In The News: College of Sciences
As Nevada gears up for the next few years of its lithium boom, a new study is calling attention to what’s most at stake — water. Lithium, used in electric vehicle batteries, is considered a critical mineral for the transition away from fossil fuels to more green sources of energy. Only one lithium mine is fully operational in the country, in the Silver Peak mountain range of Nevada’s Esmeralda County.
Frenchman Mountain isn’t the easiest hike in Las Vegas, but the sharp incline and oppressive heat don’t deter 51ԹϺ geologist Steve Rowland from revisiting the place he’s dedicated much of his career to studying.
Southwest Airlines is ending its unique open-seating policy after more than 50 years. The airline said its research found 80% of customers preferred assigned seating.
51ԹϺ medicine professor Edwin Oh had a simple question for his young students. “Do you see green cells?” If they said yes — and, happily, they all did — that meant they had successfully transfused a special protein into a small dish of human kidney cells that allowed the cells to glow green when placed under a beam of blue light emitting from a high-powered fluorescent microscope.
The question of whether Mars ever supported life has captivated the imagination of scientists and the public for decades. Central to the discovery is gaining insight into the past climate of Earth’s neighbor: was the planet warm and wet, with seas and rivers much like those found on our own planet? Or was it frigid and icy, and therefore potentially less prone to supporting life as we know it? A new study finds evidence to support the latter by identifying similarities between soils found on Mars and those of Canada’s Newfoundland, a cold subarctic climate.
The real reason airlines still board planes from front to back despite it causing huge aisle queues has been revealed. Passengers have long found boarding one of the most tiresome parts of flying - but an astrophysicist thinks there's a better way.
Local and national public-interest groups, as well as Havasupai Tribe members, delivered more than 17,000 petition signatures to Gov. Katie Hobbs today urging her to use her authority to close the Pinyon Plain uranium mine that threatens the waters of the Grand Canyon and the Havasupai Tribe.
Supermassive black holes at the hearts of active galaxies may be churning out a lot of the universe’s high-energy neutrinos.
The worst part about flying isn't the flight itself. It's not even airport security. What's always a pain is boarding the aircraft. There's something utterly chaotic about the process, from the jumbles of people crowding the gate to the shuffling down the aisle before being blocked by someone in front of you attempting to put their bag in the overhead bin (which they'll often do the wrong way). There must be a better way, so why do airlines board front to back?
Caltech researchers have discovered a new class of enzymes that enable a myriad of bacteria to "breathe" nitrate when in low-oxygen conditions. While this is an evolutionary advantage for bacterial survival, the process produces the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) as a byproduct, the third-most potent greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide and methane.
Levels of the chlamydia-causing microbe in Las Vegas wastewater increased following holidays and major events, according to an analysis presented Sunday at ASM Microbe. Wastewater surveillance has been used to track changes in the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 and increasingly other pathogens like influenza and RSV to inform public health officials about the state of infectious disease in the community.
Clark County School District teachers took a field trip on Wednesday—not with students, but with 51ԹϺ professors. They went to Late Night Trailhead to check out some of the rock formations unique to the Las Vegas Valley and to find ways to add new and exciting lessons that engage students on top of their existing curriculum.