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Investigating ecosystem resiliency in different flood zones of south Brooklyn, New York

Ng et al. | Mar 23, 2024

Investigating ecosystem resiliency in different flood zones of south Brooklyn, New York
Image credit: Ng and Zheng et al 2024

With climate change and rising sea levels, south Brooklyn is exposed to massive flooding and intense precipitation. Previous research discovered that flooding shifts plant species distribution, decreases soil pH, and increases salt concentration, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels. The authors predicted a decreasing trend from Zone 1 to 6: high-pH, high-salt, and high-nutrients in more flood-prone areas to low-pH, low-salt, and low-nutrient in less flood-prone regions. They performed DNA barcoding to identify plant species inhabiting flood zones with expectations of decreasing salt tolerance and moisture uptake by plants' soil from Zones 1-6. Furthermore, they predicted an increase in invasive species, ultimately resulting in a decrease in biodiversity. After barcoding, they researched existing information regarding invasiveness, ideal soil, pH tolerance, and salt tolerance. They performed soil analyses to identify pH, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) levels. For N and P levels, we discovered a general decreasing trend from Zone 1 to 6 with low and moderate statistical significance respectively. Previous studies found that soil moisture can increase N and P uptake, helping plants adopt efficient resource-use strategies and reduce water stress from flooding. Although characteristics of plants were distributed throughout all zones, demonstrating overall diversity, the soil analyses hinted at the possibility of a rising trend of plants adapting to the increase in flooding. Future expansive research is needed to comprehensively map these trends. Ultimately, investigating trends between flood zones and the prevalence of different species will assist in guiding solutions to weathering climate change and protecting biodiversity in Brooklyn.

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Deep learning for pulsar detection: Investigating hyperparameter effects on TensorFlow classification accuracy

Upadhyay et al. | Jan 31, 2026

Deep learning for pulsar detection: Investigating hyperparameter effects on TensorFlow classification accuracy

This study investigates how the hyperparameters epochs and batch size affect the classification accuracy of a convolutional neural network (CNN) trained on pulsar candidate data. Our results reveal that accuracy improves with increasing number of epochs and smaller batch sizes, suggesting that with optimized hyperparameters, high accuracy may be achievable with minimal training. These findings offer insights that could help create more efficient machine learning classification models for pulsar signal detection, with the potential of accelerating pulsar discovery and advancing astrophysical research.

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A new hybrid cold storage material

Zhang et al. | Jun 05, 2022

A new hybrid cold storage material

With low-temperature transportation being critical for the progress of research and medical services by preserving biological samples and vaccines, the optimization of cold storage materials is more critical now than ever. The exclusive use of dry ice has its limitations. Notably, it proves insufficient for cold storage during long-range transportation necessary for the delivery of specimens to rural areas. In this article, the authors have proposed a new means of cold storage through the combination of dry ice and ethanol. Upon thorough analysis, the authors have determined their new method as considerably better than the use of pure dry ice across many characteristics, including cold storage capacity, longevity of material, and financial and environmental feasibility.

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Development of Two New Efficient Means of Wastewater Treatment

Bao et al. | Feb 06, 2014

Development of Two New Efficient Means of Wastewater Treatment

The water we use must be treated and cleaned before we release it back into the environment. Here, the authors investigate two new techniques for purifying dissolved impurities from waste water. Their findings may give rise to more cheaper and more efficient water treatment and help keep the planet greener.

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Error mitigation of quantum teleportation on IBM quantum computers

Chen et al. | May 15, 2023

Error mitigation of quantum teleportation on IBM quantum computers

Quantum computers can perform computational tasks beyond the capability of classical computers, such as simulating quantum systems in materials science and chemistry. Quantum teleportation is the transfer of quantum information across distances, relying on entangled states generated by quantum computing. We sought to mitigate the error of quantum teleportation which was simulated on IBM cloud quantum computers.

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