Новости за 07.05.2021

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon hit a record last month, the government reported Friday with figures that belie President Jair Bolsonaro's pledge to crack down on such destruction.

China now accounts for more greenhouse gas emissions than all of the world's developed nations combined, according to new research from Rhodium Group.

Inclusion of soybean and linseed oils in the diet of dairy cows made the fatty acid content of their milk even healthier for human nutrition. It also increased the proportions of omega-6 and omega-3, which in the right balance play a key role in preventing cardiovascular diseases, for example, as well as chronic inflammation and some kinds of cancer.

For the first time, a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used one of its two microphones to listen as the Ingenuity helicopter flew for the fourth time on April 30, 2021. A new video combines footage of the solar-powered helicopter taken by Perseverance's Mastcam-Z imager with audio from a microphone belonging to the rover's SuperCam laser instrument.

Images of bare, naked white coral reefs have been increasingly circulating around the world. The typically colorful reefs of tropical oceans, which are home to many species of the marine ecosystem, are suffering from rising water temperatures due to global warming. There is no heat relief for the corals in sight. Scientists are desperately seeking out ways to make the temperature-sensitive organisms more resistant to heat stress. A group of scientists led by GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel are developing a promising approach... Читать дальше...

Narrow-gap semiconductors with the ability to use visible light have garnered significant interest thanks to their versatility. Now, scientists in Japan have developed and characterized a new semiconductor material for application in process components stimulated by light. The findings have, for the first time, suggested a new way to reduce the band gap in cheaper and non-toxic tin-based oxide semiconductors for efficient light-based applications.

Observing the success of a colleague can motivate us to learn more and perform at a higher level. But when we perceive that a peer's accomplishment has risen above the usual standard of "good work" and can be rated an "exceptional" success, our motivation to learn is even greater, states a new paper co-authored by Johns Hopkins Carey Business School Assistant Professor Christopher Myers, who is an expert in organizational behavior.

Clocks are essential building blocks of modern technology, from computers to GPS receivers. They are also essentially engines, irreversibly consuming resources in order to generate accurate ticks. But what resources have to be expended to achieve a desired accuracy? In our latest study, published in Physical Review X, we answer this question by measuring, for the first time, the entropy generated by a minimal clock.

A team of researchers from the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine, the Technology & Research Academy University and the University of Hyderabad, all in India, has found that flatworms are able to sense light exposure even after decapitation. The researchers have published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A former colleague who was a researcher and promoter of local food systems once argued that local meat markets connect children with reality. "If young people do not have a direct experience with food," he told me, "they might think it originates on supermarket shelves. Local butcheries improve food literacy and reduce the disconnect between consumers and their choices." Many would dispute this approach today, but I get the point. The question is: how does it sit with what we know about food and the environment?

Large amounts of gas are sometimes funneled to a galaxy's nuclear regions, with profound consequences. The gas triggers starburst activity and can also feed the supermassive black hole, converting it into an active galactic nucleus (AGN); indeed the supermassive black holes in AGN are thought to gain most of their mass in these accretion events. Eventually, outward pressure from supernovae, shocks, and/or AGN activity terminate the inflow. Galaxy mergers are thought to be one mechanism capable of... Читать дальше...

Australia, the driest inhabited continent, is prone to natural disasters and wild swings in weather conditions—from floods to droughts, heatwaves and bushfires.

Physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) have for the first time been able to prove a long-predicted but as yet unconfirmed fundamental effect. In Faraday chiral anisotropy, the propagation characteristics of light waves are changed simultaneously by the natural and magnetic-field induced material properties of the medium through which the light travels. The researchers obtained proof that this is the case by conducting experiments using nickel helices at the nanometer scale. Читать дальше...

A team of researchers from Zhejiang University, Xi'an Jiaotong University and Monash University has developed a way to bind multiple strands of graphene oxide into a thick cable. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their process and possible uses for it. Rodolfo Cruz-Silva and Ana Laura Elías with Shinshu University and Binghamton University have published a Perspectives piece in the same issue outlining the work by the researchers and explaining why they believe... Читать дальше...

A team of researchers from Lund University, the University of Copenhagen and the Nature Research Centre in Lithuania has found that some great reed warblers climb as high as 6,000 meters when they fly over the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes monitoring migrating great reed warblers by affixing tiny data loggers to their backs.