In many ways, what Earth will look like in 50 to 100 years depends on how the tiniest sea creatures respond to warming oceans.

The Discovery Files

Seas of Change

Cloud seeding has become an increasingly popular practice in the western United States, where states grapple with growing demands for water. Measuring how much precipitation cloud seeding produces has been a longstanding challenge. Researchers have developed a way to use radar and other tools to more accurately measure the volume of snow produced through cloud seeding. And the answer is...

Kinda Flakey

Many greenhouses could become energy neutral by using see-through solar panels to harvest energy -- primarily from the wavelengths of light that plants don't use for photosynthesis.

Powerhouse

It's surely happened to you. A software update intended to make an application run faster inadvertently ends up doing just the opposite. Researchers have designed a tool to identify the source of the problem.

Slowdown Showdown

How does your brain imagine different futures to inform various kinds of everyday decisions, while keeping track of reality at the same time? And what's that got to do with your neural GPS system?

GPS & Your Imagination

One of the hurdles for making enduring, adaptable and agile robots is managing the robots' internal temperature. "Sweating" could let high-powered robots operate for long periods of time without overheating.

Imitation Perspiration

There's a worm with a mighty unusual ability: it can regrow body parts to fix nearly every imaginable injury, including decapitation. New research findings about this creature with regenerative prowess could aid human tissue engineering methods.

Tissue Re-issue

Math and science Braille textbooks are expensive and require enormous effort to produce. Now a team of researchers has developed a method for easily creating textbooks in Braille that will ensure production of the books will become easy, inexpensive and widespread.

Math Feel

Not only are mealworms able to consume various forms of plastic, new research from Stanford shows they can eat Styrofoam containing a common toxic chemical additive and still be safely used as protein-rich feedstock for other animals.

Plastic Worms

Scientists have discovered that events from the ancient past are still impacting the diversity and distribution of mammal species worldwide. Supported by the National Science Foundation, this first-of-its-kind study is the work of researchers at UMass Amherst; Rice University; University of California, Riverside; and Arizona State University. More information at http://bit.ly/39VJ8nm

Biodiversity Backstory

One way to boost the productivity of a plant is to redirect some of its resources away from maintaining an overprepared immune system and into enhanced seed production. So say NSF-funded scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who have found a gene that could help them tweak that balance.

Cornfiguration

NSF-funded researchers are using their pattern-recognition algorithm to identify microbial communities in the body by sifting through volumes of genetic code. Their method could speed the development of medical treatments for microbiota-linked ailments like Crohn’s disease.

Neighborhood Watch

New NSF-funded University of Arizona research investigates what proportion of the world's land plants are exceedingly rare, where they're found and how location might put them at risk of human development and a changing climate.

Rare Finds

Bees 'surf' atop water. When stuck in water, bees create a wave and hydrofoil atop it, according to a new study. The motion they use, though labor-intensive, could one day be used to generate robots capable of flying and swimming.

Bee-watch

Researchers have created a terahertz laser using laughing gas. (Yep.) These lasers can be small, tunable, and much more efficient. They could fit in a backpack, in your vehicle for wireless communication, or they could be used for high-resolution imaging.

T-Ray Laser

An upbeat, entertaining look at the latest advances in science and engineering. Often fun and always fascinating, each episode covers a project funded by NSF -- federally sponsored research, brought to you by you!

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The Discovery Files

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