Новости за 13.12.2021

Humans and fruit flies respond to many of the same tastes—sweet, salty, bitter and so on. The receptors that identify these substances, however, are very different between us and insects. Except when it comes to sour.

Antibiotics cure many bacterial infections. However, some patients suffer a relapse. A research group at the University of Basel has now discovered why some bacteria can survive antibiotic therapy. The team uncovered where the bacteria hide in the body and how the body's own immune system also plays an important role.

Which came first, MHC class I or MHC class II? For decades, it has been debated which of these two similar classes came first in evolution. Now, Keiichiro Hashimoto and his group at Fujita Health University, Japan, in collaboration with European research groups, have provided an answer to this question in a new article in PNAS. They discovered an ancient category of MHC molecules, MHC-W, that represents a missing link for explaining how class I molecules evolved from a class II-like origin. Peter Parham... Читать дальше...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Columbia Engineering have discovered a new method to improve the toughness of materials that could lead to stronger versions of body armor, bulletproof glass and other ballistic equipment.

Engineers are developing the crucial hardware needed for a series of daring space missions that will be carried out in the coming decade.

Long after the deafening cacophony of the Brood X cicadas ended in mid-June, their ecological legacy was still playing out underground, according to a new study of cicada burrow-riddled ground being presented at the AGU Fall Meeting. The research found that the little holes in the ground left behind by emerging cicadas had a significant impact on how water penetrated soils, with the greatest effects in areas away from human activities.

Hydrogen fuel cell cars seem like a great, low-emission driving solution: oxygen and hydrogen in, nothing but water vapor out.

Black soldier fly larvae devour food waste and other organic matter and are made of 60% protein, making them an attractive sustainable food source in agriculture. But increasingly, black soldier larvae are dying before they reach livestock facilities as animal feed.

Lightning is one of the most destructive forces of nature, as in 2020 when it sparked the massive California Lightning Complex fires, but it remains hard to predict. A new study led by the University of Washington shows that machine learning—computer algorithms that improve themselves without direct programming by humans—can be used to improve lightning forecasts.

The supply of farmed seafood such as salmon and mussels are projected to drop 16 per cent globally by 2090 if no action is taken to mitigate climate change, according to a new UBC study.

Wildlife officials have announced an effort this winter to attempt to feed Florida manatees greens like romaine lettuce in the northern Indian River Lagoon to keep them from starving.

This autumn, without much fanfare, China established a new government initiative that could have a profound impact on the nation's increasingly threatened biodiversity.

Eucalypts make up more than 70 per cent of Australia's forests and some of Australia's most extreme fire events, such as the 2009 Black Saturday fires and the most severe of the 2019/20 bushfires, occurred in this type of vegetation.

Despite astrophysical evidence for the existence of dark matter, direct detection of its interaction with particles and fields of the standard model has not been achieved. Illuminating dark matter is the best hope of making progress in understanding the universe and would provide insights into astrophysics, cosmology and physics beyond the standard model.

A piece of corrugated rubber can function as a simple computer, displaying memory and displaying the ability to count to two. Leiden physicists researching mechanical metamaterials publish about the computing rubber in the journal PNAS. "Simple materials can process information, and we want to find the principles behind that."

Minnesota lakes are losing one of the main things that makes them special: ice. Winters have warmed to the point that the state's lakes have lost an average of two weeks of ice coverage since the late 1960s, according to data released this week by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Department of Natural Resources.

Three months after wildfire flames ripped through California's ancient sequoia groves, officials at the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks have announced the Giant Forest will reopen to the public.

Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the University of Manchester have helped conduct a 16-year long experiment to challenge Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Switching to modern cooking fuels like gas or to electricity can improve the well-being of women in the global South, and eventually be connected to falling birth rates, a new study by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shows. This highlights, for the first time, a connection between the global energy transition and the demographic transition in poorer countries.

Astronomers from Costa Rica and Australia have reported the detection of a new supernova remnant (SNR) by inspecting a gamma-ray source known as FHES J1723.5−0501. The researchers found that this source is an SNR and it has been designated G17.8+16.7. The finding is detailed in a paper published December 3 on arXiv.org.

Nearly a century after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana laid the groundwork for the discovery that electrons could be divided into halves, researchers predict that split photons may also exist, according to a study from Dartmouth and SUNY Polytechnic Institute researchers.

A Japanese space tourist on Monday rejected criticism from those who questioned his decision to pay a fortune for a trip to the International Space Station, saying the "amazing" experience was worth it.

Embryonic development follows delicate stages: For everything to go well, many genes must coordinate their activity according to a very meticulous scheme and tempo. This precision mechanism sometimes fails, leading to more or less disabling malformations. By studying the Pitx1 gene, one of the genes involved in the construction of the lower limbs, a team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), in Switzerland, has discovered how a small disturbance in the activation process of this gene is at the origin of clubfoot, a common foot malformation.

How did the first chemical reactions get started at the origin of life and what was their source of energy? Researchers at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have reconstructed the metabolism of the last universal common ancestor, LUCA. They found that almost all chemical steps used by primordial life to piece together the molecular building blocks of cells are energy-releasing reactions. This identified the long-sought source of energy needed to drive these reactions forward, which has been hiding in plain sight. Читать дальше...

Titanium is an important structural metal. Titanium alloys are widely used in aerospace and biomedical applications, thanks to their light weight, remarkable specific strength, superb corrosion resistance and high heat resistance.