Science & Technology

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JFM Q&A with Yongyun Hwang

Professor Yongyun Hwang, Imperial College London has recently been appointed as an editorial board member of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. To celebrate, Yongyun participated in a Q&A with the Journal.

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JPP Q&A with Wonho Choe

Wonho Choe – Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) was recently appointed as an editorial board member of the Journal of Plasma Physics. To celebrate, Wonho participated in a Q&A with the Journal.

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The commonality of being a researcher

A year after the launch of the Cambridge Prisms series, Publisher Jessica Jones reflects on the journals’ shared values of community, collaboration and equity When we initially discussed the concept of the Cambridge Prisms, and what we hoped they would achieve, we fell into the trap of trying to compare different groups of researchers with diverse expertise and focuses.…

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IJA goes Open Access

As 2023 ends and a new year begins, the International Journal of Astrobiology is preparing to begin a new journey. Beginning in 2024, all articles in IJA will be available under Gold Open Access.

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Homicide rates in the United States increase when resources are scarce and unequally distributed

Identifying the factors that drive homicide rates is not only of paramount interest to scholars across the social and behavioral sciences but is necessary to inform policy decisions aimed at reducing lethal aggression. Studies nominate diverse causes of homicide, including ambient temperature, city greenness, firearm ownership, firearm laws, structural racism, income inequality, poverty, and more. However, without general theory scholars struggle to disentangle causal factors from correlated effects. This distinction is vitally important for designing interventions that target underlying causes rather than spurious correlations.

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Charles Meneveau wins the Batchelor Prize 2024

The 2024 Batchelor Prize has been awarded to Cambridge Author, Professor Charles Meneveau, Johns Hopkins University.  Professor Meneveau will receive the plaudit in recognition of his high-impact fundamental contributions to the study of turbulence and wall-bounded flows, and for bringing insightful and rigorous fluid mechanics to the science of wind turbines and wind farms for the benefit of society. …

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JFM Rapids: The Editors’ Insights

A spotlight on JFM Rapids, a well-established section in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics [JFM] that continues to provide a highly visible venue for short, high-quality, articles addressing timely research challenges of broad interest. In this collection, the Editors of JFM Rapids each explain why they selected one article that presents exciting results with exceptional impact on currently active fluid mechanics research.

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Cross-cultural correlations must be interpreted with caution

Is human cultural diversity partly shaped by the diversity of environments in which human societies live? Finding that a particular cultural feature is significantly associated with specific environmental variables adds weight to an argument that human diversity is shaped by environment. For example, many aspects of human cultural diversity have been found to correlate with parasite load, and these correlations have been interpreted as support for the hypothesis that cultures with high pathogen load develop features that limit the chance of infection, such as ritualized behaviours, xenophobia, belief in supernatural agents, and inclusion of antimicrobial ingredients in food.

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Blog upload: Q&A with Quantitative Plant Biology Associate Editor Felix Hartmann

I have a background in physics. As a young student, I was fascinated by quantum mechanics, especially experiments with entangled photons. But when it became clear to me that my physical disability was not compatible with experimental works, I developed a new interest in modeling and simulations. Instead of the fundamental laws of physics, I turned to complex systems, mostly at the interface with biology.

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Getting smart with water security

Dragan Savic, Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Water, explains how technology, combined with the right management philosophy, can help solve global water challenges “Water security is a multi-dimensional and enduring human goal,” states Professor Dragan Savic.…

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“Too interesting to ignore”

Following the launch of Research Directions: Bioelectronics by Cambridge University Press, Editor-in-Chief Samit Chakrabarty explains more about this fascinating branch of science A translated version of a Russian university textbook on human physiology might seem an unlikely source of inspiration for a leader in the world of neuroscience – but that is exactly what set Dr.…

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Being Less Casual About Causality in the Evolutionary Human Sciences

As evolutionary human scientists, we care about causality. We usually want to know whether something causes something else, rather than whether things are just correlated. We want to know whether aspects of our culture, social structure or ecology cause a given behaviour, as opposed to being merely associated with it, for instance. Experiments are the gold standard for assessing causality, but for obvious reasons cannot answer everything, especially many of the evolutionary questions we’re interested in – Randomising infants to be raised as religious or not, for instance, would be both impossible and ethically questionable (to put it mildly!).

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When the Levee Forms

Blues fans out there may be familiar with the Led Zeppelin classic ‘When the Levee Breaks’, but what about when the levee forms? In particular, how do natural levees form in such an organised and well-engineered process?

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Comparative transcriptomics from intestinal cells of permissive and non-permissive hosts during Ancylostoma ceylanicum infection reveals unique signatures of protection and host specificity

The latest Paper of the Month for Parasitology is Comparative transcriptomics from intestinal cells of permissive and non-permissive hosts during Ancylostoma ceylanicum infection reveals unique signatures of protection and host specificity and is freely available. …

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Water – the new oil

Richard Fenner, Editor-in-Chief of Cambridge Prisms: Water, explains why a multi-disciplinary approach is crucial to meet human needs and maintain healthy ecosystems Ensuring water security, which is threatened by the twin threats of climate change and a growing population, is one of the biggest challenges of our time.…

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On the Cover of HPL: Optical control of transverse motion of ionization injected electrons in a laser plasma accelerator

In recent years, the plasma wakefield acceleration driven by ultra-short and ultra-intense laser pulses has become increasingly mature, which can produce electron beams with ultra-high beam density and femtosecond beam duration; By using this electron beam, a new table-top radiation light source with collimation, ultrafast and high brightness can be produced.…

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Building a new frontier

Martyn Dade-Robertson, Editor-in-Chief of Research Directions: Biotechnology Design, explains more about this emerging branch of science Can we grow a building?…

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What a decade of experience tells us about buffelgrass control

Buffelgrass is a highly invasive perennial that reduces the biodiversity of native ecosystems and provides ready fuel for wildfires in the arid regions where it thrives. After examining a decade of data from Arizona’s Saguaro National Park, researchers writing in the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management describe best practices for buffelgrass control.

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The latest research in training modern machine learning models: ‘A deterministic modification of gradient descent that avoids saddle points

Machine learning models, particularly those based on deep neural networks, have revolutionized the fields of data analysis, image recognition, and natural language processing. A key factor in the training of these models is the use of variants of gradient descent algorithms, which optimize model parameters by minimizing a loss function. However, the training optimization problem for neural networks is highly non-convex, presenting unique challenges.

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Maximising beef cattle growth on our cheapest feed resource

The paper “Effect of pre-grazing herbage mass and post-grazing sward height on herbage production and intake and performance of suckler-bred steers within a weanling-to-beef production system“, published in The Journal of Agricultural Science, has been chosen as the latest Editorial Highlight and is freely available to download for one month.…

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