Новости за 09.04.2021

Desperate French farmers counted the cost Friday of several nights of frost this week which threaten to decimate grape harvests in some of the country's best-known and prestigious wine-producing regions.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is two days away from making humanity's first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. If all proceeds as planned, the 4-pound (1.8-kg) rotorcraft is expected to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater Sunday, April 11, at 12:30 p.m. local Mars solar time (10:54 p.m. EDT), hovering 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface for up to 30 seconds. Mission control specialists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California expect to receive... Читать дальше...

The melting rate of the Antarctic ice sheet is mainly controlled by the increase of ocean temperatures surrounding Antarctica. Using a new, higher-resolution climate model simulation, scientists from Utrecht University found a much slower ocean temperature increase compared to current simulations with a coarser resolution. Consequently, the projected sea-level rise in 100 years is about 25% lower than expected from the current simulations. These results are published today in the journal Science Advances.

For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain data from underneath Thwaites Glacier, also known as the "Doomsday Glacier." They find that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow.

Excessive CO2 emissions are a major cause of climate change, and hence reducing the CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere is key to limiting adverse environmental effects. Rather than just capture and store CO2, it would be desirable to use it as carbon feedstock for fuel production to achieve the target of "net-zero-emissions energy systems." The capture and conversion of CO2 (from fuel gas or directly from the air) to methane and methanol simply using water as a hydrogen source under ambient conditions... Читать дальше...

A two-week old elephant has died after being rejected by her family following the birth of another elephant calf, Sweden's Boras Zoo announced Friday.

A volcano that has been dormant for decades erupted Friday on Saint Vincent, darkening skies over the northern part of the Caribbean island and forcing thousands to flee to safety.

Over the past decade, the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system has revolutionized genetic engineering, allowing scientists to make targeted changes to organisms' DNA. While the system could potentially be useful in treating a variety of diseases, CRISPR-Cas9 editing involves cutting DNA strands, leading to permanent changes to the cell's genetic material.

Alloying is a general and efficient strategy to boost the catalytic activity of Pt catalysts toward oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) through electronic and geometric effects. Besides, high-index surfaces (HISs) of Pt also exhibit superior ORR activity, mainly originated from low-coordinated step or kink atoms. Thus, a combination of the alloying and HISs would be a promising method to further develop excellent catalysts for ORR. However, simultaneous control of alloy composition and HISs exposure in nanoscale remains challenging.

Italy's Mount Etna, Europe's most active volcano, has recently been on explosive form, with 17 eruptions in less than three months. Instruments onboard three different satellites orbiting Earth have acquired imagery of the eruptions—revealing the intensity of the lava-fountaining eruptive episodes, known as paroxysms.

A new four-part HBO series, "Allen v. Farrow," documents the accusations of sexual abuse against film director Woody Allen and the aftermath. The documentary calls on the expertise of Joan S. Meier, a professor of law at George Washington University Law School. In the docuseries Meier comments on strategies of disinformation used by abusers, and references her research focusing on a particularly widespread one: the claim of "parental alienation" often used to deny abuse claims by women and children.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered that bird blood produces more heat in winter, when it is colder, than in autumn. The study is published in The FASEB Journal.

Peatlands are one of the most valuable terrestrial ecosystems in our fight against climate change. These deep layers of partially decayed plants and other organic material are tens of thousands of years old.

A team of researchers from a number of institutions in the U.S. has identified a DNA methylation regulator called QSER1. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes studying the valleys of unmethylated DNA and their discovery of a new regulator. Tianpeng Gu and Margaret Goodell with the Baylor College of Medicine, have published a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue outlining prior research with DNA methylation and the work by the team on this new effort.

The properties of carbon-based nanomaterials can be altered and engineered through the deliberate introduction of certain structural "imperfections" or defects. The challenge, however, is to control the number and type of these defects. In the case of carbon nanotubes—microscopically small tubular compounds that emit light in the near-infrared—chemists and materials scientists at Heidelberg University led by Prof. Dr. Jana Zaumseil have now demonstrated a new reaction pathway to enable such defect control. Читать дальше...

School closures in the last year have led to serious learning losses, with primary-age school pupils making virtually no progress studying at home, according to a new study by researchers at Oxford's Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science, published in Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Learning losses were particularly pronounced in families with low levels of education.

Chemists developed a method to detect changes in proteins that may signal the early stages of cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and other major diseases. Angewandte Chemie published the work, led by chemists at Emory University and Auburn University. The results offer a novel strategy for studying links between unique protein modifications and various pathologies.

A team of researchers from Jinan University, the University of Colorado, Boulder, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, has found evidence indicating that the massive bush fires that burned from late 2019 through early 2020 in parts of Australia produced so much smoke particulates that they increased the temperature of the stratosphere in the region for approximately six months. In their paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters... Читать дальше...

University of Otago research analyzing skeletal remains has found evidence of a range of ethnicities present on the Goldfields of Otago, proving some assumptions of the cultural make-up of early settler New Zealand to be inaccurate.

Millions of gallons of water laced with fertilizer ingredients are being pumped into Florida's Tampa Bay from a leaking reservoir at an abandoned phosphate plant at Piney Point. As the water spreads into the bay, it carries phosphorus and nitrogen—nutrients that under the right conditions can fuel dangerous algae blooms that can suffocate sea grass beds and kill fish, dolphins and manatees.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) has long roots in human history. With the advent of modern technologies, scientists were finally able to start scanning the skies for any sign of life. When the search first started back in the 1960s, it focused almost exclusively on trying to detect radio signals. Over the decades, no irrefutable evidence of any artificial radio signals was ever found. Financial support started to drift away from the discipline, and where the money goes so do many scientists.

The search for life on other planets has received a major boost after scientists revealed the spectral signatures of almost 1000 atmospheric molecules that may be involved in the production or consumption of phosphine, a study led by UNSW Sydney revealed.

Nobel laureate Herbert Kroemer once famously asserted "The interface is the device." The observations by the Sydney researchers could therefore spark a new debate on whether interfaces—which are physical boundaries separating different regions in materials—are a viable solution to the unreliability of next-generation devices.

Ube Industries, Ltd., the Port and Airport Research Institute, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology today announced that a joint research group has established a method for evaluating the mechanical properties of hardened cement mortar and initiated the first-ever in-situ data measurement. The research project aims to contribute to the construction of deep-sea infrastructure. By collecting... Читать дальше...