discuss Science & Technology news & discussion

New Technique Could Turn Plastic Back Into Oil, Which Is … Something

There is way too much plastic in the world—and we’re making more every day, even as we struggle to find a way to get rid of the old stuff. A new study poses an interesting solution: Melting plastic bags and bottles back into the oil it was originally made from.

The new research, published Wednesday in Science Advances, looks at a technique called pyrolysis, which essentially melts down polyolefin into its original form—aka oil and gas. Polyolefins are a very common type of plastic in everyday items from drinking straws to packaging to thermal underwear to plastic cling wrap. It accounts for two-thirds of the world’s plastic demand. The production of these kinds of plastics has been a huge boon for the oil and gas industry, and is giving fossil fuel producers a glimmer of hope for the future; while plastics only account for 14% of oil demand today, they’re projected to make up half the world’s demand for oil by 2050.

https://earther.gizmodo.com/new-technique-could-turn-plastic-back-into-oil-which-i-1846733316

Physicists Have Caught Electron Orbits in an Exciton Quasiparticle For The First Time



There's been a fabulous new achievement in particle physics.

For the first time, scientists have managed to image the orbits of electrons within a quasiparticle known as an exciton - a result that has allowed them to finally measure the excitonic wave function describing the spatial distribution of electron momentum within the quasiparticle.

This achievement has been sought since the discovery of excitons in the 1930s, and while it may sound abstract at first, it could help in the development of various technologies, including quantum tech applications.

"Excitons are really unique and interesting particles; they are electrically neutral which means they behave very differently within materials from other particles like electrons. Their presence can really change the way a material responds to light," said physicist Michael Man of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit in Japan.

"This work draws us closer to fully understanding the nature of excitons."

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/scient...er-image-of-an-electron-s-orbit-in-an-exciton

New Analysis Finds a Mysterious Second Author For One of The Dead Sea Scrolls

Ever since the Dead Sea Scrolls were accidentally discovered over 70 years ago in a cave in Israel, they have been a source of fascination.

The scrolls are famous for containing the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible. But exactly who wrote these important documents has been a mystery. Now, thanks to the use of technology, we're getting closer to understanding some of the background to these enigmatic texts.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Groningen's Qumran Institute have put together a robust investigation into the paleography – the study of old handwriting – of one of the scrolls.

Through a series of painstaking processes including digitization, machine reading and statistical analysis, the team propose that two scribes with very similar handwriting probably wrote the two halves of the manuscript.

The scroll in question, 1QIsaa, is a large manuscript and one of seven found near the Dead Sea at Qumran, Israel in 1946. The 2,000-year-old scroll preserves the 66 chapters of the Hebrew Bible's Book of Isaiah and predates other Hebrew manuscripts of Isaiah by over 1,000 years.

...A different scribe is not the only possible explanation, however. The authors note that a change of pen, the sharpening of a nib, a change in writing conditions or in the health of the scribe could contribute to the difference they found.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-stud...olls-finds-they-could-have-been-a-team-effort

Dementia deaths in Australia fell during Covid-19 pandemic

Early evidence suggests measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus such as Melbourne’s lockdown reduced the chances of other infections.

It contrasts with the experience of other developed countries such as the UK where mortality among people with dementia, even when not due to Covid-19, rose during the pandemic, she said.

Measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19 included implementing social distancing and, at times, enforcing mask-wearing and lockdowns in areas where outbreaks occurred.

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...hs-in-australia-fell-during-covid-19-pandemic

American Honey Still Contains Radioactive Fallout From Nuclear Tests Decades Ago

Traces of radioactive fallout from nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s can still be found in American honey, new research reveals.

The radioactive isotope identified, cesium-137, falls below levels considered to be harmful – but the amounts measured nonetheless emphasize the lingering persistence of environmental contaminants in the nuclear age, even a half-century after international bomb tests ended.

"There was a period in which we tested hundreds of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere," lead researcher Jim Kaste, an environmental geochemist at William & Mary university in Williamsburg, Virginia, explained last year in comments about the research.

"What that did was put a blanket of these isotopes into the environment during a very narrow time window."

One of those isotopes was cesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission involving the reaction of uranium and plutonium, which can often be found in trace amounts in food sources due to such nuclear contamination of the environment.

Read on...

https://www.sciencealert.com/americ...active-fallout-from-nuclear-tests-decades-ago

CraigD said:

Indonesian submarine goes missing north of Bali
An Indonesian navy submarine has gone missing with 53 people on board, military officials say.

The submarine was conducting a drill north of the island of Bali on Wednesday, but it failed to report back and contact was lost.

Indonesia's military chief said warships had been dispatched to find the KRI Nanggala-402 vessel.

Officials have called on Australia and Singapore to help in the search. The countries have not publicly commented.

The German-made submarine is thought to have disappeared in waters about 60 miles (100km) off the coast of Bali early on Wednesday morning.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-56829278

Click to expand...

Worrying find after submarine with 53 people on board vanishes

Indonesian rescuers searching for a submarine that went missing with 53 people on board found an oil spill on Wednesday near where the vessel dived, authorities said.

The 44-year-old submarine, KRI Nanggala-402, was conducting a torpedo drill when it failed to relay the results as expected, a navy spokesman said.

An aerial search found an oil spill near the submarine’s dive location and two navy vessels with sonar capability have been deployed to assist in the search.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/worrying-find-after-submarine-53-people-board-vanished-005935827.html

More information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KRI_Nanggala_(402)

List of submarine incidents since 2000
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submarine_incidents_since_2000

koolishman said:

Never mind outrunning a T. rex — you could probably outwalk it

New simulations calculated T. rex walking speed from the motion of its swaying tail.

Could you run faster than a T. rex? According to new research, you might be able to outpace one by walking.

In the movie "Jurassic Park" (Warner Bros, 1993), a carful of terrified people famously tries to escape a loping T. rex, but science quickly threw shade at the movie beast and demonstrated that the king of tyrannosaurs wouldn't have been fast enough to run down a jeep. Now, researchers have slowed down the big dinosaur even more.

New simulations based on tail movement showed that T. rex wasn't even a quick walker. In fact, its preferred walking speed clocked in at just under 3 mph (5 km/h), about half the speed of earlier estimates. To put that into perspective, that's about the average walking speed for a human, according to the British Heart Foundation.

Click to expand...

To the author of that article...: I bet he says that because T.Rex is no more between us... but I guess he just wanted to place another clickbait header on that article.

In the same article they say "Maximum running speed for a T. rex is thought to be in the range of 10 to 25 mph (16 to 40 km/h), according to Hutchinson."
Well, then better you are Usain Bolt in your best shape (44.72km/h at world record 9.58-second 100m final in Berlin in 2009), or you will serve as an appetizer for the T.rex.

And that's an "estimation". T.rex was simply the most advanced killer machine on the world history.
I bet that in "live" somebody would be surprised about how fast the T. rex could run. He was heavy, very heavy, but he also had some "muscles" and we know how animal muscles work.
Even an hippopotamus can easily outrun a human (48 km/h). Now think about a killer machine like a T.Rex.

NASA Extracts Oxygen On Mars For The First Time


On Wednesday, NASA hit a milestone in the history of our universe extracting oxygen from carbon dioxide on Mars for the first time.

The test took place on a toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard the Perseverance rover called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) on April 20, the 60th Martian day, or sol, since the rover landed Feb. 18.

Although the technology demonstration is only in its early stages, it has the potential to transform science fiction into science reality by isolating and storing oxygen on Mars to fuel rockets that could carry astronauts off the planet’s surface.

For rockets or astronauts, oxygen is key, said MOXIE’s principal investigator, Michael Hecht of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory.

It would take 25 metric tons of oxygen for a trip to Mars, according to NASA experts. It will be a difficult challenge to transport 25 metric tons of oxygen from Earth to Mars.

It will be much more efficient and practical to transport a one-ton oxygen converter – a bigger, more efficient relative of MOXIE capable of producing those 25 tons.

The atmosphere of Mars is composed of 96 percent carbon dioxide. MOXIE acts by separating oxygen atoms from carbon dioxide molecules (one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms). Carbon monoxide is released into the Martian atmosphere as a waste product.

Airbus pioneers a superconducting powertrain cooled by liquid hydrogen

Long-haul aviation, like everything else in the human world, needs to be totally decarbonized, and in the race to zero emissions for international airliners, liquid-hydrogen powertrains look like one of the only viable possibilities.

Liquid H2's key drawcard to aircraft designers is its impressive energy density by weight, but Airbus believes there are serious opportunities to be explored in another of its properties: temperature. To keep it liquid, it needs to be stored cryogenically at -253.15 °C (-423.7 °F), and Airbus figures that if you've got a monster cold source like that on board your aircraft, you might as well make use of it.


The theory is that the liquid hydrogen can supercool the entire electric powertrain down to superconducting temperatures, at which point resistance virtually disappears from the system, and efficiency skyrockets. A powertrain designed to take full advantage of this effect, reasons Airbus, could get the same job done at less than half the weight, half the electrical losses and reduced voltages.

So it's building one. The Ascend system will be a ground-based proof of concept developed over the next three years. It'll be a 500-kW (670-hp) powertrain, with cables, controllers, electronics and motors that are cryogenically cooled by liquid hydrogen pumped around in a circuit from the fuel tanks.

New Horizons snaps photo of Voyager 1 from 11 billion miles away

NASA’s New Horizons currently has a lot of time on its hands as it coasts through vast emptiness towards interstellar space. The probe has just passed a new milestone distance on the journey, and celebrated by taking a snap of its predecessor Voyager 1 – or at least, the patch of sky where it is.

And on April 17, New Horizons ticked over a major (albeit entirely arbitrary) milestone – 50 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. That’s 50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, or about 7.5 billion km (5 billion miles) away. It’s only the fifth spacecraft to travel that far, after Voyagers 1 and 2 and Pioneers 10 and 11.

To celebrate the occasion – and give the little probe something to do out there – New Horizons took a photo of Voyager 1. At a distance of more than 152 AU, Voyager 1 is currently the most distant human-made object in the universe, and was the first spacecraft to cross over into interstellar space.

koolishman said:

New Horizons snaps photo of Voyager 1 from 11 billion miles away

NASA’s New Horizons currently has a lot of time on its hands as it coasts through vast emptiness towards interstellar space. The probe has just passed a new milestone distance on the journey, and celebrated by taking a snap of its predecessor Voyager 1 – or at least, the patch of sky where it is.

And on April 17, New Horizons ticked over a major (albeit entirely arbitrary) milestone – 50 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun. That’s 50 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, or about 7.5 billion km (5 billion miles) away. It’s only the fifth spacecraft to travel that far, after Voyagers 1 and 2 and Pioneers 10 and 11.

To celebrate the occasion – and give the little probe something to do out there – New Horizons took a photo of Voyager 1. At a distance of more than 152 AU, Voyager 1 is currently the most distant human-made object in the universe, and was the first spacecraft to cross over into interstellar space.

Click to expand...

LOL, I was reading up on that photo yesterday.

Voyager and New Horizons are so far apart that there is no way something the size of a small car can be imaged at that huge distance.

The circle marks the spot NASA knows the spacecraft is in

EDIT: noticed that is actually mentioned in the article. Some of the other online articles failed to mention that fact.

CraigD said:

LOL, I was reading up on that photo yesterday.

Voyager and New Horizons are so far apart that there is no way something the size of a small car can be imaged at that huge distance.

The circle marks the spot NASA knows the spacecraft is in

EDIT: noticed that is actually mentioned in the article. Some of the other online articles failed to mention that fact.

Click to expand...

To be fair, the article says "As such, you can’t actually see Voyager 1 amidst the star field, but NASA knows exactly where it is thanks to radio tracking, helpfully marking its location with a yellow circle."

Sutruk said:

To the author of that article...: I bet he says that because T.Rex is no more between us... but I guess he just wanted to place another clickbait header on that article.

In the same article they say "Maximum running speed for a T. rex is thought to be in the range of 10 to 25 mph (16 to 40 km/h), according to Hutchinson."
Well, then better you are Usain Bolt in your best shape (44.72km/h at world record 9.58-second 100m final in Berlin in 2009), or you will serve as an appetizer for the T.rex.

And that's an "estimation". T.rex was simply the most advanced killer machine on the world history.
I bet that in "live" somebody would be surprised about how fast the T. rex could run. He was heavy, very heavy, but he also had some "muscles" and we know how animal muscles work.
Even an hippopotamus can easily outrun a human (48 km/h). Now think about a killer machine like a T.Rex.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I can't resist...

Creativity and community: How modern humans overcame the Neanderthals

Study identifies creativity genes that set Homo sapiens apart from close living and extinct relatives

A new study is the first-ever to identify the genes for creativity in Homo sapiens that distinguish modern humans from chimpanzees and Neanderthals. The research identified 267 genes that are found only in modern humans and likely play an important role in the evolution of the behavioral characteristics that set apart Homo sapiens, including creativity, self-awareness, cooperativeness, and healthy longevity. The study, led by an international and interdisciplinary team of researchers from the American Museum of Natural History and Washington University among other institutions, is published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

"One of the most fundamental questions about human nature is what sparked the explosive emergence of creativity in modern humans in the period just before and after their widespread dispersal from Africa and the related extinction of Neanderthals and other human relatives," said study co-author Ian Tattersall, curator emeritus in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Anthropology. "Major controversies persist about the basis for human creativity in art and science, as well as about potential differences in cognition, language, and personality that distinguish modern humans from extinct hominids. This new study is the result of a truly pathbreaking use of genomic methodologies to enlighten us about the mechanisms underpinning our uniqueness."

In the latest study, the researchers discovered that 267 genes from this larger group are found only in modern humans and not in chimpanzees or Neanderthals. These uniquely human genes code for the self-awareness brain network and also regulate processes that allow Homo sapiens to be creative in narrative art and science, to be more prosocial, and to live longer lives through greater resistance to aging, injury, and illness than the now-extinct hominids they replaced.

Robot taught table etiquette can explain why it won't follow the rules

We use what is known as inner speech, where we talk to ourselves, to evaluate situations and make more-informed decisions. Now, a robot has been trained to speak aloud its inner decision-making process, giving us a view of how it prioritises competing demands.

Arianna Pipitone and Antonio Chella at the University of Palermo, Italy, programmed a humanoid robot named Pepper, made by SoftBank Robotics in Japan, with software that models human cognitive processes, as well as a text-to-speech processor. This allowed Pepper to voice its decision-making process while completing a task. “With inner speech, we can better understand what the robot wants to do and what its plan is,” says Chella.

The software allowed Pepper to retrieve relevant information from its memory and find the correct way to act based on human commands.

The researchers asked Pepper to set a dinner table according to etiquette rules they had encoded into the robot. Inner speech was either enabled or disabled to see how it affected Pepper’s ability to do what was requested.

When instructed to place a napkin on a fork with inner speech enabled, Pepper asked itself what the etiquette required and concluded that this request went against the rules it had been given. It then asked the researchers if putting the napkin on the fork was the correct action. When told it was, Pepper said, “OK, I prefer to follow your desire,” and explained how it was going to place the napkin on the fork.

When asked to do the same task without voicing the inner speech, Pepper knew this contradicted the etiquette rules so didn’t perform the task or explain why.

Mice master complex thinking, with a remarkable capacity for abstraction

Categorization is the brain's tool to organize nearly everything we encounter in our daily lives. Grouping information into categories simplifies our complex world and helps us to react quickly and effectively to new experiences. Scientists have now shown that also mice categorize surprisingly well. The researchers identified neurons encoding learned categories and thereby demonstrated how abstract information is represented at the neuronal level.

Mice categorize surprisingly well

Sandra Reinert and Pieter Goltstein, together with Mark Hübener and Tobias Bonhoeffer, group leader and director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, studied how the brain stores abstract information like learned categories. Since this is difficult to investigate in humans, the scientists tested whether mice categorize in a way similar to us. To do so, they showed mice different pictures of stripe patterns and gave them a sorting rule. One animal group had to sort the pictures into two categories based on the thickness of the stripes, the other group based on their orientation. The mice were able to learn the respective rule and reliably sorted the patterns into the correct category. After this initial training phase, they even assigned patterns of stripes they had not seen before into the correct categories -- just like the child with the new book.

And not only that: when the researchers switched the sorting rules, the mice ignored what they had learned before and re-sorted the pictures according to the new rule -- something we humans do all the time while learning new things. Therefore, the study demonstrates for the first time to what extent and with which precision mice categorize and thereby approach our capacity for abstraction.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03452-z
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03452-z

Inflammatory diet linked to testosterone deficiency in men

Consuming a diet high in pro-inflammatory foods - including foods that contain refined carbohydrates and sugar as well as polyunsaturated fats - may be associated with increased odds of developing testosterone deficiency among men, suggests a study in The Journal of Urology®, Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

The researchers studied the association between the DII and testosterone deficiency in 4,151 men from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, all of whom completed a 24-hour dietary interview and underwent sex hormone testing. Each participant's DII was calculated based on the dietary history interview.

Calculated DII scores ranged from ?5.05 (most anti-inflammatory) to +5.48 (most pro-inflammatory). Average total testosterone level was 410.42 ng/dL in men with the most pro-inflammatory diet versus 422.71 ng/dL in those with the most anti-inflammatory diet. Overall, about 26 percent of the men had testosterone deficiency.

For men with the most pro-inflammatory diet, the odds of testosterone deficiency were about 30 percent higher compared to men with the most anti-inflammatory diet. The associations remained significant after adjustment for other characteristics, including body mass index and smoking.

In a fully adjusted analysis, the risk of testosterone deficiency was greatest in men who were obese and had a higher DII. For this group, the odds of testosterone deficiency were nearly 60 percent higher compared to men with obesity who had a lower DII.

Drs. Qiu, Zhang, and coauthors note some important limitations of their study, including the fact that the DII was calculated based on a limited number of anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory food parameters.


Also,

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-foods-that-cause-inflammation

Golf course turfgrass species 'remembers' if it was mowed, develops differently

Mystery-solving discovery likely to result in seed being available to superintendents for greens

Poa annua, or annual bluegrass, a turfgrass species commonly found on golf course putting greens around the world, possesses transgenerational memory, “remembering” whether its parent was mowed or not mowed, according to a new study by Penn State researchers.

The discovery solves a two-decades-old mystery that has vexed David Huff, professor of turfgrass breeding and genetics, whose research trials at the College of Agricultural Sciences' Joseph E. Valentine Turfgrass Research Center are aimed at breeding Poa annua to produce seed for greens.

Dolphins learn the ‘names’ of their friends to form teams—a first in animal kingdom

Dolphin allies form teams to help their pals fight rivals who might try to take away a fertile female. Here, two males assist their pals in guarding a lone female.

Like members of a street gang, male dolphins summon their buddies when it comes time to raid and pillage—or, in their case, to capture and defend females in heat. A new study reveals they do this by learning the “names,” or signature whistles, of their closest allies—sometimes more than a dozen animals—and remembering who consistently cooperated with them in the past. The findings indicate dolphins have a concept of team membership—previously seen only in humans—and may help reveal how they maintain such intricate and tight-knit societies.

“It is a ground-breaking study,” says Luke Rendell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of St. Andrews who was not involved with the research. The work adds evidence to the idea that dolphins evolved large brains to navigate their complex social environments.

Male dolphins typically cooperate as a pair or trio, in what researchers call a “first-order alliance.” These small groups work together to find and corral a fertile female. Males also cooperate in second-order alliances comprised of as many as 14 dolphins; these defend against rival groups attempting to steal the female. Some second-order alliances join together in even larger third-order alliances, providing males in these groups with even better chances of having allies nearby should rivals attack.

International Space Station Is About To Get Crowded, And It's Running Out Of Beds

The International Space Station might be bigger than a football field, but it's equipped with just seven permanent sleeping pods, each about the size of a phone booth. NASA has to get creative for those rare times when there are more people than beds.

When the four new crew members arrive, they'll join seven already on board. Two astronauts will have to sleep in the docked SpaceX capsules. And that leaves two others without beds — but that's not a problem. "The nice thing about sleeping in space is that just about anywhere can be your bedroom," said NASA spokesman Dan Huot.

The packed house is only temporary. SpaceX is launching NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. The crew will spend the next six months in space.

The four astronauts who arrived last November are scheduled to return to Earth next week. During this brief transition period, those two bedless crew members can pick wherever they want to call home.

The US has pledged to halve its carbon emissions by 2030

The news: The US will pledge at a summit of 40 global leaders today to halve its carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. This far exceeds an Obama-era pledge in 2014 to get emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. The hope is that the commitment will help encourage India, China, and other major emitters to sign up to similar targets before the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, set to be held in Glasgow, UK, in November. “The United States is not waiting, the costs of delay are too great, and our nation is resolved to act now,” the White House said in a statement.

The big picture: The world has already warmed up by 1.2 °C since preindustrial times, and it’s getting ever closer to the 1.5 °C threshold that the 2016 Paris agreement aimed to avoid. Climate scientists have been warning for years now that a significant amount of climate damage is already baked in thanks to previous emissions, but there is still a short window to avoid catastrophic global warming.

What are other countries doing? Earlier this week, the UK pledged to reduce emissions 78% from 1990 levels by 2035. The EU has also promised to cut its current emissions 55% by 2030, while Japan announced today that it will cut its emissions 46% from 2013 levels by 2030.

Stanford engineers find ankle exoskeletons can greatly increase walking speed

In lab tests, researchers found that an optimized ankle exoskeleton system increased participants’ walking speed by about 40 percent compared with their regular speed. The researchers hope someday to help restore walking speed in older adults.

NASA Astronomers Release New All-Sky Map of Milky Way's Outer Reaches

Astronomers using data from NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) telescopes have released a new all-sky map of the outermost region of our galaxy. Known as the galactic halo, this area lies outside the swirling spiral arms that form the Milky Way’s recognizable central disk and is sparsely populated with stars. Though the halo may appear mostly empty, it is also predicted to contain a massive reservoir of dark matter, a mysterious and invisible substance thought to make up the bulk of all the mass in the universe.

The data for the new map comes from ESA’s Gaia mission and NASA’s Near Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or NEOWISE, which operated from 2009 to 2013 under the moniker WISE. The study makes use of data collected by the spacecraft between 2009 and 2018.

The new map reveals how a small galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) – so named because it is the larger of two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way – has sailed through the Milky Way’s galactic halo like a ship through water, its gravity creating a wake in the stars behind it. The LMC is located about 160,000 light-years from Earth and is less than one-quarter the mass of the Milky Way.

koolishman said:

Golf course turfgrass species 'remembers' if it was mowed, develops differently

Mystery-solving discovery likely to result in seed being available to superintendents for greens

Poa annua, or annual bluegrass, a turfgrass species commonly found on golf course putting greens around the world, possesses transgenerational memory, “remembering” whether its parent was mowed or not mowed, according to a new study by Penn State researchers.

The discovery solves a two-decades-old mystery that has vexed David Huff, professor of turfgrass breeding and genetics, whose research trials at the College of Agricultural Sciences' Joseph E. Valentine Turfgrass Research Center are aimed at breeding Poa annua to produce seed for greens.

Click to expand...

I wonder if this can be applied to cricket pitch turfs which are notoriously hard to maintain?

The grasses are Couch Grass (Cynodon dactylon) and Perennial Ryegrass (Lolium perenne) and are generally cut and rolled.

https://www.cricketvictoria.com.au/turf-management/
http://vicsportsturf.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/VCAWicketPrep20101.pdf

The intricate dance between waves, wind, and gliding pelicans is worked out for the first time

It's a common sight: pelicans gliding along the waves, right by the shore. These birds make this kind of surfing look effortless, but actually the physics involved that give them a big boost are not simple.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have recently developed a theoretical model that describes how the ocean, the wind and the birds in flight interact in a recent paper in Movement Ecology.

UC San Diego mechanical engineering Ph.D. student Ian Stokes and adviser Professor Drew Lucas, of UC San Diego's Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, found that pelicans can completely offset the energy they expend in flight by exploiting wind updrafts generated by waves through what is known as wave-slope soaring. In short, by practicing this behavior, sea-birds take advantage of winds generated by breaking waves to stay aloft.

The model could be used to develop better algorithms to control drones that need to fly over water for long periods of time, the researchers said. Potential uses do not stop there.

https://phys.org/news/2021-04-intricate-gliding-pelicans.html