Новости за 20.01.2021

The onset date of the yearly rainy season reliably predicts if seasonal drought will occur in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa that are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, and could help to mitigate its effects. Shraddhanand Shukla and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara's Climate Hazards Center, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 20, 2021.

The new tech elite share distinct views setting them apart from other segments of the world's elite more generally, according to a study published January 20, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hilke Brockmann from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany, and colleagues.

In the Early Bronze Age of Europe, ancient people used bronze objects as an early form of money, even going so far as to standardize the shape and weight of their currency, according to a study published January 20, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Maikel H. G. Kuijpers and Catalin N. Popa of Leiden University, Netherlands.

A Nepali climbing team which made history at the weekend by becoming the first to summit the world's second-highest mountain in winter told Wednesday how they battled hurricane-force winds and freezing temperatures to achieve the record.

Dark clouds, the smell of rain on a hot sidewalk, the flashes of intense light followed by a loud crackling and then a low, rolling thunder—who doesn't love a good summer thunderstorm? We've all seen one, heard one, or been completely soaked by one. But how much do we really know about this weather phenomenon?

Wildfires are the enemy when they threaten homes in California and elsewhere. But a new study led by SMU suggests that people living in fire-prone places can learn to manage fire as an ally to prevent dangerous blazes, just like people who lived nearly 1,000 years ago.

New photo-ferroelectric materials allow storage of information in a non-volatile way using light stimulus. The idea is to create energy efficient memory devices with high performance and versatility to face current challenges. The study has been published in Nature Communications by Josep Fontcuberta and co-workers and opens a path towards further investigations on this phenomenon and to neuromorphic computing applications.

Hydrogel-polymer hybrids are widely used across a variety of applications to form biomedical devices and flexible electronics. However, the technologies are presently limited to hydrogel-polymer hybrid laminates containing silicone rubbers. This can greatly limit the functionality and performance of hydrogel-polymer-based devices and machines. In a new study, Qi Ge, and a team of scientists in mechanics, mechatronic systems, flexible electronics, chemistry and advanced design in China, Singapore... Читать дальше...

Physicist Pekka Janhunen with the Finnish Meteorological Institute has developed a novel idea to colonize a place other than the Earth—and it is not the moon or Mars. Instead, Janhunen is suggesting in a paper posted on the arXiv preprint server that humans populate a giant satellite that orbits Ceres, a dwarf planet in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

Using the AstroSat spacecraft, Indian astronomers have performed an imaging and spectroscopic study of the Fornax A galaxy. Results of the study, published January 13 on the arXiv preprint server, provide more clues on the properties of the galaxy and ultraviolet emission from this source.

Changes in climate that occur over short periods of time influence biodiversity. For a realistic assessment of these effects, it is necessary to also consider previous temperature trends going far back into Earth's history. Researchers from the University of Bayreuth and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg show this in a paper for Nature Ecology and Evolution. According to the paper, future climate-related species extinction could be less severe than predictions based only on the current trend of global warming. Читать дальше...

One of Brazil's worst environmental disasters—a dam collapse that also killed more than 200 people—could have been foreseen with the latest satellite radar imaging technique, according to a new study by the University of Nottingham and Durham University.

Countries where massive natural hazard events occur frequently are not more likely than others to make changes to reduce risks from future disasters. This is shown in an interdisciplinary Uppsala University study now published in Nature Communications.

Numerous natural products are awaiting discovery in all kinds of natural habitats. Especially microorganisms such as bacteria or fungi are able to produce diverse natural products with high biomedical application potential in particular as antibiotics and anticancer agents. This includes the so-called red yeast of the species Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, isolated from a deep-sea sediment sample from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and analyzed for its genome and chemical constituents by researchers from GEOMAR... Читать дальше...

A 'do not touch' directive applies to both a Matisse painting and this Matiss experiment on board the International Space Station.

It takes a lot to make a wooden table. Grow a tree, cut it down, transport it, mill it … you get the point. It's a decades-long process. Luis Fernando Velásquez-García suggests a simpler solution: "If you want a table, then you should just grow a table."

Even the smallest molecule can tell a big story. For instance, observing a single molecule can throw light on underlying biological processes in the human body. In fact, molecular imaging procedures—which are noninvasive and painless—are being used to diagnose and manage the treatment of COVID-19, cancer, heart disease, and other serious health conditions.

Sixteen years of remote sensing data reveals that in Earth's largest freshwater lakes, climate change influences carbon fixation trends.

There's a common adage that knowing the right people holds the secret to wealth and success. The flip side of that, however, is reminiscent of the country song, "Friends in Low Places": Sometimes social connections can prove detrimental.

Getting arrested even once can keep a millennial from buying a home as quickly as peers with no arrest history, according to new research from a Rice University sociologist.

The views of women and men can differ on important gendered issues such as abortion, gender equity and government spending priorities. Surprisingly, however, average differences in sex on this front are usually small. Many women adopt social and political positions that favor men and many men favor women-friendly positions.

The fungus Zymoseptoria triciti is one of the most genetically diverse and devastating wheat pathogens in the world. An important step has been taken in the fight against this fungus: an international consortium that includes WUR has succeeded in cloning the resistant Stb16q-gene and successfully introducing it in wheat. The gene is now relatively easy to incorporate in commercial wheat varieties via breeding. This means that growers will have less loss of harvest and less need to apply chemical... Читать дальше...

A McGill-led research team has identified a new species of praying mantis thanks to imprints of its fossilized wings. It lived in Labrador, in the Canadian Subarctic around 100 million years ago, during the time of the dinosaurs, in the Late Cretaceous period. The researchers believe that the fossils of the new genus and species, Labradormantis guilbaulti, helps to establish evolutionary relationships between previously known species and advances the scientific understanding of the evolution of the most 'primitive' modern praying mantises. Читать дальше...

Agriculture and climate experts have warned for some years that extreme climate events including severe droughts with frequent heatwaves drop the production of major staple food crops like wheat causing a severe threat to food security. Therefore, scientists are looking at grains that can better adapt to these circumstances: An international team, lead by Wolfram Weckwerth from the University of Vienna, has taken a comparative physiological and molecular view on wheat and pearl millet under drought stress... Читать дальше...