New research has found cover crops that are viable in Washington’s normal “off season” don’t hurt the soil and can be sold as a biofuel source. 

After harvest, farmland often sits fallow and unused until growers seed in the next crop. Soil can erode, weeds can take root, and farmers don’t make any money during that time. Cover crops can eliminate or reduce some of those issues, but many farmers have concerns about their effects on soil quality, a reduced growing window for their primary crop, and the inability to sell the cover crop. 

In a paper recently published in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy, a team led by Washington State University scientists looked at four cover crops grown for multiple years in western and central Washington fields. Two showed promising results.

Griffith researchers built and tested a digital archaeology framework to learn more about the ancient humans who created one of the oldest forms of rock art, finger fluting.

Finger flutings are marks drawn by fingers through a soft mineral film called moonmilk on cave walls.

Experiments were conducted - both with adult participants in a tactile setup and using VR headsets in a custom-built program - to explore whether image-recognition methods could learn enough from finger-fluting images made by modern people to identify the sex of the person who created them.

A time crystal, a long-life quantum system approaching perpetual motion, has been hooked up to its environment for the first time, unlocking an intriguing way to increase quantum computational and sensing power.

A new study published in the journal Nature Communications reveals that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a key driver of global climate variability, is projected to undergo a dramatic transformation due to greenhouse warming. Using high-resolution climate models (Figure 1), a team of researchers from South Korea, the USA, Germany, and Ireland found that ENSO could intensify rapidly over the coming decades and synchronize with other major climate phenomena, reshaping global temperature and rainfall patterns by the end of the 21^st century.

A team from the Faculty of Physics and the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the University of Warsaw has developed a new type of all-optical radio receiver based on the fundamental properties of Rydberg atoms. The new type of receiver is not only extremely sensitive, but also provides internal calibration, and the antenna itself is powered only by laser light. The results of the work, in which Sebastian Borowka, Mateusz Mazelanik, Wojciech Wasilewski and Michał Parniak participated, were published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. They open a new chapter in the technological implementation of quantum sensors.

In International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, a review summarizes the latest advances in high-quality testing methods for 2D materials and highlights the fundamental mechanisms behind their unique mechanical behaviors.

By outlining current challenges and future directions, this work provides valuable guidance for applying 2D materials in aerospace, flexible electronics, precision sensing, and integrated circuits.

In International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing, researchers at Trinity College Dublin have unveiled a novel inkless printing method that could transform the way functional materials and devices are manufactured. The technique, called Laser Ablation Dry Aerosol Printing (LADAP), generates nanoparticles directly from solid targets using pulsed laser ablation, and then focuses them aerodynamically to print metals and oxides without the need for solvent-based inks.