Новости за 29.03.2021

Dwindling water supplies and a growing population will halve per capita water use in Jordan by the end of this century. Without intervention, few households in the arid nation will have access to even 40 liters (10.5 gallons) of piped water per person per day.

A major component of NASA's Psyche spacecraft has been delivered to the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, where the phase known as assembly, test, and launch operations is now underway. Over the next year, the spacecraft will finish assembly and undergo rigorous checkout and testing before it's shipped to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for an August 2022 launch to the main asteroid belt.

SpaceX has postponed the latest test flight of its prototype interplanetary Starship rocket from the company's south Texas facility, Elon Musk said Monday.

Those on the left of the political spectrum are more likely than those on the right to notice social inequality, but only when it affects typically disadvantaged groups, a new study from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University has shown.

Life in the midst of a pandemic offers precious little to celebrate, but the California condor success story should warm all of our hearts.

A third of the planet's agricultural land is at "high risk" of pesticide pollution from the lingering residue of chemical ingredients that can leach into water supplies and threaten biodiversity, according to research published Monday.

Nitrogen dioxide, an air pollutant emitted by fossil fuel-powered cars and gas-burning stoves is not only bad for the climate—it's bad for our health. Long-term exposure to NO2 has been linked to increased heart disease, respiratory diseases such as asthma, and infections.

Applied physicists at the University of Sydney have proposed new standards to measure moisture leaks into bionic devices such as pacemakers, cochlear hearing implants and retinal replacements.

Research into the flower preferences of pollinating moths may have delivered a vital clue to the simple factors needed for the emergence of new species.

The vast majority of the world's largest meat and dairy companies have not made an explicit commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, finds a new analysis by researchers at New York University.

Transition metal perovskite oxides exhibit several desirable properties, including high-temperature superconductivity and electrocatalysis. Now, scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology explore the structure and properties of a perovskite oxide, PbFeO3, in anticipation of the unusual charge distribution and exotic magnetic transitions displayed by such systems. They report two of the magnetic transitions, with a distinctive transition above room temperature and look into its causes, opening doors... Читать дальше...

In the last few years, as climate changes continues to become more severe, there has been a growing push for rich countries to pay poorer ones to preserve and protect rain forests and other tropical forests. However, according to a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, RIHN Associate Professor Keiichiro Kanemoto and Senior Researcher Nguyen Tien Hoang show that other financial motives, namely international trade with these same rich countries have actually encouraged poorer countries to increase... Читать дальше...

Five years ago, scientists created a single-celled synthetic organism that, with only 473 genes, was the simplest living cell ever known. However, this bacteria-like organism behaved strangely when growing and dividing, producing cells with wildly different shapes and sizes.

The permanent rise of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, which fundamentally changed the subsequent nature of Earth's habitability, occurred much later than thought, according to new research.

A new black hole breaks the record—not for being the smallest or the biggest—but for being right in the middle.

Simulating the interactions between atoms and molecules is important for many scientific studies. However, accurate simulations can take a long time, which limits their use. To speed up simulations without sacrificing too much detail, Siewert-Jan Marrink, Professor of Molecular Dynamics at the University of Groningen, designed a set of parameters that allow fast but accurate coarse-grained simulations. In a paper that was published on 29 March in Nature Methods, Marrink and his co-workers present... Читать дальше...

Using an ordinary light microscope, MIT engineers have devised a technique for imaging biological samples with accuracy at the scale of 10 nanometers—which should enable them to image viruses and potentially even single biomolecules, the researchers say.

New research reveals how cancer cells endure stress and survive. Publishing in Molecular Cell, an international research team identified mechanisms that human and mouse cells use to survive heat shock and resume their original function—and even pass the memory of the experience of stress down to their daughter cells.

Scientists at MIPT have found a possible explanation for the anomalously fast release of gas from nuclear fuel. Supercomputer simulations have uncovered an unexpected mechanism for accelerating the escape of gas bubbles from the uranium dioxide crystal matrix to the surface. The result points the way to eliminate the paradoxical discrepancy of several orders of magnitude between existing theoretical models and experimental results. The paper was published in the Journal of Nuclear Materials.

Researchers at the University of Southampton have developed a new way of using nanomaterials to identify and enrich skeletal stem cells—a discovery which could eventually lead to new treatments for major bone fractures and the repair of lost or damaged bone.

The creation of genes with new functions is a major driver of developmental innovation in all living organisms. How these genes acquire new functions over evolutionary time scales, however, is unclear.

The sun is the most important source of energy for sustaining life on Earth, but it gives us a lot more than just light and heat. It also gives us solar storms.

The race for the quantum computer will most likely be decided at the quantum bit (qubit) – the smallest information unit of the quantum computer. The coupling of several qubits into a computing system is currently one of the greatest challenges in the development of quantum computers. A key question is which physical system and which material are best suited for qubits. Development of qubits based on superconductors has advanced farthest—but there are increasing signs that silicon semiconductor technology... Читать дальше...

Climate change is having an undeniable influence on coastal areas. A substantial proportion of the world's sandy coastlines are already eroding owing to increased storm surges, flooding and sea level rise. With our coastal environments in constant change, Earth observation satellites are being used to better strengthen our knowledge of changing coastlines.

When I was a teenager, I volunteered in the rainforest exhibit at an aquarium. A few times a week, we'd get a phone call from someone looking to donate a pet that they could no longer care for. Mostly turtles and frogs. The occasional parrot. Once, a retired dancer wanted to find a new home for two boa constrictors that had been part of her act.