Новости за 08.11.2021

COVID-19 has particularly negative effects on people who come from economically weaker and less educated backgrounds, especially when we look at health, job security and education—this is shown by figures and studies from recent months. How the coronavirus pandemic affects prosocial behavior, on the other hand, is still largely unknown. A group of economic researchers led by Matthias Sutter has now been able to show that prosocial behavior is also negatively affected by the pandemic. And here, too... Читать дальше...

The moon was exposed to a heavy bombardment of asteroids 3.9 billion years ago. The origin of this bombardment, however, was previously unclear. Planetologists at Münster University have now tested these hypotheses with very precise isotope measurements of lunar rocks. Their conclusion: The bombardment of the moon goes back to continuous impacts of asteroids left over from the main phase of the Earth's formation. The results are published in the current issue of the journal Science Advances.

Sudden oak death is one of the most ecologically devastating forest diseases in North America and particularly California, where it has killed millions of oaks and tanoaks along the coast. The disease has altered species composition and impacted carbon pools and fire risk. To curb the impact of this disease, scientists need to better understand the basic biology of the causal pathogen Phythophthora ramorum, including how well it sporulates on common plants.

Hydrocarbons, which are an essential component of crude oil and natural gas, form under pressure and high temperatures in the deep ocean floor. In the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California, researchers have detected hydrocarbon gas patterns that could not have been generated by known formation pathways. In their study, which has now been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they describe a new pathway for the formation of two of the main components of natural gas... Читать дальше...

How do you like your rice? Sticky, fluffy, brown, or white? These qualities, in addition to grain length, width, appearance, and other traits, are hugely important predictors of rice sales and consumption worldwide. And region matters. Rice preferences in Latin America, for example, are very different from those in West Africa, Japan, India, and elsewhere.

The air quality in many parts of Europe and the Netherlands does not meet the advisory values of the World Health Organization (WHO). However, the smart integration of air purification technology at polluting hotspots in public spaces can substantially reduce fine dust concentrations in cities. This is the conclusion of the Eindhoven University of Technology, ENS Clean Air, Air Liquide, and the municipality of Eindhoven from the pilot project "Lungs of the City," in which the effect of air purification... Читать дальше...

The two-legged dinosaur Issi saaneq lived about 214 million years ago in what is now Greenland. It was a medium-sized, long-necked herbivore and a predecessor of the sauropods, the largest land animals ever to live. It was discovered by an international team of researchers from Portugal, Denmark and Germany, including the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The name of the new dinosaur pays tribute to Greenland's Inuit language and means "cold bone." The team reports on its discovery in the journal Diversity.

Online advertisements are found frequently splashed across news websites. Clicking on these banners or links provides the news site with revenue. But these ads also often use manipulative techniques, researchers say.

All vertebrates have the same basic body plan: Head, spine, four appendages. Those appendages vary greatly in size, shape, and function, of course—from fins to wings, arms, and legs—but a new genetic analysis shows that genes that control development at the ends of the appendages share a deep evolutionary history.

A new study, co-authored by researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Forestry, offers a "scorecard" for climate adaptation projects—a set of 16 criteria that can be used to evaluate climate adaptation projects and inform their design. The scientists recently published their findings in the journal Environmental Science & Policy.

Poorly drained agricultural soils emit enough of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide that the resulting climate change effects could far exceed the benefits of using the same soils as a means of sequestering carbon, according to a recently published scientific study.

Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth's climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the MPT, cycles between glacial (colder) and interglacial (warmer) periods happened every 41,000 years. After the MPT, glacial periods became more intense—intense enough to form ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere that lasted 100,000 years. This gave Earth the regular... Читать дальше...

Over the last decade, John Huntley, a paleontologist and an associate professor of geological sciences at the University of Missouri, has studied the history of parasite-host interactions. These interactions can occur either outside a host's body, such as a tick, or inside a host's body, such as a flatworm.

The rates of death and health burdens associated with air pollution are borne unequally and inequitably by people of color and those with lower household income and educational attainment in Washington, D.C., according to a new study.

The success of a global circular economy is critically dependent on effective cooperation between influential countries. A joint Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on circular economy, signed by China and the EU in 2018, attracted high hopes—and corresponding optimistic narratives. A research team led by Anran Luo from the Chair of Social Transformation and Circular Economy at the Institute of Environmental Social Sciences and Geography at the University of Freiburg and Prof. Dr. Sina Leipold, who... Читать дальше...

Four astronauts were preparing to leave the International Space Station and head back to Earth on Monday after spending six busy months aboard the orbital outpost.

All known atomic nuclei and therefore almost all visible matter consists of protons and neutrons, yet many of the properties of these omnipresent natural building blocks remain unknown. As an uncharged particle, the neutron in particular resists many types of measurement and 90 years after its discovery there are still many unanswered questions regarding its size and lifetime, among other things. The neutron consists of three quarks which whirl around inside it, held together by gluons. Physicists... Читать дальше...

Quantum entanglement occurs when two particles appear to communicate without a physical connection, a phenomenon Albert Einstein famously called "spooky action at a distance." Nearly 90 years later, a team led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory demonstrated the viability of a "quantum entanglement witness" capable of proving the presence of entanglement between magnetic particles, or spins, in a quantum material.

Planckian metals have the potential to power high-temperature superconductors, quantum computers and a host of other next-generation technologies. However, these "strange" metals—in which electrical resistance increases linearly with temperature—are notoriously difficult to study, let alone comprehend.

The Great Lakes are experiencing record warmth this fall as water temperatures spike well above normal seasonal levels, fueling lake effect snow and potentially disrupting fish spawning.

A coping-skills program with young Black men in Philadelphia barbershops helped reduce reported violent behavior for up to three months, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.

Researchers in Korea succeeded in developing a core material for the next-generation neuromorphic (neural network imitation) semiconductor for the first time in the country. This is a result of a research team led by Dr. Jung-dae Kwon and Yong-hun Kim of the Department of Energy and Electronic Materials of the Korea Institute of Materials Science, together with Professor Byungjin Cho's research team at Chungbuk National University. KIMS is a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT.

A pair of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed an artificial material that emulates the way that plants use fluids to defy gravity. In their paper published in the CellPress journal Matter, Amrita Kataruka and Shelby Hutchens describe their synthetic plant tissue analog and its possible uses.

A new study by researchers from Durham University and Yunnan University reveals that penis worms (Priapulida) invented the 'hermit' lifestyle, some 500 million years ago, at the rise of the earliest animal ecosystems in the Cambrian period.

Cut off the head of a three-banded panther worm and another will take its place—mouth, brain, and all. Cut off its tail and it will grow another. Cut the worm in three separate pieces and within eight weeks there'll be three fully formed worms. Cut it in … well, you get picture…