A planned hydroponic farming operation in a Virginia community is expected to create dozens of new jobs and provide internship and learning opportunities for career and technical education students. The greenhouse is expected to produce about 3.7 million pounds of produce over its first three years of operation.
Scientists were able to store energy in ordinary red bricks by heating them with acid vapor and adding reactive compounds through a process described in Nature Communications. The bricks are currently expensive to produce, but if the cost could be reduced and they could be made safe to use for construction, they could potentially be used to power home electronics, says researcher Julio D'Arcy.
A Missouri school district is moving forward with a planned addition to its Carthage South Technical Center. The expansion will include space for a kitchen/food science lab, construction rooms, advanced manufacturing classroom/industrial maintenance and a public safety lab.
The Berkshire Innovation Center in Massachusetts announced the launch of Berkshire E-Talent Accelerator -- a job training program for high-school juniors and seniors and recent graduates. The six-week initiative is aimed at connecting students with career opportunities in the area.
Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District in California is offering new courses to help those affected by the economic downturn stemming from the coronavirus pandemic gain new skills to help them reach career goals. Among the most popular courses is one that trains fire responders.
Photons were reflected back to Earth starting in 2018 from the reflector array of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was deployed in 2009, providing scientists with a new way to take measurements on and around the moon. "This experiment provides a new method of verifying theories of dust accumulation over decades on the lunar surface," say the researchers behind a study published in Earth, Planets and Space.
Ancient humans mingled with a mystery ancestor in addition to Neanderthals and Denisovans as much as 1 million years ago, a DNA study published in PLOS Genetics suggests. "A picture is emerging of a series of distinct but related populations moving around the globe and frequently interacting with one another, with occasional interbreeding events that produced hybrid offspring," says study author Adam Siepel.
Mathematical models developed by Alan Turing are helping scientists better understand the unusual habits of passerine birds such as long-tailed tits, which segregate themselves within their habitats, according to findings published in The Journal of Animal Ecology. "The field work is extremely time consuming and without the help of these mathematical models these behaviors wouldn't have been discovered," says lead study author Natasha Ellison.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $26 million grant to a collaboration between the University of Minnesota, Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of California at Riverside to establish a biopreservation research center. The center, to be named the NSF Engineering Research Center for Advanced Technologies for the Preservation of Biological Systems, will focus primarily on preserving tissue for research without freezing it.
Annica Lam and Elaina Mann, rising high-school juniors in New Jersey, have created a series of virtual workshops for girls covering topics such as mechanics, robotics, coding and cybersecurity, with the goal of introducing more female students to STEM fields. Lam also developed an all-girls robotics team, and both students have earned top placement in a number of STEM national and international competitions.