Новости за 18.08.2021

Due to their protected status, sea otter populations have rebounded across the Pacific Northwest Coast following their near elimination during the historic maritime fur trade. But the recovery of these shellfish predators and the federal laws now protecting them challenge local Indigenous communities who hold constitutionally protected rights to harvest those same shellfish but who are legally unable to hunt sea otters to protect these traditional foods. Now a new study confirms that for millennia... Читать дальше...

It's believed that there are fewer than 200 albino alligators in the world, and a pair recently hatched at Wild Florida, a gator and wildlife safari park.

Beautiful people are more likely to get hired, receive better performance evaluations and get paid more—but it's not just because of their good looks, according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

Strategies that not only conform to science but also consider the cultural context of countries are key to fighting future pandemics, according to researchers from Simon Fraser University and two U.S. universities.

Believe it nor not, more and more lending companies are turning to human-robot interaction to help with investment advice. But how do people react and what's the result of an investment decision when robots use algorithms to make suggestions? New research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research finds that investors who could benefit most from robo-advisors (RAs) aren't using them. And those who are change their minds too quickly to see a return.

The lack of adequate access to effective soil fertility testing in India, and much of the subtropical and tropical world, has led a group of scientists to explore how a smartphone camera might be transformed into a powerful and readily available alternative. Recently published in the Elsevier journal Biosystems Engineering, the research team describes important advances in the area of image-based soil organic matter (SOM) assessment and how it can streamline the process of evaluating soil fertility.

Digital badges used as emblems to indicate an accomplishment or skill is a concept familiar to online learners seeking advanced knowledge in their profession. For many learners, digital badges have been used as a motivation to continue along a prescribed path—often through workshop attendance or completion of required online learning modules.

Threatening or obscene messaging includes repeated, unwanted texts, emails, letters or cards experienced by the recipient as threatening or obscene, and causing fear, alarm or distress. It is a rarely examined aspect of intimate partner violence.

Small commercial satellites have a role in atmospheric particulates investigations, according to recently published thesis research by a research associate with the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of the University of Alabama System.

Two Johns Hopkins University researchers who study classroom stress and the emotional well-being of students and teachers have released an app that allows teachers to get daily reports about how their students are feeling.

An international study led by the University of Bonn has found evidence of a long-sought effect in accelerator data. The so-called "triangle singularity" describes how particles can change their identities by exchanging quarks, thereby mimicking a new particle. The mechanism also provides new insights into a mystery that has long puzzled particle physicists: Protons, neutrons and many other particles are much heavier than one would expect. This is due to peculiarities of the strong interaction that holds the quarks together. Читать дальше...

As wildfire fronts advance through landscapes or communities on the ground, they also attack from above, launching volleys of glowing embers into the air. Also known as firebrands, these specks of burning debris can glide for up to 40 kilometers (approximately 24 miles) before landing and can cause up to 90% of home and business fires during wildfires.

Management of many of the largest fisheries in the world assumes incorrectly that many small fish reproduce as well as fewer large ones with similar total masses, a new analysis has found. That can lead to overharvesting the largest, most prolific fish that can contribute the most to the population.

Tropical storm Grace strengthened to a hurricane on Wednesday as it barreled toward Mexico's Caribbean coast, threatening to bring heavy rain, flash flooding and large waves, meteorologists said.

Engineers at Duke University have devised a new approach to using sound waves to manipulate tiny particles suspended in liquid in complex ways. Dubbed a "shadow waveguide," the technique uses only two sound sources to create a tightly confined, spatially complex acoustic field inside a chamber without requiring any interior structure. The technology offers a new suite of features to the fast-developing platform of acoustic tweezers that has applications in fields such as chemical reaction control... Читать дальше...

Seadragons (Phyllopetryx taeniolatus) live off the coast in western and southern Australia. An international team involving evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer from the University of Konstanz has now found the genetic basis for some external characteristics of the seadragon, like its lack of teeth and its distinct leaf-like appendages. The team also localized the sex-determination gene in the seadragon genome. The study will be published in Science Advances on 18 August 2021.

Humans have been always on the move, creating a complex history of languages and cultural traditions dispersed over the globe. An international team under UZH's lead has now traced families of related languages over more than 10,000 years by combining data from genetics, linguistics and musicology using novel digital methods. Their findings: grammar reflects best the common prehistory of a population and therefore mirrors genetics more than any other cultural feature.

Giant anteaters living in less forested habitats make use of larger home ranges, according to a study by Aline Giroux at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul and colleagues, publishing August 18 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE. This behavior may allow them to incorporate forest patches into their territory, the authors say.

The 21st century has undoubtedly been the era of quantum science. Quantum mechanics was born in the early 20th century and has been used to develop unprecedented technologies which include quantum information, quantum communication, quantum metrology, quantum imaging, and quantum sensing. However, in quantum science, there are still unresolved and even inapprehensible issues like wave-particle duality and complementarity, superposition of wave functions, wave function collapse after quantum measurement... Читать дальше...

Recreational fishing in the U.S. is largely a personal hobby that scales up to a multibillion-dollar economic activity. More than 44 million people in the U.S. identify as recreational anglers making this hobby second only to jogging in terms of popular outdoor activities.

A gap remains between white parents and Black and Hispanic parents in their preferences for in-person schooling, but it has narrowed since May. The RAND Corporation survey, funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, details parents' responses concerning school hesitancy and preferences for COVID-19 safety practices in U.S. schools in fall 2021.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have explored high-pressure behavior of shock-compressed tantalum at the Omega Laser Facility at the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE). The work showed tantalum did not follow the predicted phase changes at high pressure and instead maintained the body-centered cubic (BCC) phase until melt.

New research shows changes in tides and hurricane activity played a part in upending the Maya civilization centuries ago.

Neutrinos are tricky beasts. Alone among known fundamental particles, they suffer from an identity crisis—if it were possible to put them on a weighing scale, you would unpredictably measure one of three possible masses. As a result, the three neutrino "flavors" merge into each other as they race through space and matter, opening up the potential for matter-antimatter asymmetries relevant to open questions in cosmology. Neutrinos are today the subject of a vibrant worldwide research program in particle physics... Читать дальше...

Marjan Minnesma cheered along with her fellow climate activists in May when a judge ordered Royal Dutch Shell Plc to drastically slash its carbon dioxide emissions. It was the first time a company had been held legally accountable for its planet-warming pollution.