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April Breezes Across Earth and Beyond

APR 30, 2021
This month in pictures
April Breezes Across Earth and Beyond lead image

A research team preparing 22-foot-wide tethered balloons to study dust particles.

Randy Montoya/Sandia National Laboratories

(Inside Science) -- As warm winds swept across the Northern Hemisphere this month, researchers took the opportunity to fly giant red balloons and study wind energy. Those aerial accomplishments were mirrored on Mars with the first-ever flight on another planet. Endangered animals also took center stage for Earth Day, celebrated on April 22 this year.

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emerging technology involves concentrating sunlight into sand-like ceramic particles within a tower, then collecting the particles in a falling-particle receiver. These 22-foot-wide tethered balloons were released in areas adjacent to the receiver to collect airborne dust samples.

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new research in Science Advances suggests that sifakas possess a genetic adaptation that helps neutralize those toxins and optimize nutrient absorption. These lemurs also dine on flowers and fruits, making for a flexible diet when they suffer habitat loss due to deforestation.

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recent study from Oxford Brookes University, 11,500 hours of computer simulations showed that wind energy farms could perform more efficiently using vertical wind turbines instead of the more commonly used horizontal variety.

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Vertebrate Genomes Project aims to find out whether the species has enough genetic resilience to survive. This month, researchers obtained a reliable kakapo genome sequence for the first time.

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