What’s hot in science and engineering? Research news for the day of March 15, 2022

Tue, 15 Mar 2022
Protecting vulnerable urban areas from increasingly extreme weather

Initiative intends to improve precision of wild weather event predictions and reduce damage

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University working under a U.S. National Science Foundation grant from the Convergence Accelerator program are constructing a new project to reduce damage caused by extreme weather events in cities …

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Tue, 15 Mar 2022
Human-caused climate factors exacerbate extreme fire risks

Hot, dry, windy autumn weather can set the stage for severe wildfires

Human activities have increased the likelihood of hot, arid, windy autumn weather and dry forests by 40% in California and Oregon, setting the stage for severe wildfires, new computer models show.

The study, led by …

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Mon, 14 Mar 2022
Researchers discover unexpected structural features in knobby starfish skeletons

The biomineralized remains are lightweight and damage resistant

A team of U.S. National Science Foundation grantee researchers discovered a dual-scale, single-crystalline microlattice diamond-like structure in the biomineralized skeleton of the knobby starfish, Protoreaster nodosus.

The damage-resistant structure leaves behind tough and durable, lightweight remains. It’s the first reported dual-scale, single-crystalline …

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Mon, 14 Mar 2022
Scientists discover new and unusual species of diatoms in waters off Hawaii

New marine phytoplankton species become a self-fertilizing system

Scientists have discovered two new and unusual species of diatoms in the waters off Hawaii, they report in Nature Communications. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded researchers at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, University of California Santa Cruz, and California State …

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