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Middle and high school students in Salt Lake City are helping scientists and the community better understand particulate matter pollution, which typically appears as a haze over the city in the winter. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), University of Utah chemical engineer Kerry Kelly and a team set up the partnership for outreach and education, as well as research. Acting as citizen scientists, the kids measure air quality with low-cost sensors in various areas around town, including their homes and schools. In school, they construct simplified sensors out of building blocks to learn how they work. The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1642513, Community Network to Understand Air Quality and Sensor Reliability.

Do the math for bedbugs, frog-skin lifesavers, cuddles for ICU babies and recipe against disaster. It's "4 Awesome Discoveries You Probably Didn't Hear About This Week." 1. Honest landlords can cut bedbug infestations 2. Frog skin bacteria may help humans 3. Wireless body sensors to monitor newborns in the ICU 4. Bacteria bio-cement could limit risk of coal ash spills

WiFi detects weapons, what ants can teach robots, position repercussions on concussions, how saving forests saves kids. It's your weekly briefing on the latest discoveries you might not hear about anywhere else, all with funding from the National Science Foundation. For more detailed information, refer to these news articles: Stanford study shows how head and neck positioning affects concussion risk Stanford University Common WiFi Can Detect Weapons, Bombs and Chemicals in Bags Rutgers University–New Brunswick More workers working might not get more work done, ants (and robots) show Georgia Tech University of Colorado at Boulder How forests improve kids' diets University of Vermont Sonoma State University

See what surprise science has just uncovered about where we process emotions. It's episode 6 of "4 Awesome Discoveries You Probably Didn't Hear About This Week": A pollen catapult, memory palace, brain reversal and a way to make concrete green. Here's your weekly briefing on the latest discoveries you might not hear about anywhere else, all with funding from the National Science Foundation. Watched the video and want more info: 1. For this flower, it's ready, set, launch 2. People remember information better through VR 3. Left, right and center: mapping emotion in the brain 4. Cementless fly ash binder makes concrete "green"

Bug eaters, remotes, hurricanes and memories. Your weekly briefing on the latest discoveries you might not hear about anywhere else, all with funding from the National Science Foundation. For more information, please refer to these news articles: 1. Researchers Operate Lab-Grown Heart Cells by Remote Control 2. What we inherited from our bug-eating ancestors 3. Hurricanes: Stronger, slower, wetter in the future? 4. UCLA biologists 'transfer' a memory

You may get a breakdown of your home energy use in your monthly bill, but what if you could see how much energy your bedroom lamp draws versus your toaster? With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), computer scientist Shwetak Patel and his team at the University of Washington are developing new sensing systems to empower people to make better informed decisions for themselves and their homes. Patel's initial interest was in providing the most detailed information yet for consumers about their energy and water consumption, and most of that technology has already been transferred to the marketplace. Now, with the same fundamental approach and goals of detail and ease, the researchers have turned their attention to personal health monitoring. The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1253709, New Systems and Tools for Residential Sustainability Sensing. It was made through NSF's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program.

Researchers at New York University are tackling one of the major challenges in agriculture: How to raise healthy plants while minimizing the use of fertilizer and the leaching of fertilizer chemicals into the environment. With support from the National Science Foundation, a team led by plant genomic scientist Gloria Coruzzi and computer scientist Dennis Shasha is using the latest genomic tools to develop new plant varieties that don't need as much nitrogen to grow. The researchers are also investigating which of the plant's genes control fertilizer uptake and which combinations of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium--the main nutrient chemicals in traditional commercial fertilizers--produce the heartiest plants.

University of Chicago scientists supported by NSF are collaborating with researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory to build out a wide-ranging urban sensing project in Chicago known as the Array of Things (AoT). One could think of it as a fitness tracker for a city -- a network of 500 computer nodes designed to gather data on livability factors all over Chicago, from climate, weather and air quality to noise and traffic, on a city block scale. Each AoT node is equipped with power, Internet and sensors to measure environmental health and safety factors, such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone levels. The nodes also have a camera, which temporarily records images. Once the data of interest is extracted, the images are purged from the system. The data is gathered in real time and available to the public, as well as urban planners, health workers and others who can use the information to make better informed decisions.

When it comes to aircraft engines, rocket motors and nuclear power plants, the "heat" is constantly on to make the parts inside stronger, more reliable and more durable. In fact, when an airplane takes off, the materials in the hottest part of the engine reach about 90 percent of their melting temperature. So, there's always a desire to find a material that can operate at a higher temperature. With support from NSF, materials scientist Tresa Pollock and a team at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are partnering with General Electric and others to develop new multilayered materials designed for high performance in extreme environments. Pollock's team is pioneering the use of new modeling tools to speed up the development process and using advanced computer algorithms and big data analysis to hone their designs before testing them.

There's a new renewable energy player in town and it's about to make waves in the industry. Despite its massive potential as a source for renewable energy, the ocean is unlikely to contribute meaningfully to electricity supplies without dramatic, innovation-driven reductions in the cost of energy conversion. That's where engineers Balky Nair, Rahul Shendure and Tim Mundon come in with their company, Oscilla Power. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), they're developing a utility-scale wave energy harvester called the Triton. It's a sturdy system with few moving parts -- rugged enough to stand up to harsh seas with little need for maintenance. This technology shows promise as a means for delivering utility-scale electric power to the grid at a price that is competitive with conventional fossil or renewable technologies. The team plans more tests with increasingly larger and more sophisticated prototypes.

These tiny creatures are Arctic surfclams. They're getting packed up for a trip to the shore. With some help, they're about to take up residence in an intertidal mudflat on the Maine coast, or "Downeast" as they say around here, referring to ships sailing centuries ago from Boston east to Maine and downwind. The area's rich maritime history is not lost on Brian Beal, a marine ecologist with the University of Maine at Machias who has lived here all of his life and grew up working on the water. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Beal and a team based at the university's Marine Science Field Station at the Downeast Institute are putting their aquaculture innovation skills to work. The team's goals are to diversify the U.S. market for shellfish and increase the number of jobs in that market. The researchers are focused on two types of shellfish with the potential to bring more jobs and dollars to the area: blue mussels and Arctic surfclams. In the case of the latter, Arctic surfclams are not only a valuable species, but, Beal says, no one has ever tackled culturing them before. Arctic surfclams are a deepwater species that range from Rhode Island north to Newfoundland. Low densities have so far prevented the species from becoming a highly valued fishery in the U.S., but in Canada, there's a $50 million fishery off the southeast coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and off the Grand Banks, south of Newfoundland. The other species, blue mussels, aren't new to Maine. They've been a part of the seafood industry here for years. Beal would like to expand the market for blue mussels by making cultivation more of a turnkey operation by providing mussel growers with a choice between collecting wild seed (that depends each year on the vagaries of nature) and a more consistent hatchery-reared seedling.

The National Ecological Observatory (NEON) is a large-facility project managed by NEON Inc., and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NEON is a continental-scale research platform for discovering and understanding the impacts of climate change, land-use change and invasive species on ecological systems. NEON will gather long-term data on the biosphere's response to changes in land use and climate, as well as its interactions with the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Data will be collected by automated sensors, an airplane and field crews in 20 NEON regions, or 'domains,' over 30 years-time. Scientists and the public everywhere can access the data online. The Mid-Atlantic domain comprises the core site in Front Royal, Virginia, at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's 3,200-acre campus, along with two additional sites located at Blandy Experimental Farm near White Post, Virginia, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Maryland.

Marc, Joel, and Rich merge their top 5 lists to come up with a top 5 best villain list.