Corals live symbiotically with a variety of microscopic algae that provide most of the energy corals require, and some algae can make coral more resilient to heat stress. In assessing one of the main reef builders in Hawai‘i, Montipora capitata or rice coral, researchers from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa found that the symbiont community in those corals varied significantly in different parts of Kaneohe Bay.

The researchers' unique platform solves a key problem in water harvesting: Collected water droplets form a thermal barrier that prevents further condensation, so they need to be removed from the surface as rapidly as possible to make room for more harvesting. The UTD team addressed this problem by developing a platform with a unique shape. They cut a series of mushroom-like channels — smaller in diameter than a human hair — into the collection surface so that part of the surface material overhangs each channel. As droplets collect on the surface, they are absorbed into the channels, but the mushroom design prevents the water from flowing back onto the initial collection surface. Harvested water is collected through those channels.

A new technique enables on-device training of machine-learning models on edge devices like microcontrollers, which have very limited memory. This could allow edge devices to continually learn from new data, eliminating data privacy issues, while enabling user customization.

The SOAR Telescope in Chile, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, imaged the more than 10,000 kilometers long trail of debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos two days after the asteroid was impacted by NASA’s DART spacecraft.

A physicist at the University of California, Riverside, and her former graduate student have successfully modeled the formation of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that spreads COVID-19, for the first time.

New research has discovered that monkeys with the most human interactions, typically around sources of food, may act as “superspreaders” of human respiratory diseases. Published in the journal Scientific Reports, the study found that locations with access to human-provisioned food see monkeys from different groups coming together and mixing closely, leading to larger outbreaks of zooanthroponotic diseases. The study was led by scientists from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, and University of California, Davis, and combined detailed behavioural data, collected from India and Malaysia, with epidemiological models.

Robotics and wearable devices might soon get a little smarter with the addition of a stretchy, wearable synaptic transistor developed by Penn State engineers. The device works like neurons in the brain to send signals to some cells and inhibit others in order to enhance and weaken the devices’ memories.

For the very first time, a study led by Julian Chen and his group in Arizona State University’s School of Molecular Sciences and the Biodesign Institute’s Center for the Mechanism of Evolution, has discovered an unprecedented pathway producing telomerase RNA from a protein-coding messenger RNA (mRNA).