Science

Oil and water are difficult to separate without leaving some impuritiesAbaca Press/Alamy Mixtures of oil and water can be efficiently separated by pumping them into thin channels between semipermeable membranes, paving the way to cheaper and cleaner ways to deal with industrial waste. Experimental prototypes managed to recover both oil and water with a purity greater than 99.9 per cent. Various methods already exist to split such mixtures into component parts, including spinning them in a centrifuge, mechanically skimming oil from the surface and splitting them with chemicals, electrical charges or semipermeable membranes, which allow some substances through, but not others. Membranes are the simplest method, but are currently imperfect, leaving behind a stubborn mix o...

A new material can bend lightUniversity of Glasgow Scientists have discovered a technique whereby light can be bent around corners, inspired by the way clouds scatter sunlight. This type of light-bending could lead to advances in medical imaging, electronics cooling and even nuclear reactor design. Daniele Faccio at the University of Glasgow, UK, and his colleagues say they are shocked this type of light scattering wasn’t noticed before. It works on the same basis as clouds, snow and other white materials that absorb light: once photons hit the surface of such a material, they are scattered in all directions, barely penetrating at all and getting reflected out the way they came. For instance, when sunlight hits a tall cumulonimbus cloud, it bounces off the top, making ...

Last week, the Columbia Climate School Signature Speaker Series welcomed Hans Bruyninckx, former executive director of the European Environmental Agency, to talk about “The European Green Deal: The pathway to net-zero emissions in a complex global context.” Bruyninckx gave a primer on the current challenges and opportunities the E.U. is facing when it comes to climate change impact and mitigation—and why what happens next is so important. When his PowerPoint presentation hit an initial snag, Bruyninckx was ready with a quip about how this was lesson number one: “Technology alone is not the solution to climate change.” In all seriousness, “Whatever we do in Europe is based on global scientific assessments and reports that bring science to policy,” he began. “All these reports ...

Adélie penguins in AntarcticaProf. Heather Lynch Artificial intelligence can help accurately map and track penguin colonies in Antarctica by analysing tourist photos. “Right now, everyone has a camera in their pocket, and so the sheer volume of data being collected around the world is incredible,” says Heather Lynch at Stony Brook University in New York. Haoyu Wu at Stony Brook University and his colleagues, including Lynch, used an AI tool developed by Meta to highlight Adélie penguins in photographs taken by tourists or scientists on the ground. With guidance from a human expert, the AI tool was able to automatically identify and outline entire colonies in photos. This semi-automated method is much faster than doing everything manually because the AI tool takes ...

This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective series, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest of the series here. An astrophysicist and a surgeon walk into a bar. No, this isn’t the start of a bad joke. A few years ago, astrophysicist Franco Vazza met his childhood friend Alberto Feletti, who had become a neurosurgeon. As they reminisced and chatted about their work – Vazza modelling the structure of the universe, Feletti poring over the composition of the brain – a thought struck them: why not compare the two? Vazza, based at the University of Bologna, Italy, did just that. He used statistical methods to compare the neurons in one area of the brain, the cortex, with the cosmic web, the pattern of matter distributio...