Scripps Institution of Oceanography

New evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 19 confirms long-held fears about the fate of scientific data. Careful evaluation of more than 500 randomly selected studies found that the original data behind those published papers have been lost to science at a rapid rate. Two years after publication, data are essentially always

The campaign target has already been exceeded many times over When we first checked in on the Omni, an omnidirectional treadmill from Virtuix designed to translate the user’s physical movements into a virtual world, the company was hoping to launch a Kickstarter campaign in May. It missed that target, but only just, with a launch on

One involves pumping water uphill, the other one involves compressing air   Energy storage is the key to deploying wind and solar energy on a vast scale, but exactly how much of it will be required remains to be seen. North America is windy. If the U.S. and Canada had enough wind turbines, they could

By combining wind turbines and batteries, AES hopes to deliver reliable power ELKINS, W.Va. — On top of the wooded green, orange and red rain-soaked hills near here, AES Wind Generation LLC, a subsidiary of AES Corp?., yesterday unveiled its new grid-scale power storage system, the largest facility of its kind in the world. The

Lab’s ‘green’ invention reduces carbon dioxide into valuable fuels A common greenhouse gas could be repurposed in an efficient and environmentally friendly way with an electrolyzer that uses renewable electricity to produce pure liquid fuels. The catalytic reactor developed by the Rice University lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Haotian Wang uses carbon dioxide as its feedstock and, in its latest

Microplastics have become a big concern in the world’s oceans and estuaries. Water pollution remains a significant problem in bodies of water large and small worldwide; however, in addition to the visible plastic litter, the even larger problem are small pieces of polyethylene or polypropylene referred to as microplastics, which international researchers acknowledge as a

IPhone-connected hearing aids are just the beginning. Dick Loizeaux recently found himself meandering through a noisy New York nightclub. This was unusual; Mr. Loizeaux, a 65-year-old former pastor, began suffering hearing loss nearly a decade ago, and nightclubs are not really his scene. “They’re the absolute worst place to hear anybody talk,” he said. But

Wetlands are responsible for fifteen to forty per cent of the global methane flux into the atmosphere. Researchers from ETH Zurich and the University of Tubingen describe a process that suppresses the formation of methane in soils that are rich in humic substances. For this process to work, the soils need to switch between having

When it comes to exploring the murky depths of the oceans, autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have become increasingly important over the past decade. These vehicles generally fall into one of two groups: propeller-driven vehicles such as Snookie that can travel fast and carry lots of instruments, but are limited to expeditions of just a few days,