Новости за 02.02.2021

A fascinating and crucial ability of biological tissue, such as muscle, is self-healing and self-strengthening in response to damage caused by external forces. Most human-made polymers, on the other hand, break irreversibly under enough mechanical stress, which makes them less useful for certain critical applications like manufacturing artificial organs. But what if we could design polymers that reacted chemically to mechanical stimuli and used this energy to enhance their properties?

The longer someone stays awake, the more likely they'll start getting tired as their brain needs sleep. But how the brain senses that need for sleep hasn't always been clear. Now, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have shown in fruit flies that certain groups of brain cells called astrocytes sense electrical activity in different regions of the brain and use these signals to facilitate the process of falling asleep. The more activity that they detect, the stronger the need-for-sleep signals become... Читать дальше...

Nature is a 'blind spot' in economics that can no longer be ignored by the accounting systems that dictate national finances and the decision-makers behind them.

Cycling, e-biking or walking can help tackle the climate crisis—even if you swap the car for active transport just one day a week—according to a new study led by researchers from the University of Oxford's Transport Studies Unit.

Now just a year and a half from launch, the mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid will soon begin assembling and testing the spacecraft.

Researchers developing renewable plastics and exploring new processes for plastics upcycling and recycling technologies will now be able to easily baseline their efforts to current manufacturing practices to understand if their efforts will save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The findings of a new study examining the behaviors of alligator and caiman hatchlings have enhanced our understanding of how we can conserve, and increase, the population of endangered crocodilian species.

A team of researchers at the University of Maryland, has found a new way to make wood transparent. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their process and why they believe it is better than the old process.

Astronomers from Switzerland and Germany have performed multiwavelength observations of a high-synchrotron-peaked blazar known as Mrk 421. Results of this observational campaign provide more insights into the variability of gamma-ray emission from this source. The study was published January 26 on arXiv.org.