Новости за 11.11.2021

A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has identified a new way to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas through a process that could be a step toward ammonia replacing carbon-based fuels.

Funding to restore mangrove forests is money well spent, according to a new meta-analysis by ecological economists at the University of Tokyo. For every dollar spent to restore mangroves, the ecosystem will yield $6.83 to $10.50 in returns over the next 20 years. The range reflects different economic projections of how much immediate costs are worth compared to future benefits and reflects the significant ecological benefits that degraded habitats receive from mangrove restoration. The findings were recently published in Nature Communications.

Wetlands are particularly sensitive to hydrological changes, such as the reduction in water supply during extensive droughts. In response to a reduction of water levels, many aquatic plants can become amphibious, producing morphologically, structurally and physiologically different emergent growth forms.

Salk Institute scientists, collaborating with researchers from the University of Cambridge and Johns Hopkins University, have sequenced the genome of the world's most widely used model plant species, Arabidopsis thaliana, at a level of detail never previously achieved. The study, published in Science on November 12, 2021, reveals the secrets of Arabidopsis chromosome regions called centromeres. The findings shed light on centromere evolution and provides insights into the genomic equivalent of black holes.

Until now, observing subatomic structures was beyond the resolution capabilities of direct imaging methods, and this seemed unlikely to change. Czech scientists, however, have presented a method with which they became the first in the world to observe an inhomogeneous electron charge distribution around a halogen atom, thus confirming the existence of a phenomenon that had been theoretically predicted but never directly observed. Comparable to the first observation of a black hole, the breakthrough... Читать дальше...

Rockfish is on the menu around the Pacific Rim, for the most part with little regard for the fish's origin or which of the 137 species is on the plate—it's typically identified simply as rockfish or, incorrectly, as rock cod or red snapper.

Two articles being published in Science magazine's influential Policy Forum this week argue for more and better social science research into the potential use of solar geoengineering to offset some of the global warming from greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The mechanism behind one of the first stages of coal creation may not be what we thought it was, according to a team of researchers who found that microbes were responsible for coal formation and production of methane in these areas, which has implications for methane fuel recovery from some coal fields.

Far below you lies a sphere of solid iron and nickel about as wide as the broadest part of Texas: the Earth's inner core. The metal at the inner core is under pressure about 360 million times higher than we experience in our everyday lives and temperatures approximately as hot as the Sun's surface.

It hung over the Los Angeles Basin like a curtain—a veil of stagnant air that blotted out the sun and concealed both the San Gabriel Mountains and the skyscrapers of downtown L.A.

When deciding how much nitrogen fertilizer to apply, farmers have options. The standard tool for the Midwest—the maximum return to nitrogen (MRTN) calculator – offers a static recommendation. It is based on hundreds of field trials, but doesn't vary much year to year. Newer dynamic tools have the potential to account for soil properties and weather, but also require input from farmers during the growing season to deliver site-specific nitrogen recommendations.

When considering determinants of an individual's health outcomes, doctors and researchers consider personal factors like age, race, gender or socioeconomic factors such as education quality, economic stability or health care access. A new study from the University of Kansas adds to the evidence that political ideology can be a social determinant of health, especially during public health crises.

A team led by Santiago Marco, professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering of the UB and member of IBEC, has optimized the use of a technique that analyzes, at a molecular level, the present substances in the aroma of food. Therefore, it differentiates, among Iberian ham samples, those pigs that had been fed with acorn and those fed with feed.

The human genome is littered with selfish genetic elements, which do not seem to benefit their hosts, but instead seek only to propagate themselves.

Quick bursts of laser light, lasting less than a trillionth of a second, are used in a range of applications today. These ultrashort laser pulses have allowed scientists to observe chemical reactions in real-time, image delicate biological samples, build precise nanostructures, and send long-distance, high-bitrate optical communications.

On top of the COVID-19 pandemic, people worldwide have dealt with an infodemic—a flood of ever-evolving information and misinformation about the virus, causing confusion and mistrust. New Cornell research finds that in remote parts of Bangladesh with little internet access, people have relied on local experts, spiritual views and their sense of social justice to evaluate new coronavirus information.

Scaling down information devices to the atomic scale has brought the interest of using individual spins as a basic unit for data storage. This requires precise detection and control of spin states and a better understanding of spin-spin interactions.

New research shows that humans had a significant role in the extinction of wooly mammoths in Eurasia, occurring thousands of years later than previously thought.

Researchers led by Prof. Hu Yuxin from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently reported that the Arabidopsis carboxylesterase 15 (AtCXE15) and its orthologues in seed plants function as efficient hydrolases of plant hormone strigolactones (SLs). This discovery reveals the catalytic mechanism underlying homeostatic regulation of SLs in plants.

Digital news subscriptions have doubled in the past four years, but half of those gains went to the New York Times and the Washington Post alone. To find out why, researchers at the Missouri School of Journalism explored the way people understand and make sense of and value the news they read on digital sites.

A near-Earth asteroid named Kamo`oalewa could be a fragment of our moon, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona.

Glitter is the bane of every parent and primary school teacher. But beyond its general annoyance factor, it's also made of toxic and unsustainable materials, and contributes to plastic pollution.

Volcanic eruptions contributed to the collapse of dynasties in China in the last 2,000 years by temporarily cooling the climate and affecting agriculture, according to a Rutgers co-authored study.

A small team of researchers from Germany, Mexico and the U.K. has found evidence suggesting that the reason a species of ammonite grew into giants was because of the increasing size of the mosasaurs that fed on them. In their paper posted on the open-access site PLOS ONE, the group describes their detailed study of 154 specimens of two species of ammonite fossils and what they learned about them.

Whale-watch vessels with louder petrol engines significantly disrupt short-finned pilot whale resting and nursing, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.