Новости за 18.11.2021

Groundwater in California's Central Valley is at risk of being depleted by pumping too much water during and after droughts, according to a new study in the AGU journal Water Resources Research, an interdisciplinary journal that focuses on hydrology and water resources.

A parasitoid wasp that is the natural enemy of a fly known as the spotted-wing drosophila could be a good friend to growers. Washington State University researchers recently confirmed the discovery of the potentially beneficial wasp in the United States for the first time.

Video footage from NASA's Perseverance Mars rover of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's 13th flight on Sept. 4 provides the most detailed look yet of the rotorcraft in action.

An atom's electrons are arranged in energy shells. Like concertgoers in an arena, each electron occupies a single chair and cannot drop to a lower tier if all its chairs are occupied. This fundamental property of atomic physics is known as the Pauli exclusion principle, and it explains the shell structure of atoms, the diversity of the periodic table of elements, and the stability of the material universe.

New research by a team of University of Florida investigators, and others, provides evidence that host immunity drives evolution of the dengue virus. The work, published today in Science, retrospectively analyzes two decades of dengue virus genetic variation from Thailand, alongside population-level measures of infection and immunity.

JILA researchers have tricked nature by tuning a dense quantum gas of atoms to make a congested "Fermi sea," thus keeping atoms in a high-energy state, or excited, for about 10% longer than usual by delaying their normal return to the lowest-energy state. The technique might be used to improve quantum communication networks and atomic clocks.

Some ancestral rodents likely had repeated infections with SARS-like coronaviruses, leading them to acquire tolerance or resistance to the pathogens, according to new research publishing November 18th in PLOS Computational Biology by Sean King and Mona Singh of Princeton University, US. This raises the possibility that modern rodents may be reservoirs of SARS-like viruses, the researchers say.

An international team of scientists has found an innovative, animal-friendly manner for studying venom genes. The technique makes it possible to determine the unique venom production of a wide range of venomous animals that have scarcely, if at all, been studied.

The International Space Station remains at increased risk from orbiting debris following this week's Russian weapons test, NASA said Thursday.

Joining the global effort to curb air pollution, researchers at Texas A&M University have developed computational tools to accurately assess the footprint of certain organic atmospheric pollutants. Their simulation, described in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, could help government agencies keep a closer check on human-made sources of carbon-based pollutants.

Bubbles are common in nature and can form when ocean waves break and when raindrops impact surfaces. When bubbles burst, they send tiny jets of water and other materials into the air. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign examines how the interplay between bubble surfaces and water that contains organic materials contributes to the transport of aerosolized organic materials—some of which are linked to the spread of disease or contamination—into the atmosphere.

For at least the last 30 years, not a single country has met the basic needs of its residents without overconsuming natural resources, according to new research led by the University of Leeds.

What does it mean when we say that something is extremely cold? A physicist's answer would be: this means that atoms and molecules barely move. For several decades now, physicists have been developing techniques to create such ultracold states of matter, using lasers to bring gasses into the regime where quantum mechanics reigns. In a new 'Insight' issue of Nature Physics, UvA-physicists describe the developments in this nearly motionless yet very exciting world.

Providing some basic standards of support will greatly increase diversity in fields of science and medicine, a group of hard of hearing and deaf scientists argue in a perspective published in the journal Frontiers in Education.

We've been living in a time of unprecedented global economic growth. Depressions, recessions and other dips in the economy notwithstanding, the last century has been unlike any other before in terms of overall Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita growth. It's the result of a potent combination of technology, via the Industrial Revolutions, and economic and political freedom and stability, thanks to the spread of democracy.

The ice sheets of Greenland are melting at an alarming rate. This causes large amounts of freshwater to flow into the North Atlantic, thereby slowing the Gulf Stream. Researchers fear that this will have noticeable effects on the climate worldwide. Densely populated tropical areas that depend on monsoon rains for their freshwater supply are particularly at risk. In order to make reliable predictions for future climate change, climate researchers are looking far back into the past. An international... Читать дальше...

Two and a half years after signing a deal aimed at averting a damaging crisis along the Colorado River, water officials from California, Arizona and Nevada are discussing plans to take even less water from the shrinking river and leave it in Lake Mead in an effort to prevent the reservoir from falling to dangerously low levels.

Eco Resilience Games from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has released the first augmented reality (AR) game focusing on the growing issue of harmful algae blooms. Algae Bloom Dynamics uses AR technology to create a stylized photo-realistic, lake-island aquatic ecosystem where users walk around the immersive habitat to discover information that can help find solutions to the human behaviors and environmental factors that cause harmful algae blooms.

Cells in your body cannot see, but they can sense their surroundings and their own shape. Scientists at the University of Mons and the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria now showed via both—experiments and theory—how cells can sense the curvature of tissue around them and how this influences their inner workings. The study was published in Nature Physics.

Researchers at Institute for Molecular Science in Japan report that novel photon upconversion (UC) system with heterojunctions of organic semiconductors. The solid-state UC system is achieved with an external quantum efficiency of two orders of magnitude higher than those of the conventional systems. Using this result, efficient UC, from near-infrared to visible light, can be realized on flexible organic thin films under a weak light-emitting diode-induced excitation, observable by naked eyes.

Using spacecraft and ground-based facilities, Russian astronomers have inspected the Orion Bar photodissociation region, focusing on the mid-infrared emission from this source. Results of the study could help astronomers to better understand the evolution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in space. The research was published November 10 on arXiv.org.

A team of researchers from the University of New Mexico, the University of California and the University of Murcia has found that the cocoon created by lungfish living in dry lakebeds in Africa is made of living antimicrobial tissue. They've published the results of their study in the journal Science Advances.

A team of researchers from ThrustMe, working with colleagues from Sorbonne Université, has successfully tested the use of iodine as an ionizing agent in an ion-thrusting spacecraft engine. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes their two-year test of the chemical element. The team has also posted a press release describing their work on their site.

The United States on Thursday threw its support behind negotiations on a treaty to curb plastic pollution, ending a key holdup in international efforts to clean up the planet's oceans and save marine life.

Global warming will cause the world's soil to release carbon, new research shows.