Новости за 16.07.2021

A three-day celebration of what would have been history-making astronaut John Glenn's 100th birthday began Friday in his birthplace and childhood hometown in Ohio, even as additional events were announced to mark the occasion.

For the first time ever, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine discovered that phages—tiny viruses that attack bacteria—are key to initiating rapid bacterial evolution leading to the emergence of treatment-resistant "superbugs." The findings were published today in Science Advances.

Archaeologists have discovered a rare stone delineating the city limits of ancient Rome that dates from the age of Emperor Claudius in 49 A.D. and was found during excavations for a new sewage system.

The hydrothermal vent fluids from the Gorda Ridge spreading center in the northeast Pacific Ocean create a biological hub of activity in the deep sea. There, in the dark ocean, a unique food web thrives not on photosynthesis but rather on chemical energy from the venting fluids. Among the creatures having a field day feasting at the Gorda Ridge vents is a diverse assortment of microbial eukaryotes, or protists, that graze on chemosynthetic bacteria and archaea.

Evolution is often portrayed as a tree, with new species branching off from existing lineages, never again to meet. The truth however is often much messier. In the case of adaptive radiation, in which species diversify rapidly to fill different ecological niches, it can be difficult to resolve relationships, and the phylogeny (i.e. evolutionary tree) may look more like a bush than a tree. This is because lineages may continue to interbreed as new species are established, and/or they may diverge and then re-hybridize... Читать дальше...

Many legacy media outlets played an unwitting role in the growth of the four most successful fake Twitter accounts hosted by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) that were created to spread disinformation during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, according to a study led by a University at Buffalo communication researcher.

Recent findings, with important implications for ocean biogeochemistry and climate science, have been published by Nature Communications in a paper by Associate Professor Mark Holzer from UNSW Science's School of Mathematics & Statistics, with co-authors Tim DeVries (UCSB) and Casimir de Lavergne (LOCEAN).

U.S. corn and soybean varieties have become increasingly heat and drought resistant as agricultural production adapts to a changing climate. But the focus on developing crops for extreme conditions has negatively affected performance under normal weather patterns, a University of Illinois study shows.

At Shikine Island, Japan, kelp forests and abalone fisheries were once common, but over the last twenty years they have disappeared. Now, researchers from Japan have discovered that these temperate coastal marine ecosystems are becoming more 'simple', losing biodiversity, complexity and their esthetic values.

The first full approval of a drug to treat lymphoma in dogs has been granted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Great leaps in science and technology have been propelled by recent advances in seeing fast evolving physical phenomena, as they happen. Femtosecond lasers from the infrared to the X-ray region have enabled us to 'watch', in real time, atoms dance in molecules and solids on femtosecond and picosecond timescales. Watching such fascinating motions not just in real time, but at the spatial locations where they happen, is a bigger challenge.

Using long wavelength near-infrared light, scientists at UC Davis developed a label-free microscopy approach that achieves a unique combination of deep, high resolution, and minimally invasive brain imaging. The technique images neurons and axonal myelination across the mouse neocortex and some sub-cortical regions, through the thinned skull. Now studies of brain disease can be conducted deep in the mouse brain through a minimally invasive and simple surgical preparation.

The laws of quantum physics rule the microcosm. They determine, for example, how easily electrons move through a crystal and thus whether the material is a metal, a semiconductor or an insulator. Quantum physics may lead to exotic properties in certain materials: In so-called topological insulators, only the electrons that can occupy some specific quantum states are free to move like massless particles on the surface, while this mobility is completely absent for electrons in the bulk. What's more... Читать дальше...

Measurements of biomechanical properties inside living cells require minimally-invasive methods. Optical tweezers are particularly attractive as a tool. They use the momentum of light to trap and manipulate micro- or nanoscale particles. A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Denz from the University of Münster (Germany) has now developed a simplified method to perform the necessary calibration of the optical tweezers in the system under investigation. Scientists from the University of Pavia in Italy were also involved. Читать дальше...

The ability to predict and interpret modifications of ribonucleic acid (RNA) has been a welcome advance in biochemistry research.

Greenland dropped all plans for future oil exploration on environmental grounds, saying the price of extraction was "too high."

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) are a promising technology for cleanly converting chemical energy to electrical energy. But their efficiency depends on the rate at which solids and gasses interact at the devices' electrode surfaces. Thus, to explore ways to improve SOFC efficiency, an international team led by researchers from Berkeley Lab studied a model electrode material in a new way – by exposing a different facet of its crystal structure to oxygen gas at operating pressures and temperatures.

A new way of producing coherent light in the ultra-violet spectral region, which points the way to developing brilliant table-top X-ray sources, has been produced in research led at the University of Strathclyde.

Although some people may yearn for sports to be free of political or racial divisiveness, a new study shows how impossible that dream may be.

Engineers have made considerable progress in checking off NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's final series of tests. Three big milestones have recently been completed, bringing the world's most complex and powerful space science telescope ever built much closer to being fully prepared for its million-mile journey to orbit. These three testing milestones are outlined below:

Meerkats love hard-boiled eggs.

A newly discovered visitor to the outer edges of our solar system has been shown to be the largest known comet ever, thanks to the rapid response telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory. The object, which is named Comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein after its two discoverers, was first announced on Saturday, June 19th, 2021. C/2014 UN271 was found by reprocessing four years of data from the Dark Energy Survey, which was carried out using the 4-m Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile between 2013 and 2019. Читать дальше...

Women and people of color remain underrepresented along every step of the tenure track in every academic field in the United States. As a new MIT study shows, progress toward equitable representation for women in academia will require active, concerted, and sustained effort—and even then, change may be slow in coming.

A study led by University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Veterinary Medicine Clinical Assistant Professor Erin Lashnits provides new insights into how best to diagnose Bartonella infection in dogs, a common flea-borne disease that is linked to heart infection, organ inflammation, and other ailments.

The performance and safety of lithium-ion batteries (LIB) can be attributed to complex electrode microstructures. Microstructure analysis at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) aims to apply in-depth knowledge of the electrodes to predict battery performances and identify optimal microstructure architecture to guide LIB development.