Новости за 24.03.2021

The high temperatures and pressures of the Earth's mantle forge carbon-rich minerals known as carbonates into diamond. But less is known about the fate of carbonates that travel even deeper underground—depths from which no sample has ever been recovered.

Scientists make pivotal discovery of method for wireless modulation of neurons with X-rays that could improve the lives of patients with brain disorders. The X-ray source only requires a machine like that found in a dentist's office.

For nearly two decades, they've hung out underground, preparing for the day they'll writhe up into our world, make a lot of noise, have sex and die.

Crowded into a tiny plane, 1,000 feet above the water off Georgia, the surveyors look down in search of a disturbance—a long splash, or a dark patch amid all that blue.

This latest installment from our data sonification series features three diverse cosmic scenes. In each, astronomical data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes are converted into sounds. Data sonification maps the data from these space-based telescopes into a form that users can hear instead of only see, embodying the data in a new form without changing the original content.

Bronze Age mining sites relied on outside sources to deliver pre-processed food to sustain the community, according to a study published March 24, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Andreas Heiss of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and colleagues.

Every society has some degree of wealth inequality—over history, across continents, there always seem to be some people who have more than others. But the amount of inequality differs—in some civilizations, a few powerful people have nearly all the wealth, whereas in others, it's more spread out. In a new study in PLOS ONE, archaeologists examined the remains of houses in ancient Maya cities and compared them with other Mesoamerican societies; they found that the societies with the most wealth inequality... Читать дальше...

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have studied for the first time how chemical reactions in clouds can influence the global climate. They found that isoprene, the dominant non-methane organic compound emitted into the atmosphere, can strongly contribute to the formation of organic aerosols in clouds. They published their results today in the journal Science Advances.

The wrong type of earthquake in an area where there should not have been an earthquake led researchers to uncover the cause for this unexpected strike-slip earthquake—where two pieces of crust slide past each other on a fault—in places where subduction zone earthquakes—one geologic plate slipping beneath another—are common.

Powering Los Angeles entirely with renewable energy can be accomplished without significant disruption to the economy or lifestyles over the next 25 years, if not sooner, according to new research conducted by USC experts for the city and federal government.

For scientists, especially graduate students, who conduct fieldwork, every day is precious. Researchers meticulously prepare their equipment, procedures and timelines to make sure they get the data they need to do good science. So you can imagine the collective anxiety that fell across academia in spring 2020 when COVID-19 struck and many universities suspended in-person activities, including fieldwork.

Skoltech researchers examined the antibiotic compounds that employ a 'Trojan horse' strategy to get into a bacterial cell unrecognized and prevent the synthesis of proteins, ultimately killing the cell. They were able to identify new gene clusters that look like those of known 'Trojan horses' - these likely guide the biosynthesis of new antimicrobials that require further investigation. The review paper was published in the journal RSC Chemical Biology.

Nearly 2,000 active landfills are spread across the U.S., with the majority of garbage discarded by homes and businesses finding its way to a landfill. The resulting chemicals and toxins that build up at these sites can then leach into soil and groundwater, and this "leachate" can present serious hazards to the environment and to the people who live nearby.

Living tissue can heal itself from many injuries, but giving similar abilities to artificial systems, such as robots, has been extremely challenging. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Nano Letters have developed small, swimming robots that can magnetically heal themselves on-the-fly after breaking into two or three pieces. The strategy could someday be used to make hardier devices for environmental or industrial clean up, the researchers say.

The process of fabricating materials is complicated, time-consuming and costly. Too much of one material, or too little, can create problems with the product, forcing the design process to begin again. Advancements in the design process are needed to reduce the cost and time it takes to produce materials with targeted properties.

Decreasing the emission and efficient utilization (fixation) of carbon dioxide (CO2) are worldwide issues to prevent global warming. Promotion of the use of renewable energy is effective in reducing CO2 emissions. However, since there are large time-dependent fluctuations and large regional differences in renewable energy production, it is necessary to establish a fixation technology to allow efficient energy transportation and storage. Thus, there is increasing interest in technologies for synthesizing... Читать дальше...

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fuels plant growth. As carbon levels rise, it's appealing to think of supercharged plant growth and massive tree-planting campaigns drawing down the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning, agriculture and other human activities.

Despite aquaculture's potential to feed a growing world population while relieving pressure on badly depleted oceans, the industry has been plagued by questions about its environmental impacts.

A team of researchers from the U.S., Japan, Germany, and the Netherlands reports that honeybees use a series of cascading scenting behaviors to locate their queen. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes their study of honeybees using observational and machine learning techniques and what they discovered.

Matthew Kotchen, an economist at Yale University, has found that fossil fuel companies in the U.S. are getting approximately $62 billion in implicit subsidies every year. In his paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kotchen describes how he calculated the costs associated with use of fossil fuels in the U.S. and what it means for those who produce it.

An international team of astronomers has detected four new "hot Jupiter" exoplanets as part of the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The newly found alien worlds are at least 10% larger than Jupiter but less massive than the solar system's biggest planet. The finding is reported in a paper published March 18 on arXiv.org.

Advances in tip-based microscopy in materials science have allowed imaging at angstrom-scale resolution, although the technique does not provide clear characterization of the structural and chemical heterogeneities of surface species. In a new report now published on Science, Jiayu Xu and a research team in quantum information and quantum physics at the University of Science and Technology of China used a model system of pentacene derivatives on a silver surface. The researchers then combined a range... Читать дальше...

A new study shows that if the population were fixed at current levels, the risk of population displacement due to river floods would rise by ~50% for each degree of global warming. However, if population increases are taken into account, the relative global flood displacement risk is significantly higher.

A "plague" of the world's most venomous spiders could swarm Sydney after torrential rain and flooding, the Australian Reptile Park said Wednesday, warning that the deadly arachnids could seek refuge in homes as they escape the deluge.

Florida has experienced a relatively mild winter, which typically translates to more mosquitoes in the summer and more birds on which they can feast. If history repeats itself, it's likely there will be an uptick in West Nile virus cases this year, especially in the outer fringes of the suburbs where much of the nighttime illumination emanates from the skyglow of nearby cities.