Jack Hawksmoor

science-junkie:

How do you feed 9 billion people?

An international team of scientists has developed crop models to better forecast food production to feed a growing population – projected to reach 9 billion by mid-century – in the face of climate change.

In a paper appearing in Nature Climate Change, members of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project unveiled an all-encompassing modeling system that integrates multiple crop simulations with improved climate change models. AgMIP’s effort has produced new knowledge that better predicts global wheat yields while reducing political and socio-economic influences that can skew data and planning efforts, said Bruno Basso, Michigan State University ecosystem scientist and AgMIP member.

“Quantifying uncertainties is an important step to build confidence in future yield forecasts produced by crop models,” said Basso, with MSU’s geological sciences department and Kellogg Biological Station. “By using an ensemble of crop and climate models, we can understand how increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, along with temperature increases and precipitation changes, will affect wheat yield globally.”

The improved crop models can help guide the world’s developed and developing countries as they adapt to changing climate and create policies to improve food security and feed more people, he added.

Read more

science-junkie:

Prince Rupert’s drop

The prince Rupert’s drop is a truly amazing thing.When molten glass hits cold water, its outer surface cools rapidly and shrinks as it solidifies. Since the center is still fluid, it can flow to adjust to the outer shell’s smaller size. As that center eventually cools and solidifies, it also shrinks, but now the outer shell is already solid and can’t change its shape to accommodate the smaller core. The result of this is a high amount of internal pressure, as the inside pulls the outside from all directions the glass is set to release a lot of energy. If you break the thin glass at the tail, a chain reaction travels like a shock wave through the drop. As each section breaks, it releases enough energy to break the next section, and so on, shattering the whole drop in less than a millisecond. At the same time The glass can be extremely strong aswell glass breaks when tiny scratches pull apart and spread into fractures. Since the surface is compressed by internal stress, scratches can’t grow, and the glass is very difficult to break.

Credits: ScienceCubed - http://sciencecubed.tumblr.com/

 

unknownelandes:

SO THAT’S HOW THEY DO IT

HOLY FUCKBALLS

(via allonsy-my-wayward-assbutts)

sciencesoup:

Ginkgo Trees Stand Test of Time

“Living fossil” is an informal term used by biologists to describe species that lack living relatives.  While you might not personally think being called a fossil is a compliment, these organisms are actually quite impressive survivors.  The Ginkgo biloba tree, for example, is strange and unique amongst contemporary plants but incredibly similar to fossils dating back to the Permian, almost 270 million years! This means that even though every single other lineage of the Ginkgo’s relatives changed and adapted beyond recognition or died out, there are still Ginkgo trees growing today that would be indistinguishable from trees from hundreds of millions of years ago. If that fails to impress you, consider this: in Hiroshima, Japan there are still a handful of Ginkgo trees that survived the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945 living to the present day! If these hardy trees can withstand a disturbance of an A-bomb’s magnitude, it is no wonder they have managed to remain viable when so many other ancient plants could not.

Guest post written by Reggie Henke

respectmethugtoninatalia:

mr-platypus:

premiumgifs:

Liquid being placed on a hydrophobic material causing it to keep its shape.

Sometimes science makes me really angry. 

this is bothering me

ha ha no that’s excellent

get a straw and drink from the middle

(via chibi-cas)

sciencesoup:

Oh gosh, you seem so genuinely distressed. Let me calm you with my science.

As I understand it, all substances are composed of millions of molecules, and the stickiness of the substance depends on the charge of the molecules—and therefore how much the molecules of two substances are attracted to each other. Attractions between any two molecules are electric and are based on Coulomb’s Law, which states that positively and negatively charged molecules are attracted to each other, and that the charges of the molecules are directly proportional to the strength of the bond.

There are different types of intermolecular forces, but to give a short answer, just know that stickiness is caused by the electrostatic charges of molecules attracting them to one another—so when you peel sticky tape off a present, what you’re actually doing is breaking intermolecular bonds.