Новости за 26.11.2021

Lin Meng has been named the grand prize winner of this year's Science & SciLifeLab Prize for Young Scientists for research she conducted on how both global warming and bright city lights can impact phenology in trees (when they begin to grow leaves in the spring). In her paper published in the journal Science, Meng outlines her study of satellite data showing green areas in cities along with artificial light sources and also trees growing in the Alps.

To the untrained eye, the loops, kinks and folds in the single strand of RNA that makes up the coronavirus genome look like a jumble of spaghetti or tangled yarn. But to researchers like Amanda Hargrove, a chemistry professor at Duke University, the complex shapes that RNA takes on as it folds upon itself could have untapped therapeutic potential in the fight against COVID-19.

Solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy—a technique that measures the frequencies emitted by the nuclei of some atoms exposed to radio waves in a strong magnetic field—can be used to determine chemical and 3D structures as well as the dynamics of molecules and materials.

In a recent theoretical work published in Physical Review Letters, researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and their collaborators suggested probing helium dimer by relativistic highly charged projectiles.

Blazing along at space-record speeds that would get it from Earth to the Moon in under an hour, NASA's Parker Solar Probe completed its 10th close approach to the sun on Nov. 21, coming within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometers) of the solar surface.

A trio of psychologists at Lund University has found via online questionnaire, that people who believe in astrology tend to be less intelligent than the norm and more narcissistic. In their paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, Ida Andersson, Julia Persson and Petri Kajonius describe their study and what they learned from it.

A joint research team led by researchers from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography (XIEG) and the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has reconstructed the historical non-growing-season (from November of the previous year to February of the current year) precipitation in the southeastern Tibetan Plateau using tree rings.

Watch as eight stars skirt a black hole 1 million times the mass of the Sun in these supercomputer simulations. As they approach, all are stretched and deformed by the black hole's gravity. Some are completely pulled apart into a long stream of gas, a cataclysmic phenomenon called a tidal disruption event. Others are only partially disrupted, retaining some of their mass and returning to their normal shapes after their horrific encounters.

The benefits to humans most commonly associated with wild ungulates—such as deer, hippos, wild boar, or giraffes—are hunting (and the food-source it represents for many communities) and their aesthetic value. This is one of the conclusions of a scientific literature review led by researchers from the Ecology Area of the Miguel Hernández University of Elche (MHU), in which scientists from the University of Granada (UGR) also participated. In the study, the benefits and detriments associated with wild ungulates were studied on a global scale.

Smallholder farms in tropical regions can double their crop production by 2030 compared to 2015, finds a study to which José Mogollón (Institute of Environmental Sciences) contributed. But to achieve this, the farmers must increase the input of phosphorus beyond what is currently foreseen. The study is published in Nature Sustainability.

Engineering teams have completed additional testing confirming NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is ready for flight, and launch preparations are resuming toward Webb's target launch date of Wednesday, Dec. 22, at 7:20 a.m. EST.

A recent news item about New Zealand's radical new housing law and whether such measures could work in Canada implies that soaring home prices are due to a lack of supply.

An international team of scientists, led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), has linked increased air pollution to an uptick in cases of lung adenocarcinoma (LADC) worldwide. The same study also concluded an overall lower consumption of tobacco worldwide is statistically linked to less people contracting lung squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC).

Lithium-ion batteries are notorious for being a fire hazard due to their flammable organic electrolytes. As such, there has been much effort to utilize water-based electrolytes as a safer alternative. However, this is hampered by the problem of water molecules undergoing electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen within the battery, which causes various problems such as poor efficiency, short device longevity, and safety issues.

RIKEN researchers have shown how the genomic sorting that occurs during fertilization—the incorporation of genomic material from both parents and the elimination of excess maternal DNA from the egg—takes place in mice. If the same process occurs in humans, the finding could help to improve some assisted reproductive technologies.

Thanks to work by scientists from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and collaborators, scientists are closer to creating devices that can use microscopic movements in a coordinated way to create coherent motion on a macroscopic scale. This replicates the way living organisms move in a different way from manmade mechanical devices.

A decline in metabolism and endurance of skeletal muscle is commonly observed in obese patients, but the underlying mechanism is not well-understood. A research team led by Dr. Chi Bun Chan, Assistant Professor from School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), uncovers a new mechanism to explain how obesity jeopardizes the functions of skeletal muscle and provides a potential treatment against the disease. The research findings have recently been published in the journal Autophagy.

Agriculture is facing enormous challenges worldwide due to global changes caused by human activities. Drought, severe weather events, record temperatures and emerging pathogens threaten the world's food supply. For this reason we need to make our crops more robust without further polluting the environment. Microbiome research and management offer great potential to achieve these goals. A new study by an international research group led by Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), published in the scientific journal New Phytologist... Читать дальше...

A study published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science reveals the presence of murine coronavirus—the murine hepatitis virus or M-CoV—in mice of the Canary archipelago (Spain) that could have reached the islands by maritime transport from the European continent. This is the first ecoepidemiological study to examine the presence of coronaviruses that circulate in mice and rats of the natural and urban environment of the islands of La Palma, El Hierro, Tenerife and Lanzarote.

The species Gliricidiasepium is a deciduous tree, cultivated and used for a variety of purposes in tropical regions. In Zambia, it is used for timber, firewood, medicine, charcoal, living fences, and plantation shading. Additionally, both soil health and crop nutrition can be improved by the incorporation of the leguminous tree's leaf biomass.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing technology now has a new addition to its list of useful applications—producing protective shoes for birds. In a first for Asia, Jurong Bird Park's avian veterinary team and the Keio-NUS CUTE Center at the National University of Singapore (NUS) jointly embarked on a two-year effort to create silicone shoes casted from 3D printed molds for the wildlife park's birds of prey. This collaboration has achieved an effective treatment plan for a medical condition known as pododermatitis or "bumblefoot" in birds.

The molecular mechanism underlying enzyme activity regulation of ubiquitin-specific protease 8 (USP8) has been decoded by researchers at Tokyo Tech. USP8 has been implicated in Cushing's disease pathogenesis. They have identified an autoinhibitory region on the enzyme that interacts with its catalytic region. They also provide first evidence on the release of autoinhibition due to USP8 mutations as the underlying cause behind Cushing's disease. Their findings could be invaluable for understanding Cushing's disease pathogenesis.

Home to some of the highest mountains in the world, including the legendary Mount Everest, the vast Himalayan-Tibetan plateau is often referred to as the "Roof of the World." With an average elevation of 4500 meters above the sea level, the plateau towers over the rest of East and South Asia.

Understanding how the complex geometry of branching tissues takes shape during embryonic development or the growth of any organisms has long been a fascinating subject. Neuroscientists at Karolinska Institutet, together with theoretical physicists from IST-Austria, have now combined live imaging in a zebrafish model system with analytical theory to uncover a generic design principle to predict 3D axon branching morphogenesis.

Black rot disease in cabbages, radishes and related cruciferous crops may have disastrous consequences for the yield and production of marketable plants. The bacterium Xanthomonas campestris is the major cause of black rot disease, which works by slowing several light-mediated biological processes. Behind this biological retardation lies a complicated signaling cascade that is balanced by specialized proteins such as phytochromes.