineral, and in the West dairy products such as milk, cheese and yoghurt are primary sources of calcium. But this demand can take its toll on milk-producing cows: roughly 5-10% of the North American dairy cow population suffers from hypocalcaemia -- in which calcium levels are low. The risk of this disease is particularly high immediately before and after cows give birth.

Hypocalcaemia is considered a major health event in the life of a cow. It is associated with immunological and digestive problems, decreased pregnancy rates and longer intervals between pregnancies. These all pose a problem for dairy farmers, whose profitability depends upon regular pregnancies and a high-yield of calcium-rich milk.

Whilst there has been research into the treatment of hypocalcaemia, little research has focused on prevention. In rodents it has been shown that serotonin (a naturally-occurring chemical commonly associated with feelings of happiness) plays a role in maintaining calcium levels; based on this, a team from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by Dr Laura Hernandez, investigated the potential for serotonin to increase calcium levels in both the milk and blood of dairy cows. The team infused a chemical that converts to serotonin into 24 dairy cows, in the run up to giving birth. Half the cows were Jersey and half were Holstein -- two of the most common breeds. Calcium levels in both the milk and circulating blood were measured throughout the experiment.

Whilst serotonin improved the overall calcium status in both breeds, this was brought about in opposite ways. Treated Holstein cows had higher levels of calcium in their blood, but lower calcium in their milk (compared to controls). The reverse was true in treated Jersey cows and the higher milk calcium levels were particularly obvious in Jerseys at day 30 of lactation -- suggesting a role for serotonin in maintaining levels throughout lactation.

"By studying two breeds we were able to see that regulation of calcium levels is different between the two," says Laura Hernandez. "Serotonin raised blood calcium in the Holsteins, and milk calcium in the Jerseys. We should also note that serotonin treatment had no effect on milk yield, feed intake or on levels of hormones required for lactation."

The next steps are to investigate the molecular mechanism by which serotonin regulates calcium levels, and how this varies between breeds.

"We would also like to work on the possibility of using serotonin as a preventative measure for hypocalcaemia in dairy cows," continues Laura Hernandez, "That would allow dairy farmers to maintain the profitability of their businesses, whilst making sure their cows stay healthy and produce nutritious milk."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by European Society of Endocrinology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Samantha R Weaver, Austin P Prichard, Elizabeth L Endres, Stefanie A Newhouse, Tonia L Peters, Peter M Crump, Matthew S Akins, Thomas D Crenshaw, Rupert M Bruckmaier, Laura L Hernandez. Elevation of circulating serotonin improves calcium dynamics in the peripartum dairy cow. Journal of Endocrinology, 2016; 230 (1): 105 DOI:10.1530/JOE-16-0038

Solar panels study reveals impact on Earth

Researchers have produced the first detailed study of the impact of solar parks on the environment, opening the door to smarter forms of farming and better land management.

Environmental Scientists at Lancaster University and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology monitored a large solar park, near Swindon, for a year.

They found that solar parks altered the local climate, measuring cooling of as much as 5 degrees Centigrade under the panels during the summer but the effects varied depending on the time of year and the time of day.

As climate controls biological processes, such as plant growth rates, this is really important information and can help understand how best to manage solar parks so they have environmental benefits in addition to supplying low carbon energy.

Their paper 'Solar park microclimate and vegetation management effects on grassland carbon cycling' is published in the Journal Environmental Research Letters.

Increasing energy demands and the drive towards low carbon energy sources have prompted a rapid increase in ground-mounted solar parks across the world.

This means a significant land use change on a global scale and has prompted urgent calls for a detailed understanding of the impacts of solar parks on the fields beneath them.

Dr Alona Armstrong, of Lancaster University, said the new study raises some key questions for the future.

She said: "Solar parks are appearing in our landscapes but we are uncertain how they will affect the local environment."

"This is particularly important as solar parks take up more space per unit of power generated compared with traditional sources. This has implications for ecosystems and the provision of goods, for example crops, and services, such as soil carbon storage. But until this study we didn't understand how solar parks impacted climate and ecosystems."

"With policies in dominant economies supporting solar energy, it is important that we understand the environmental impacts to ensure we get more than just low carbon energy from the land they occupy."

The authors of the study say understanding the climate effects of solar parks will give farmers and land managers the knowledge they need to choose which crops to grow and how best to manage the land; there is potential to maximise biodiversity and improve yields.

Dr Armstrong added: "This understanding becomes even more compelling when applied to areas that are very sunny that may also suffer water shortages. The shade under the panels may allow crops to be grown that can't survive in full sun. Also, water losses may be reduced and water could be collected from the large surfaces of the solar panels and used for crop irrigation."

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Lancaster University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Analysis of ant colonies could improve network algorithms

Ants, it turns out, are extremely good at estimating the concentration of other ants in their vicinity. This ability appears to play a role in several communal activities, particularly in the voting procedure whereby an ant colony selects a new nest.

Biologists have long suspected that ants base their population-density estimates on the frequency with which they -- literally -- bump into other ants while randomly exploring their environments.

That theory gets new support from a theoretical paper that researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will present at the Association for Computing Machinery's Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing conference later this month. The paper shows that observations from random exploration of the environment converge very quickly on an accurate estimate of population density. Indeed, they converge about as quickly as is theoretically possible.

Beyond offering support for biologists' suppositions, this theoretical framework also applies to the analysis of social networks, of collective decision making among robot swarms, and of communication in ad hoc networks, such as networks of low-cost sensors scattered in forbidding environments.

"It's intuitive that if a bunch of people are randomly walking around an area, the number of times they bump into each other will be a surrogate of the population density," says Cameron Musco, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and a co-author on the new paper. "What we're doing is giving a rigorous analysis behind that intuition, and also saying that the estimate is a very good estimate, rather than some coarse estimate. As a function of time, it gets more and more accurate, and it goes nearly as fast as you would expect you could ever do."

Random walks

Musco and his coauthors -- his advisor, NEC Professor of Software Science and Engineering Nancy Lynch, and Hsin-Hao Su, a postdoc in Lynch's group -- characterize an ant's environment as a grid, with some number of other ants scattered randomly across it. The ant of interest -- call it the explorer -- starts at some cell of the grid and, with equal probability, moves to one of the adjacent cells. Then, with equal probability, it moves to one of the cells adjacent to that one, and so on. In statistics, this is referred to as a "random walk." The explorer counts the number of other ants inhabiting every cell it visits.

In their paper, the researchers compare the random walk to random sampling, in which cells are selected from the grid at random and the number of ants counted. The accuracy of both approaches improves with each additional sample, but remarkably, the random walk converges on the true population density virtually as quickly as random sampling does.

That's important because in many practical cases, random sampling isn't an option. Suppose, for instance, that you want to write an algorithm to analyze an online social network -- say, to estimate what fraction of the network self-describes as Republican. There's no publicly available list of the network's members; the only way to explore it is to pick an individual member and start tracing connections.

Similarly, in ad hoc networks, a given device knows only the locations of the devices in its immediate vicinity; it doesn't know the layout of the network as a whole. An algorithm that uses random walks to aggregate information from multiple devices would be much easier to implement than one that has to characterize the network as a whole.

Repeat encounters

The researchers' result is surprising because, at every step of a random walk, the explorer has a significant likelihood of returning to a cell that it has already visited. An estimate derived from random walks thus has a much higher chance of oversampling particular cells than one based on random sampling does.

Initially, Musco says, he and his colleagues assumed that this was a liability that an algorithm for estimating population density would have to overcome. But their attempts to filter out oversampled data seemed to worsen their algorithm's performance rather than improve it. Ultimately, the were able to explain why, theoretically.

"If you're randomly walking around a grid, you're not going to bump into everybody, because you're not going to cross the whole grid," Musco says. "So there's somebody on the far side of the grid that I have pretty much a zero percent chance of bumping into. But while I'll bump into those guys less, I'll bump into local guys more. I need to count all my interactions with the local guys to make up for the fact that there are these faraway guys that I'm never going to bump into. It sort of perfectly balances out. It's really easy to prove that, but it's not very intuitive, so it took us a while to realize this."

Generalizations

The grid that the researchers used to model the ants' environment is just a special instance of a data structure called a graph. A graph consists of nodes, typically represented by circles, and edges, typically represented as line segments connecting nodes. In the grid, each cell is a node, and it shares edges only with those cells immediately adjacent to it.

The researchers' analytic techniques, however, apply to any graph, such as one describing which members of a social network are connected, or which devices in an ad hoc network are within communication range of each other.

If the graph is not very well connected -- if, for instance, it's just a chain of nodes, each connected only to the two nodes adjacent to it -- then oversampling can become a problem. In a chain of, say, 100 nodes, an explorer taking a random walk could get stuck traversing the same five or six nodes over and over again.

But as long as two random walks starting from the same node are likely to branch out in different directions, as is often the case in graphs describing communication networks, random walks remain virtually as good as random sampling.

Moreover, in the new paper, the researchers analyze random walks executed by a single explorer. Pooling observations from many explorers would converge on an accurate estimate more quickly. "If they were robots instead of ants, they could get gains by talking to each other and saying, 'Oh, this is my estimate,'" Musco says.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Electricity generated with water, salt and a 3-atoms-thick membrane

Proponents of clean energy will soon have a new source to add to their existing array of solar, wind, and hydropower: osmotic power. Or more specifically, energy generated by a natural phenomenon occurring when fresh water comes into contact with seawater through a membrane.

Researchers at EPFL's Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology have developed an osmotic power generation system that delivers never-before-seen yields. Their innovation lies in a three atoms thick membrane used to separate the two fluids. The results of their research have been published in Nature.

The concept is fairly simple. A semipermeable membrane separates two fluids with different salt concentrations. Salt ions travel through the membrane until the salt concentrations in the two fluids reach equilibrium. That phenomenon is precisely osmosis.

If the system is used with seawater and fresh water, salt ions in the seawater pass through the membrane into the fresh water until both fluids have the same salt concentration. And since an ion is simply an atom with an electrical charge, the movement of the salt ions can be harnessed to generate electricity.

A 3 atoms thick, selective membrane that does the job

EPFL's system consists of two liquid-filled compartments separated by a thin membrane made of molybdenum disulfide. The membrane has a tiny hole, or nanopore, through which seawater ions pass into the fresh water until the two fluids' salt concentrations are equal. As the ions pass through the nanopore, their electrons are transferred to an electrode -- which is what is used to generate an electric current.

Thanks to its properties the membrane allows positively-charged ions to pass through, while pushing away most of the negatively-charged ones. That creates voltage between the two liquids as one builds up a positive charge and the other a negative charge. This voltage is what causes the current generated by the transfer of ions to flow.

"We had to first fabricate and then investigate the optimal size of the nanopore. If it's too big, negative ions can pass through and the resulting voltage would be too low. If it's too small, not enough ions can pass through and the current would be too weak," said Jiandong Feng, lead author of the research.

What sets EPFL's system apart is its membrane. In these types of systems, the current increases with a thinner membrane. And EPFL's membrane is just a few atoms thick. The material it is made of -- molybdenum disulfide -- is ideal for generating an osmotic current. "This is the first time a two-dimensional material has been used for this type of application," said Aleksandra Radenovic, head of the laboratory of Nanoscale Biology

Powering 50'000 energy-saving light bulbs with 1m2 membrane

The potential of the new system is huge. According to their calculations, a 1m² membrane with 30% of its surface covered by nanopores should be able to produce 1MW of electricity -- or enough to power 50,000 standard energy-saving light bulbs. And since molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) is easily found in nature or can be grown by chemical vapor deposition, the system could feasibly be ramped up for large-scale power generation. The major challenge in scaling-up this process is finding out how to make relatively uniform pores.

Until now, researchers have worked on a membrane with a single nanopore, in order to understand precisely what was going on. '' From an engineering perspective, single nanopore system is ideal to further our fundamental understanding of membrane-based processes and provide useful information for industry-level commercialization'', said Jiandong Feng.

The researchers were able to run a nanotransistor from the current generated by a single nanopore and thus demonstrated a self-powered nanosystem. Low-power single-layer MoS2 transistors were fabricated in collaboration with Andreas Kis' team at at EPFL, while molecular dynamics simulations were performed by collaborators at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Harnessing the potential of estuaries

EPFL's research is part of a growing trend. For the past several years, scientists around the world have been developing systems that leverage osmotic power to create electricity. Pilot projects have sprung up in places such as Norway, the Netherlands, Japan, and the United States to generate energy at estuaries, where rivers flow into the sea. For now, the membranes used in most systems are organic and fragile, and deliver low yields. Some systems use the movement of water, rather than ions, to power turbines that in turn produce electricity.

Once the systems become more robust, osmotic power could play a major role in the generation of renewable energy. While solar panels require adequate sunlight and wind turbines adequate wind, osmotic energy can be produced just about any time of day or night -- provided there's an estuary nearby.

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

How Nanotechnology Can Help Us Grow More Food Using Less Energy And Water

With the world's populace anticipated that would surpass nine billion by 2050, researchers are attempting to grow better approaches to take care of rising worldwide demand for sustenance, vitality and water without expanding the strain on characteristic assets. Associations including the World Bank and the U.N. Nourishment and Agriculture Organization are calling for more development to address the connections between these parts, regularly alluded to as the sustenance vitality water (FEW) nexus.

Nanotechnology – outlining ultrasmall particles – is currently rising as a promising approach to advanced plant development and improvement. This thought is a piece of the developing art of accuracy horticulture, in which agriculturists use innovation to focus on their utilization of water, compost, and different inputs. Accuracy cultivating makes horticulture more manageable in light of the fact that it diminishes waste.

We as of late distributed results from exploration in which we utilized nanoparticles, incorporated in our research center, set up of customary manure to build plant development. In our study, we effectively utilized zinc nanoparticles to build the development and yield of mung beans, which contain high measures of protein and fiber and are broadly developed for sustenance in Asia. We trust this methodology can diminish utilization of traditional manure. Doing as such will ration characteristic mineral stores and vitality (making compost is exceptionally vitality escalated) and diminish water defilement. It likewise can upgrade plants' healthful qualities.

Effects Of Fertilizer Use

Compost gives supplements that plants need keeping in mind the end goal to develop. Agriculturists commonly apply it through the soil, either by spreading it on fields or blending it with watering system water. A noteworthy part of manure connected along these lines becomes mixed up in nature and contaminates different environments. For instance, abundance nitrogen and phosphorus composts get to be "settled" in soil: they frame synthetic bonds with different components and get to be distracted for plants to take up through their roots. In the long run, downpour washes the nitrogen and phosphorus into streams, lakes, and straights, where it can bring about genuine contamination issues.

Compost use worldwide is expanding alongside worldwide populace development. As of now agriculturists are utilizing almost 85 percent of the world's aggregate mined phosphorus as compost, despite the fact that plants can uptake just an expected 42 percent of the phosphorus that is connected to the soil. On the off chance that these practices proceed with, the world's supply of phosphorus could run out inside the following 80 years, compounding supplement contamination issues all the while.

Rather than customary manure use, which includes numerous huge amounts of inputs, nanotechnology concentrates on little amounts. Nanoscale particles measure somewhere around 1 and 100 nanometers in no less than one measurement. A nanometer is equal to one-billionth of a meter; for viewpoint, a sheet of paper is around 100,000 nanometers thick.

These particles have one of a kind physical, synthetic and basic elements, which we can calibrate through the building. Numerous natural procedures, for example, the workings of cells, happen at the nanoscale, and nanoparticles can impact these exercises.

Researchers are effectively inquiring about a scope of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, otherwise called nano fertilizer, for use in plant science and horticulture. These materials can be connected to plants through soil watering system and/or showered onto their clears out. Examines propose that applying nanoparticles to plant leaves is particularly painful for nature since they don't interact with soil. Since the particles are to a great degree little, plants ingest them more proficiently than by means of soil. We combined the nanoparticles in our lab and showered them through a redid spout that conveyed an exact and predictable focus to the plants.

We focused on zinc, which is a micronutrient that plants need to develop, yet in far littler amounts than phosphorus. By applying nano zinc to mung bean leaves following 14 days of seed germination, we could build the action of three imperative catalysts inside the plants: corrosive phosphatase, soluble phosphatase, and phytase. These chemicals respond with complex phosphorus mixed in soil, changing over them into structures that plants can take up effectively.

When we made these compounds more dynamic, the plants took up almost 11 percent more phosphorus that was normally present in the dirt, without getting any routine phosphorous preparation. The plants that we treated with zinc nanoparticles expanded their biomass (development) by 27 percent and delivered 6 percent a bigger number of beans than plants that we developed utilizing run of the mill ranch rehearses yet no compost.

Nano fertilizer likewise can possibly expand plants' dietary quality. In a different study, we found that applying titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles to tomato plants expanded the measure of lycopene in the tomatoes by 80 to 113 percent, contingent upon the sort of nanoparticles and grouping of doses. This may happen in light of the fact that the nanoparticles expand plants' photosynthesis rates and empower them to take up more supplements.

Lycopene is a normally happening red color that goes about as a cancer prevention agent and may avoid cell harm in people who devour it. Making plants more nourishment rich along these lines could diminish hunger. The amounts of zinc that we connected were inside the U.S. government's suggested limits for zinc in nourishments.

Next Questions: Health And Environmental Impacts Of Nanoparticles

Nanotechnology research in farming is still at an early stage and advancing rapidly. Before nano-fertilizers can be utilized on homesteads, we will require a superior comprehension of how they function and controls to guarantee they will be utilized securely. The U.S. Sustenance and Drug Administration has as of now issued direction for the utilization of nanomaterials in creature encourage.

Makers likewise are adding built nanoparticles to sustenances, individual consideration, and other shoppe items. Cases incorporate silica nanoparticles in infant recipe, titanium dioxide nanoparticles in powdered cake doughnuts, and different nanomaterials in paints, plastics, paper filaments, pharmaceuticals and toothpaste.

Numerous properties impact whether nanoparticles posture dangers to human wellbeing, including their size, shape, precious stone stage, dissolvability, sort of material, and the presentation and does focus. Specialists say that nanoparticles in sustenance items available today are most likely safe to eat, however, this is a dynamic exploration range.

Tending to these inquiries will require further studies to see how nanoparticles act inside the human body. We likewise need to complete life cycle evaluations of nanoparticles' effect on human wellbeing and the earth and create approaches to survey and deal with any dangers they may posture, and practical approaches to fabricate them. Be that as it may, as our exploration on nano fertilizer proposes, these materials could comprehend a portion of the word's most squeezing asset issues at the nourishment vitality water nexus.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Scientists Successfully Convert Waste Plastic Into Fuel

The seas are brimming with rubbish. A standout amongst the most discouraging truths about humankind's corruption of the common world is the nearness of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge vortex of plastic and other marine flotsam and jetsam that could be up to double the measure of the mainland United States. As a rule, plastic takes around 450 years to totally corrupt, and we're dumping a greater amount of it into the seas constantly – so this patch isn't leaving at any point in the near future.

In spite of the fact that our need ought to be too tidy up this chaos and stop any a greater amount of it entering the land cycle, there are different things science has evoked that may likewise offer assistance. Writing in the diary Science Advances, a joint US-China attempt has depicted a path in which this sort of plastic can be changed over into a wellspring of fuel.

This is all in view of the way that plastics – blends of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen iotas organized in long chains – are produced using fossil powers, so it makes sense that they can be changed over into a sort of fossil fuel. The creators chose to center their endeavors on polyethylene (PE), a basic chain particle that is likewise a standout amongst the most normally utilized sorts of plastic as a part of the world.

"PE is the biggest volume plastic on the planet, with yearly creation surpassing 100 million metric tons [110 million US tons]," the researchers, drove by Xiangqing Jia, a specialist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, write in their study.

PE takes a surprisingly long time to debate and requires vivacious synthetic procedures with the goal it should respond to anything – or be changed over once again into a fuel. Essentially warming it doesn't work, as the particle chains (or "polymers") will separate turbulently into numerous littler variations, all of which have their own particular properties. Monitoring this, the group swung to impetuses, chemicals that quicken response forms.

The group first uses an iridium-rich compound, which expels the hydrogen particles from PE. The carbon molecules abandoned start shaping twofold bonds with each other, which are more receptive to specific chemicals than the first single bonds.

The second impetus, which contains a blend of aluminum, oxygen, and rhenium, assaults this new defenselessness and crushes the polymer separated. After this, the freed hydrogen iotas are by and by re-detained back onto the divided polymer sections ("monomers").

The deciding consequence of this mixture of concoction wizardry is to turn the first PE object – which for this situation incorporated a plastic sack, a container, and sustenance bundling – into a fuel. Changing the measure of hydrogens and carbons on a hydrocarbon polymer truly changes it into a totally diverse synthetic, and this is definitely what this group has figured out how to accomplish without utilizing much warmth, and consequently vitality, in doing as such.

Changing the pace of the response, or the level of beginning reactant discontinuity, permits the group to pick whether they need a fluid fuel to rise toward the end, or, then again, a sort of wax. This procedure appears to deliver generally perfect, low-contamination fills, concerning other fossil powers. Not putting vitality into unearthing fossil energies is additionally something to be thankful for, earth talking.

Ideally, however, this doesn't turn into the go-to future strategy for creating vitality. Reusing plastic to be utilized as a fuel is a smart thought, regardless, we ought to concentrate on vitality sources that have a low-to-zero carbon impression, as renewables, and atomic. Most importantly, we ought to quit squandering such a great amount of plastic in any case.

There's A Rather Unusual Way To Fix Your Phone If You've Dunked It In Water

Dropping your telephone into a liquid conveying vessel, whether that be a swimming pool, a lake, or an (ideally generally void) latrine, is a significantly chafing occasion, and one that numerous telephones tend not to return in place from. There are regularly two choices now: putting your telephone in some rice, which can suck out the water, or swear abundantly and sulk.

As indicated by telephone organization Gazelle, there is a third choice, insofar as you possess a feline or cat. No, in spite of their smarts, your catlike partners themselves won't have the capacity to help you – actually, they most likely couldn't care less about your mechanical quandary. Things being what they are, a particular sort of feline litter is more viable at sparing your telephone from a watery demise than rice.

In a post entitled "The Truth About Rice, the Galaxy and Everything," which certainly oversells itself, Gazelle clarifies how its devoted group of telephone revivers deliberately suffocated nine tragic cell phones before endeavoring to restore everyone by means of various techniques, including rice, moment oats, magnificent couscous, general feline litter, and precious stone kitty litter – the remainder of which is silica gel, the getting dried out specialist found in little parcels inside numerous gadgets bundles.

The organization suggests that you shake however much of the water out of your telephone in the first place, permitting it to quickly air dry, then place it in a sack of precious stone feline litter for whatever length of time that could reasonably be expected. They recommend that it takes a few days for this to work, so the holdup guarantees to be nail-gnawing.

Assuming, be that as it may, your telephone still isn't operational 48 to 72 hours after the awkwardness happened, then you might need to purchase yourself another telephone.

China Completes World's Largest Radio Telescope

Our ears to the sky have quite recently turned into significantly more touchy. China has wrapped up the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), the biggest radio telescope on the planet.

The telescope costs $180 million dollars (1.2 billion yuan) and took five years to manufacture. It is essentially bigger than the US worked observatory in Arecibo, which is 305 meters (1,000 feet) over.

The last triangular board was put in the reflector on Sunday, with FAST now all set to begin perceptions in September. Also, it's sheltered to say researchers are anticipating it.

"As the world's biggest single-gap telescope situated at a to a great degree radio-calm site, its logical effect on cosmology will be exceptional, and it will absolutely alter different territories of the normal sciences," Nan Rendong, the boss researcher with the FAST Project, told Xinhua news office.

The telescope is situated in a three-slope valley in China's southwestern territory of Guizhou. This site was chosen both for its regular despondency, which means lower developments costs and on the grounds that it is situated far from adjacent towns. There is a 5-kilometer (3-mile) territory around the office that isolates it from any human movement, subsequently lessening potential obstruction.

Amid the early science stage, which will last a few years, the instrument will be changed and confirmed to achieve top affectability. Once the early operation stages are finished, the telescope will be interested in researchers around the globe, as indicated by Peng Bo, chief of the NAO Radio Astronomy Technology Laboratory.

The telescope will have the capacity to study vacillating and far away galactic occasions, from weak pulsars to nonpartisan hydrogen in the early universe. The telescope group is likewise cheerful for the identification of amino acids, the building pieces of life, in interstellar space.

The site could likewise be utilized as a part of the quest for extraterrestrial insight. "Quick's capability to find an outsider progress will be 5 to 10 times that of current gear, as should be obvious more distant and darker planets," said Peng Bo.

Radio telescopes are colossally essential in space science, helping and fortifying the discoveries from different instruments and additionally giving a special take a gander at the universe.

Juno Enters Jupiter Orbit: How To Watch Live Stream Of Crucial And Historic Moment

Following 15 years, the world is at long last seeing the passage of NASA's Juno test into Jupiter's circle today evening time.

Viewers can get a live stream of the occasion beginning at 10:30 p.m. Eastern, and the landing itself is set to occur at 11:53 p.m.

The mission, be that as it may, is not without peril. Juno will need to change to autopilot when it does a 35-minute motor smolder (setting hydrazine fuel ablaze) then push the other way for the test to "embed" itself into Jupiter's circle.

This is a urgent move that could either "represent the moment of truth" every one of the years of arranging, says Rick Nybakken, Juno venture administrator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Juno has been going in space for a long time. To inspire it to sink into space, it will need to start a lull at a separation of 2,609 miles from the planet.

One wrong move amid the motor blaze could send the test flying past the planet. On top of this test, researchers note, there is likewise no real way to control the test progressively since it takes 48 minutes for light to head out from Earth to Jupiter, accordingly deferring orders between the lab and the test.

To abstain from coming up short on force, Juno should alter its situating and guide itself to the sun not long after it enters circle.

"We must get blood coursing through Juno's veins once more," says Scott Bolton, the test's primary specialist from the Southwest Research Institute.

Jupiter's own particular planetary conditions are additionally a vital variable to the achievement (or disappointment) of the orbital insertion. For one, the Juno test will be hit hard by influxes of electrons in Jupiter's climate, and this could "debase the gadgets," as indicated by JPL's Heidi Becker. She drives the observing of radiation experienced by the test.

Jupiter's attractive field is apparently 20,000 times more grounded than Earth's. The radiation likewise gives the planet a standout amongst the most serious situations in the close planetary system.

The Juno test will confront the harshest territories of this environment the moment it starts the motor blaze and orbital insertion.

NASA analysts are intending to study Jupiter's remarkable surroundings, from its environment down to its exceptionally center. Tech Times prior reported why this mission is significant to researchers, incorporating its likeness in structure to the sun.

"Consider Juno today evening time and send a major wish as well," includes Becker.

The group at NASA is giving you a front-line perspective of this essential and notable occasion in space history. You can get the live stream in the video underneath:

Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjfQCTat-8s

Our Electromagnetic Universe

Electromagnetic strengths are a crucial component to all life on Earth anyway; it is turning out to be progressively evident that electromagnetic powers are grinding away amongst a wide range of grandiose bodies and their communication with each other.

Electromagnetism. What is it? It is one of the principal strengths in nature that exists inside everything permitting associations between a wide range of bodies to be conceivable. Basically; it is electrically accused particles in conjunction of uncharged attractive powers that better portray our physical responses amongst other individuals and our universe. As individuals, we are comprised of matter as well as electromagnetic powers too. Electrical streams sent from the cerebrum to the body and back convey messages that decipher as summons and reactions, for example, to walk or to feel torment. Attractive powers of the mind, for example, those frequently saw in winged animals, are utilized generally for relocation, however, people for a large number of years have utilized such powers for mending.

Much of people, planets and whole universes too are comprised of electromagnetic vitality. This is the place Electric Comet scholars start their comet proposal, from the primordial flotsam and jetsam in which Solar Systems are made from. With this said, it is trusted that passing comets electromagnetically affect both the Sun and on Earth. Customarily it was trusted that comets were just solidified wads of ice that had no impact on Earth unless of an immediate effect, in any case, the late proof is starting to test this hypothesis. Comets achieving perihelion and additionally Sun plunging comets have appeared to have been trailed by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) presently. And additionally, it is likewise being proposed that Sunspot Activity and Solar Flaring increments on the Sun while comets are in different orbital fields before achieving perihelion because of the electromagnetic charges between the two grandiose bodies.

Clearly, the Sun has an electromagnetic impact here on Earth. Charged plasma particles, which are comprised of a wide range of components including hydrogen and iron, discharge from the Sun affecting Earth's Magnetosphere disturbing or cheating electrical lattices and also reinforcing the Auroral Electrojet bringing on the Aurora Lights to be unmistakable over most of the globe. The Magnetosphere on Earth alone is comprised of an electromagnetic impact brought on by the turning impact of Earth's electrically-conductive center. The internal planets additionally have an electromagnetic impact and share attractive availability on both Earth and the Sun once they turn out to be geocentrically or heliocentrically adjusted. The impact of this is generally expanded Solar Flaring from the Sun and additionally expanded Seismic Activity here on Earth.

In outline, all bodies interface with each other in any case on the off chance that they are made out of natural materials or grandiose. As innovation develops so does the capacity to watch electromagnetic associations amongst comets and planets and also stars and universes. The capacity to pick up a comprehension of electromagnetism and the whole Electromagnetic Spectrum is critical for people and our journey to finding our motivation.

Samsung Working on an 11K Resolution Display for Mobile

On the off chance that you thought the Galaxy was sharp, simply hold up. Samsung as of late banded together with the South Korean government and 13 organizations from everywhere throughout the world to build up an 11k determination show. Right around three times more honed than the clearest financially accessible screen as of now accessible, this declaration gives Samsung a tremendous favorable position over its rivals, who have yet to try and report the advancement of an 8k screen.

Determination alludes to the quantity of pixels on a screen; the more pixels in a presentation, the clearer the picture. To give you a thought of what makes 11k determination so unique, investigate the accompanying:

720p resolution= 1,280 X 720 pixels

1080p determination (for the most part acknowledged industry standard)= 1,920 X 1,080 pixels

4K determination (right now just accessible on TVs)= 3,840 × 2,160 pixels

8k determination (still being developed) = 7,680 × 4,320 pixels

11k resolution= 11,264 х 6,336 pixels

It doesn't take a virtuoso to perceive that 11,264 is significantly more than 7,680, which is the reason Samsung's declaration is so stunning; fitting that numerous pixel on a screen is hard to envision. Nobody comprehends what an 11k showcase will resemble; the clarity could even approach that of a genuine item.

It's simpler to execute new innovation on bigger gadgets, which is the reason TVs dependably get higher determination screens before tablets and cell phones. This slower improvement time implies that you can expect the determination of most cell phones to be simply under the business standard. At this moment, the normal TV is 1080p and most cell phones have 720p screen resolutions. The Samsung Galaxy S6 works at higher resolutions(2,560 X 1,440), yet this is the exemption as opposed to the guideline; the iPhone 6, one of the world's most prominent telephones, works has a 1,242 X 2,208 showcase.

Try not totally your pixels before they're created; there are still two or three things to consider around 11k presentations. While an 11k screen creates a clearer picture, you won't see the distinction; a few studies demonstrate that the human eye can't separate somewhere around 720p and 1080p, a great deal less notice a contrast somewhere around 8k and 11k. There must be a point where the measure of pixels present won't matter, on the grounds that your mind won't have the capacity to prepare their presence.

Samsung rushes to bring up that while the human eye will most likely be unable to see the distinction in clarity, 11k gadgets may deliver a 3D impact (either all alone or by including a couple key parts). This could imply that interestingly, we will have the capacity to see clear, three-dimensional pictures without the assistance of glasses. While this is energizing, nobody recognizes what the impact of delayed introduction to 3D pictures will have on eye wellbeing. Nintendo's 3DS, which creates a 3D picture without the guide of glasses, has issued notices that youngsters less than 6 years old ought not to utilize the gadget.

The 3DS works uniquely in contrast to Samsung's proposed 11k gadget clients must hold the gadget at a specific point to view it in 3D and the 3D pictures are not almost as clear 2D ones, but rather nobody will know how 11k will impact youngsters (or grown-ups) until it is completely created.

Battery life is additionally a worry. It takes a considerable measure of energy to deliver a high determination picture, which can rapidly deplete your cell phone's battery. At 16.5 hours of standby time, the S6 is a standout amongst the most battery effective telephones, however when you consider exercises that really utilize the screen (i.e. surfing the web or checking email), battery life drops significantly. Either Samsung is anticipating growing new battery innovation when 11k versatile is discharged or they must incorporate extra batteries with each gadget.

There is likewise the subject of what being "accessible" means. Samsung is wanting to uncover a model 11k machine at the 2018 Olympics in their nation of origin of South Korea, be that as it may, one can expect that this will be a TV instead of a cell phone. It is plausible 11k TVs won't be economically accessible until 2019 at the soonest, however, most specialists anticipate that they will be in stores before the end of 2020.

On the off chance that versatile patterns proceed with, this implies cell phones won't get 11k resolutions until no less than 2022. Maybe Samsung ought to have said, "in the long run accessible on cell phones," in spite of the fact that that doesn't sound as great in features. Samsung is incredible at creating restrictive equipment light years in front of contenders (see the S6's dazzling determination), so the possibility of a concurrent 11k TV and portable discharge isn't incomprehensible; it's simply improbable.

Still, the possibility of a 3D 11k telephone sounds energizing; who wouldn't like to circle
conversing with a 3D picture like Obi-Wan Kenobi? At this moment it sounds a lot for a telephone to handle,but as we have found lately, today's outlandish rapidly turns into tomorrow's likely.