Новости за 24.09.2021

The Etruscan civilization, which flourished during the Iron Age in central Italy, has intrigued scholars for millennia. With remarkable metallurgical skills and a now-extinct, non-Indo-European language, the Etruscans stood out from their contemporary neighbors, leading to intense debate from the likes of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus on their geographical origins.

A new study delves into the evolution and function of the human growth hormone receptor gene, and asks what forces in humanity's past may have driven changes to this vital piece of DNA.

A volcano in Spain's Canary Islands kept nerves on edge Friday for a fifth day since it erupted, producing loud explosions, a huge ash cloud and cracking open a new fissure that spewed out more fiery molten rock.

The laws of quantum mechanics allow for the existence of 'quasi-particles': excitations in materials that behave exactly like ordinary particles. A major advantage of quasi-particles over ordinary particles is that their properties can be engineered. In a Nature Materials News & Views article this week, IoP physicist Erik van Heumen describes recent experiments where even the interactions between quasi-particles can be tuned.

In everyday life, we know lasers from numerous applications such as the laser printer or the supermarket scanner. Industrially, lasers are used in material processing for cutting, drilling and labeling, and in medicine for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Laser spectroscopy methods are also indispensable in scientific research.

This sparkling starfield, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, contains the globular cluster ESO 520-21 (also known as Palomar 6). A densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, it lies close to the center of the Milky Way, where interstellar gas and dust absorb starlight and make observations more challenging.

On 16 December 2020 the Chang'e-5 mission, China's first sample return mission to the Moon, successfully delivered to Earth nearly two kilograms of rocky fragments and dust from our celestial companion. Chang'e-5 landed on an area of the Moon not sampled by the NASA Apollo or the Soviet Luna missions nearly 50 years ago, and retrieved fragments of the youngest lunar rocks ever brought back for analysis in laboratories on Earth. Early-stage findings, which use geological mapping to link 'exotic' fragments... Читать дальше...

When we look at an object with our eyes, or with a camera, we can automatically gather enough pixels of light at visible wavelengths to have a clear image of what we see.

An international team of researchers has used seasonal variations to identify likely sub-surface deposits of water ice in the temperate regions of Mars where it would be easiest for future human explorers to survive. The results are being presented this week by Dr. Germán Martínez at the European Planetary Science Conference (EPSC) 2021.

The interdisciplinary field of active matter physics investigates the principles behind the behavior and self-organization of living organisms. The goal is to reveal general principles that allow to describe and predict the performance of living matter and thereby support the development of novel technologies. Recently, the groups of Oliver Bäumchen and Marco Mazza from the MPIDS, the University of Bayreuth and the University of Loughborough in the UK published their results on the model describing microbial navigation.

A team of scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature (STM) has isolated exquisitely preserved cartilage cells in a 125-million-year-old dinosaur from Northeast China that contain nuclei with remnants of organic molecules and chromatin. The study was published in Communications Biology on Sept. 24.

Calabria is a region in southern Italy, famous for its irregular shape that stretches from north to south for around 250 km—separating the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west and the Ionian Sea to the east. The region covers an area of around 15,000 sq km (with over 740 km of coastline) of which agricultural land covers 49%.

This year is the 20th anniversary of sequencing the human genome. In honor of this event, a research team led by Prof. FU Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reviewed the most recent progress in the field of ancient DNA (aDNA), i.e., DNA obtained from the remains of past organisms.

The Universe is filled with energetic particles, such as X rays, gamma rays, and neutrinos. However, most of the high-energy cosmic particles' origins remain unexplained.

Different forms of linear transformations, such as the Fourier transform, are widely employed in processing of information in various applications. These transformations are generally implemented in the digital domain using electronic processors, and their computation speed is limited with the capacity of the electronic chip being used, which sets a bottleneck as the data and image size get large. A remedy of this problem might be to replace digital processors with optical counterparts and use light to process information.

The tell-tale signs that autumn is here are clear to us; the days are getting shorter and the temperature is decreasing. We take this as a sign to pull out our winter woolies and think about turning on the radiators. But how do insects know that winter is coming? And what do they do to prepare?

National Curriculum Key Stage 2 tests taken by 10- and 11-year-old children in England to assess progress in English and Mathematics do not seem to affect children's wellbeing, according to new UCL-led research.

Pacific oyster faming is a multi-billion dollar industry, but there are strong concerns about the ability of oyster larvae to develop properly and survive in future ocean acidification scenarios. A recent study from University of Gothenburg shows that long-term breeding might reduce the genetic response to experimental ocean acidification in oyster larvae. The capacity to adapt to future environments could thus be impaired.

Social media users who view images of healthy foods that have been heavily endorsed with 'likes' are more likely to make healthier food choices, a new study has found.

Brighter clouds reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, thereby cooling the surface. Emissions of organic compounds from vegetation increase with increasing temperature, thus having the capability to slow down climate warming.

A well-known method for making polymer materials is to blend or mix multiple polymers. For disperse blends, two liquid polymers do not mix well with each other, leading to a so-called droplet-in-matrix microstructure which is similar to emulsions of oil and water. The material properties of the polymer blend depend on the final microstructure, so the material properties can be tuned during processing history. However, conclusively connecting the final microstructure to the processing history with... Читать дальше...

New research from the College of Engineering lays out in detail why ranked-choice voting, combined with multi-member legislative districts, promotes fair representation, particularly when it comes to blunting gerrymandering—the party in power's ability to map a district to its political advantage.

Microorganisms, plants, and animals accomplish great feats every day. For example, by decomposing material, producing plant biomass, or pollinating flowers, they keep nature 'up and running," thereby securing the livelihood of humans. Numerous studies have shown that a high biodiversity can have a positive impact on these as well as on other ecosystem functions.

Increasingly extreme heat threatens the health and comfort of city dwellers. That's why researchers from the University of Georgia have developed a new dynamic heat exposure index that captures varying heat exposure within urban environments.

Britain's birth rates are plunging. The number of babies being born has been in steep decline since 2017. Now, researchers are investigating early signs that the pandemic may have caused rates to drop even further.