deepai Gravity feels reliable — stable and consistent enough to count on. But reality is far stranger than our intuition. In truth, the strength of gravity varies over the Earth’s surface. And it is weakest…
Saving water with superabsorbent polymers
Soil conditioners called superabsorbent polymers have the potential to reduce irrigation needs for agricultural crops by storing water and nutrients and then releasing them in drought conditions, according to a recent paper published in the…
3-D printed structures “remember” their shapes
Heat-responsive materials may aid in controlled drug delivery and solar panel tracking. [caption id="attachment_9775" align="alignnone" width="604"] In this series, a 3-D printed multimaterial shape-memory minigripper, consisting of shape-memory hinges and adaptive touching tips, grasps a…
Homosexual termite regicide
Male Japanese termites form homosexual couples when no females are around -- and when the chance arises, they take over a heterosexual couple's nest and kill the male so that one of them can mate…
2014 Napa earthquake continued to creep, weeks after…
Continuing seismic activity could pose additional hazards to infrastructure. [caption id="attachment_9736" align="alignnone" width="617"] Michael Floyd, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, says that in developing seismic hazard assessments, it’s…