Новости за 10.08.2021

A potential new treatment for mast cell cancers reduces the number of mast cells by "mutating" the messenger RNA (mRNA) before it can deliver instructions for manufacturing the gene responsible for cell proliferation. The method, known as frameshifting, changes the pre-mRNA so that the mature mRNA is degraded and any protein produced from its instructions is altered and inert. In a mouse model, frameshifting directed at the c-KIT gene reduced mast cell tumor size and prevented infiltration into other organs.

Researchers who study crime are increasingly recognizing that context matters—that is, that actions, including crime, are shaped by the people and settings in which individuals offend. A new study examined whether others' deviant actions prompted individuals to opt out of offending or reverse their intentions to offend based on the size of the offending group. The study identified opt-out thresholds for offending that differed based on the criminal situation.

What are the causes, patterns and effects of disastrous river flood? An international group of researchers led by GFZ hydrologist Bruno Merz has investigated this question in a review article published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment. The short answer: It's complicated. What is certain, however, is that there is an opposing trend of property damage and personal injury. Since the 1990s, the number of fatalities from river floods has declined worldwide, but the amount of damage has risen sharply. Читать дальше...

The reefs at Palmyra Atoll, a small outlying atoll in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, have been undergoing a shift from stony corals to systems dominated by corallimorphs, marine invertebrates that share traits with both anemones and hard corals. A published study in Coral Reefs led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa marine biology researchers has discovered that although the invading corallimorph is the same species that has been there for decades, its appearance recently changed, and it became much more insidious.

It is commonly thought that rodents are functionally blind when their surroundings are illuminated with light of longer wavelengths, which humans perceive as red. A new study, published in eLife by Nader Nikbakht of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Mathew Diamond of SISSA—Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati—challenges this assumption and shows that rats can accurately discriminate objects that are illuminated only by red light. "This result demonstrates that rodents have... Читать дальше...

Researchers have identified two sugar-binding proteins that impede the viral entry of circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants. The team, spearheaded by researchers at IMBA—Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences—may have found the "Achilles' heel" of the virus, with potential for pan-variant therapeutic interventions. The findings are now published in the EMBO Journal.

Life imprisonment without the possibility of parole is one of the most distinctive and least studied aspects of the U.S. criminal justice system. A new study analyzed seven years of federal sentencing data to investigate the associations between life sentences in federal courts and race/ethnicity. The study found that Black and Hispanic offenders were more likely to be eligible for life sentences under federal sentencing guidelines but not more likely to receive life sentences.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a rare genetic disease usually diagnosed in young boys, gradually weakens muscles across the body until the heart or lungs fail. Symptoms often show up by age 5; as the disease progresses, patients lose the ability to walk around age 12. Today, the average life expectancy for DMD patients hovers around 26.

Among our solar system's many moons, Saturn's Titan stands out—it's the only moon with a substantial atmosphere and liquid on the surface. It even has a weather system like Earth's, though it rains methane instead of water. Might it also host some kind of life?

As the world's nations prepare to set new goals for protecting biodiversity, Yale researchers have identified where data gaps continue to limit effective conservation decisions.

A global catastrophe 66 million years ago led to the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs, and large marine reptiles like mosasaurs and plesiosaurs. But what happened to the sharks? According to a study of sharks' teeth publishing August 10th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Mohamad Bazzi of Uppsala University and colleagues, shark-tooth diversity remained relatively constant across the mass extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous.

A new study published in the journal Global Sustainability finds for the first time that over 160,000 miles of rivers are at risk of losing their free-flowing status due to the proposed construction of new hydropower dams. The total stretch of free-flowing rivers at risk is longer than six times the distance around the Earth. Iconic rivers such as the Amazon, Congo, and Salween are among those that would be severed by hydropower development.

Black soldier fly larvae (BSF) can replace soybean meal (SBM) as protein source in the diet for growing pigs. That was discovered by a multidisciplinary research team of Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Leiden University, the Netherlands.

New data analysis techniques allow evidence of recent volcanism to be found in old Magellan spacecraft data. It is unclear if this activity is occurring today, or if it occurred within tens of million years, but geologically speaking, either case is recent. This adds to the growing body of evidence that volcanoes on Venus didn't go extinct as long ago as many had thought. This work was conducted by Planetary Science Institute (PSI) researchers Megan Russell and Catherine Johnson.

Politicians are more likely to tweet about climate change if they are Democrats, represent wealthier districts and if their constituents are concerned about the climate, according to a new Cornell study. Meanwhile, communities most at risk from climate change are less likely to see their political leaders tweet about it, the multidisciplinary team of researchers said.

Droplet manipulation is kindling great interest in several fields, including technological applications and basic studies in dynamic systems. The Lab-on-a-chip and microfluidics community is particularly interested in the precise manipulation of small volumes of fluids, droplet microfluidics. A piece of research conducted by the UPV/EHU's Microfluidics Cluster  has found that a superparamagnetic ring forms spontaneously around a water droplet when an oil-based ferrofluid is in contact with the droplet... Читать дальше...

Imagine if you could attach something to your skin without needing glue. A biosensor, a watch, a communications device, a fashion accessory—the possibilities are endless. Thanks to a discovery at Binghamton University, State University of New York, that time could be closer than you think.

Archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and Cardiff have discovered the origins of Arthur's Stone, one of the UK's most famous Stone Age monuments.

The headlines speak for themselves. The pictures paint a thousand words. Our planet is in flames. Lives and livelihoods are being destroyed. Our cities are under water. The biodiversity and ecosystems that are central to human survival are being incinerated before our eyes. This is our last chance to put out the fire.

Flinders University's Professor Patrick Hesp and fellow coastal scientists Christa van IJzendoorn, Sierd de Vries and Caroline Hallin from the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands have measured the vertical translation of the dune toe along the Holland coast, and found it has increased a remarkable 7-to-8 times greater than the measured sea level rise.

Portland State University TREC researchers Kelly Clifton, Kristin Tufte and John MacArthur are among the co-authors of a May 2021 article published in Harvard Data Science Review. The paper, "Urban Sustainability Observatories: Leveraging Urban Experimentation for Sustainability Science and Policy," offers an outline of the requirements and research challenges involved in designing effective policies to meet sustainability goals for cities.

At a critical time in the days before election day in 2020, several digital platforms—including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Amazon, Spotify, and TikTok—and other key digital platforms took the exceptional step of banning political ads. These policy changes were intended to prevent the spread of misinformation.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has released the first of three climate reports expected in the coming months, and a University of Arizona faculty member is a lead author, continuing the university's tradition of contributing to the global, informational resource.

Sea lampreys are a destructive invasive species that has threatened native fisheries in the Great Lakes for decades. Multiple teams of Michigan State University researchers are finding ways to harness sea lampreys' natural instincts to monitor, capture and control them.

July turned out to be an exceptional month of triple threats for the western U.S., with record heat, drought and raging wildfires. The nation as a whole had a hot July—with extreme rainfall in areas already saturated while sparing others that needed it most.