Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain An international team of health workers, vision specialists and sociologists reports that giving reading glasses to people with presbyopia in developing countries can boost incomes. Presbyopia is the leading cause of vision impairment and is usually attributable to aging. In their study, published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the group … Read more
Artist’s impression of the giant impact that shaped the Earth and created the moon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Astronomers are pretty sure they know where the moon came from. In the early solar system, a Mars-sized object dubbed Theia smashed into Earth. This cataclysmic collision knocked a huge mass of material into orbit, which coalesced and cooled … Read more
Credit: CC0 Public Domain Strawberries are a vital crop for California, the leading producer of fresh market strawberries in the United States, with a production value of more than $2 billion in 2021. The Central Coast region, encompassing areas like Watsonville and Salinas, plays a pivotal role in strawberry production, contributing significantly to the state’s … Read more
Caption:The flow of electrical current in the bottom crystalline slab (representing WTe2) breaks a mirror symmetry (shattered glass), while the material itself breaks the other mirror symmetry (cracked glass). The resulting spin current has vertical polarization that switches the magnetic state of the top 2D ferromagnet. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Globally, computation is booming … Read more
Credit: CC0 Public Domain When Americans mark their presidential election ballots later this year, immigration will be top of mind—it’s the nation’s number one issue, according to pollster Gallup. And one of the toughest talkers on the topic is former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. He’s built his political career on calls to … Read more
SS-Raman spectroscopy employs a swept-source laser, a narrow-bandwidth bandpass filter (BPF), and a highly sensitive point photoreceiver for sample identification. These components enable the development of cost-effective portable Raman spectrometers. Credit: Journal of Biomedical Optics (2024). DOI: 10.1117/1.JBO.29.S2.S22703 In 1928, Indian physicist Sir C. V. Raman and his colleague K. S. Krishnan discovered that when … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Current levels of interest in learning a foreign language are unprecedented, and there have never been so many ways to learn. The internet has given rise to a wide variety of tools for listening, reading and writing in another language. It has also led to the emergence of platforms where students … Read more
This satellite image provided by NOAA shows clouds over North America on Thursday, April 4, 2024. Credit: NOAA via AP Some who hope to witness Monday’s total solar eclipse may see the sun obscured by clouds instead of by the moon. There’s still plenty of time for forecasts to change, but meteorologists predict that eclipse … Read more
An artist-generated image illustrating possible futures in policy and research due to human modifications of the atmospheric water cycle. Credit: Patrick Keys and Fabio Comin Human activity is changing the way water flows between the Earth and atmosphere in complex ways and with likely long-lasting consequences that are hard to picture. Land use change is … Read more
An example of a probate inventory from England in the late 17th century. This is the inventory of John Booth, a victualler (supplier of food and alcohol) from Macclesfield in the county of Cheshire, dated to 1697. Credit: Reproduced with the permission of Cheshire Archives & Local Studies. Britain was already well on its way … Read more
