Новости за 23.03.2021

Featured on the cover of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the Spanish National Research Council partnered to create a new camera allowing for the imaging of wetland soil activity in real time. This camera gives the classic IRIS (indicator of reduction in soils) technology a big upgrade. IRIS is used universally by researchers and soil assessors to determine if soils are behaving like wetland soils and should therefore be classified as such.

A new study co-authored by a Tulane University geoscientist shows that human efforts to tame the Mississippi River may have had an unintended positive effect: more rapid transport of carbon to the ocean.

The Bale Mountains in south-central Ethiopia are considered to be one of the most unique centers of endemism, with an extraordinary number of plants and animals that can only be found there. Numerous species are already known from this Afromontane high-elevation plateau, making it a biodiversity hotspot, but ongoing research continues to reveal the presence of so far unknown and undescribed organisms.

Hummingbird hawkmoths are small insects that hover in the air like hummingbirds when drinking nectar from flowers. Dr. Anna Stöckl from the Biocentre of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg in Bavaria, Germany, is studying the visual performance of these insects. Dr. Stöckl and her doctoral student Ronja Bigge now present their latest findings in the journal Current Biology.

A study of ancient bones shows that Early Neolithic sheep-breeders were faced with high levels of mortality among young animals in their herds. A statistical model, partly developed at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich, allowed the age distribution of the bones to be precisely determined.

THz waves have a plethora of applications ranging from biomedical and medical examinations, imaging, environmental monitoring, to wireless communications, because of abundant spectral information, low photon energy, strong penetrability, and shorter wavelength. THz waves with technological advances not only determined by high-efficiency sources and detectors but also decided by a variety of high-quality THz components/functional devices. However, traditional THz devices should be thick enough to realize the desired wave-manipulating functions... Читать дальше...

Tailoring light is much like tailoring cloth, cutting and snipping to turn a bland fabric into one with a desired pattern. In the case of light, the tailoring is usually done in the spatial degrees of freedom, such as its amplitude and phase (the 'pattern' of light), and its polarization, while the cutting and snipping might be controlled with spatial light modulators and the like. This burgeoning field is known as structured light, and is pushing the limits in what we can do with light, enabling us to see smaller... Читать дальше...

Distributed optical fiber sensing (DOFS) is currently a mature technology that allows 'transforming' a conventional fiber optic into a continuous array of individual sensors, which are distributed along its length. Between the panoply of techniques developed in the field of DOFS, those based on phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (ΦOTDR) have gained a great deal of attention, mainly due to their ability to measure strain and temperature perturbations in real time. These unique features... Читать дальше...

Metal-insulator transition (MIT) driven by many-body interactions is an important phenomenon in condensed matter physics. Exotic phases always emerge around the metal-insulator transition points where quantum fluctuations arise from a competition among spin, charge, orbital, and lattice degrees of freedom. Two-dimensional (2D) materials are a large class of materials. Their simple structure, low dimensionality, and highly tunable carrier density make them an ideal platform for exploring exotic phases. Читать дальше...

Candidiasis is a fungal infection caused by a yeast called Candida. It is a serious global health problem and it can be vaginal, oral or systemic. The latter is the most severe form of infection, as it can lead to death, but vaginal candidiasis infection is the most prevalent, affecting 80% of women at some point in their lives.

Parents across the U.S. are conflicted about reopening schools. Most are at least somewhat worried that a return to the classroom will lead to more coronavirus cases, but there's an even deeper fear that their children are falling behind in school while at home.

A small team of researchers with the Center for Severe Weather Research, in Boulder, Colorado, has found evidence that suggests many tornados in the U.S. are bigger and stronger than their classification would suggest. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of tornadic activity in the U.S. and what they found.

Net zero targets now cover two thirds of the global economy, according to a report today from Oxford Net Zero and the ECIU (Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit) – even though it was only a decade ago that Oxford climate scientists first showed the need to reach net zero emissions. However, despite the rapid progress, the study reveals, only 20% of these targets currently meet quality tests.

In 2020 wildfires ravaged more than 10 million acres of land across California, Oregon and Washington, making it the largest fire season in modern history. Across the country, hurricanes over Atlantic waters yielded a record-breaking number of storms.

Humans are remarkably adaptable, and our ancestors have survived challenges like the changing climate in the past. Now, research is providing insight into how people who lived over 5,000 years ago managed to adapt.

Possibly the oldest cephalopods in the Earth's history stem from the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland (Canada) discovered by scientists from Heidelberg University. The 522-million-year-old fossils could turn out to be the first known form of these highly evolved invertebrate organisms, whose living descendants today include species such as the cuttlefish, octopus and nautilus. The find would indicate that cephalopods evolved about 30 million years earlier than has been assumed.

The Water Framework Directive was enacted in 2000 with the goal of protecting and restoring aquatic ecosystems to a "good ecological status." Alongside this monumental water policy effort, large amounts of environmental monitoring data were gathered to track the occurrence of organic contaminants in Europe. For the first time, this large dataset comprising of more than 8 million measurements of 352 organic contaminants in 31 countries over the last 15 years was comprehensively analyzed to deduce... Читать дальше...

An international group of researchers led by the University of Adelaide has conducted a comprehensive genetic analysis and found no evidence of interbreeding between modern humans and the ancient humans known from fossil records in Island Southeast Asia. They did find further DNA evidence of our mysterious ancient cousins, the Denisovans, which could mean there are major discoveries to come in the region.

Men, young adults and people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds are less likely to follow the Government's restrictions designed to stop the spread of COVID-19, a representative survey of 2,252 adults has found.

A pair of researchers at the University of Lausanne has found a link between invasive animal species and commercial success in the global pet trade. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jérôme Gippet and Cleo Bertelsmeier describe their study of sales of invasive species and what they learned about them.

An international team of astronomers has performed multi-wavelength photometric and spectroscopic observations of a blazar known as B2 1420+32. The observational campaign found that the object exhibits a large scale spectral variability and is the so-called "changing-look" blazar. The findings are reported in a paper published March 15 on arXiv.org.