As population growth and extreme temperatures strain the United States power grid, utilities and equipment manufacturers are looking for ways to increase the amount of electricity the grid can carry. The Powerline Conductor Accelerated Testing Facility, or PCAT, located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is one of the only facilities in the country where companies can try out new transmission line technologies for long time periods in extremes of wind, weather, temperature and electrical load conditions.

An outbreak of often-fatal epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) afflicted more than 500 white-tailed deer in Indiana’s Allen, Porter and Wabash counties last summer.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources, which adjusts hunting deer limits in counties affected by such outbreaks, needs accurate but hard-to-obtain population estimates and other related data to make their management decisions.

“Successful wildlife management requires us to know how many animals we have,” said Purdue University’s Patrick Zollner, professor of quantitative ecology in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources. “White-tailed deer, coyote and turkeys are three very prominent, charismatic species in the state, and we don’t have good numbers for their populations at all.” 

From the realm of the abstract to the tangible, the new assistant professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) Julian Léonard brings the quantum properties of matter to life. Having done research at ETH Zurich and Harvard, Léonard joins ISTA from TU Wien. His research plays with the rules of quantum physics like a board game to uncover new quantum phenomena, thus underlining the central role of quantum mechanics in nature.

An Indiana University researcher who is a former athletic trainer for pro sports is leading research projects on high school football and amateur soccer in order to understand how to protect against the risk of small repeated blows to the head in youth sports.

Amali Samarasinghe, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UT Health Science Center, describes herself as an aficionada of the alternative hypothesis. “I have a passion to uncover the inner workings of non-dogmatic possibilities.”

Mahyar Amirgholy’s group in the Futra Lab at Kennesaw State University is developing a control system that enables CAVs to communicate with both traffic lights and each other through a cloud computing network.

Kidney stones are the worst, so Reactions host Alex Dainis made some at home and tested supposed prevention methods to keep them at bay. Doctors recommend citrate to ward them off, but how is a little lemon in your water going to stop them from forming? And are all citrus juices the same, or does orange juice prevent kidney stones more than lemon juice or even grapefruit juice? This week Alex gets the answers.

Measurements of air pollutants in the northwest India region suggest the undeniable role of crop residue burning (CRB) in the increase in rural air pollution. The Aakash Project has been conducting measurements in the region since autumn 2022.