Новости за 15.12.2021

Sometimes nature surprises you. That's what happened when a massive marine heatwave took hold in the waters around Moorea, French Polynesia, in late 2018. Fortunately, UC Santa Barbara researchers turned this event into an opportunity to investigate coral bleaching.

Phthalates are a ubiquitous family of chemicals that are used every day. In a new study, researchers have investigated how these compounds affect tissue development in the reproductive systems of female mice offspring.

Fat—it is tvital for life but too much can lead to a host of health problems. Studying how fat—or adipose—tissue functions in the body is critical for understanding obesity and other issues, yet structural differences in fat cells and their distribution throughout the body make doing so challenging.

"Vacancy" is a sign you want to see when searching for a hotel room on a road trip. When it comes to quantum materials, vacancies are also something you want to see. Scientists create them by removing atoms in crystalline materials. Such vacancies can serve as quantum bits or qubits, the basic unit of quantum technology.

Researchers recently made a major discovery—14 new species of shrews, which is the largest number of new mammals described in a scientific paper since 1931. After a decade-long journey taking inventory of Indonesian shrews living on the island of Sulawesi, a group of scientists led by LSU mammologist Jake Esselstyn has identified 14 new endemic species.

The 17th flight of NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on Dec. 5 pushed the total flight time past the 30-minute mark. The 117-second sortie brought history's first aircraft to operate from the surface of another world closer to its original airfield, "Wright Brothers Field," where it will await the arrival of the agency's Perseverance Mars rover, currently exploring "South Séítah" region of Mars's Jezero Crater.

Achieving consensus among countries in global climate negotiations is a long and complicated process. Researchers at Linköping University have developed a mathematical model that describes the achievement of the 2015 Paris Agreement and that may contribute to more efficient negotiations when striving for unanimity.

The noise created by the Earth's movements has been used to build up a detailed picture of the geological conditions beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet and the impact on ice flow, described in new research led by Swansea University.

Scientists with NASA's Perseverance Mars rover mission have discovered that the bedrock their six-wheeled explorer has been driving on since landing in February likely formed from red-hot magma. The discovery has implications for understanding and accurately dating critical events in the history of Jezero Crater—as well as the rest of the planet.

Materials Scientists at Duke University have developed a lightweight material that traps thermal energy when dry, but opens a series of tiny vents to let heat escape when a person starts sweating. The vents close again to retain heat once they are dry.

New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a novel answer to one of the persistent questions in historical climatology, environmental history and the earth sciences: what caused the Little Ice Age? The answer, we now know, is a paradox: warming.

An analysis of thousands of children's books published in the last 60 years suggests that, while a higher proportion of books now feature female protagonists, male protagonists remain overrepresented. Stella Lourenco of Emory University, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on December 15, 2021 and explore the factors associated with representation.

Through the resettlement of seagrass meadows on the coasts, large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are to be removed in the future to combat climate change. Be aware, however: Seagrass meadows can, under certain conditions, release more carbon dioxide than they absorb, as is now shown by a Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon study published in the scientific journal Science Advances. Whether the recultivation of sea grass meadows makes sense ultimately depends on the location.

Nearly two-thirds of all violence-related deaths among adolescents and young adults across the United States are caused by firearms.

Soil organic carbon is a cornerstone of soil health. It improves soil structure while enhancing water- and nutrient-holding capacity, key factors for any agricultural production system. To build it up, farmers incorporate crop residues into soils.

A group of students who headed to the beach last year for some fresh air amid the gloom of the pandemic, chanced upon a crocodile bone in the old seawall that led to the discovery of other fossils.

The world is warming quickly with no indication of slowing down. This could be catastrophic for the production of food crops, particularly in already warm areas. Today, research from The University of Illinois and the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service show that bypassing a photosynthetic glitch common to crops like soybean, rice, and wheat, can confer thermal protection under heat stress in the field.

New modeling suggests large, high-speed impacts during Venus' early history could reconcile the differences between Venus and its rocky sister planet, Earth.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have developed a method to detect trace amounts of synthetic opioids. They plan to combine their approach with miniaturized sensors to create a hand-portable instrument easily used by law enforcement agents for efficient detection in the field.

Reducing mercury pollution entering lakes lowers how much harmful mercury is found in freshwater fish destined for consumers' plates.

On the surface of our cells are docking stations called receptors. All kinds of compounds from caffeine and dopamine to heroin, THC and LSD bind to these receptors. In fact, G protein-coupled receptors are the intended targets of more than 30 percent of pharmaceutical products currently on the market. But these drugs often hit unintended targets—think carpet bombing the nervous system—leading to the laundry list of side effects commonly heard at the end of pharmaceutical commercials.

Cacao farms not only provide us with the pleasure of chocolate, but also offer potential advantages for biodiversity-friendly agriculture. The benefits to biodiversity have been widely studied in tropical rainforests, but were so far unknown in tropical dry forests. An international team of researchers led by the University of Göttingen has now reported for the first time how seasonal effects drive the presence of birds and bats—the most important consumers of insect pests—in cacao agroforests in Peru. Читать дальше...

A quarter of a century after the first creation of Bose-Einstein condensates, the journal Nature Physics publishes a focus issue on developments in the field of ultracold quantum gasses and their potential in the future. For example, in what direction will atomic microscopes, optical tweezers, or new laser traps develop? What potential lies in quantum gasses from lanthanides has been detailed by Francesca Ferlaino and Matthew Norcia from the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of... Читать дальше...

Palaeonitella trifurcate is the name of a new fossil species of a freshwater plant from the Lower Cretaceous found and reconstructed by a team of geologists of the University of Barcelona. The reconstruction of the plant, dating from between 125 and 120 million years ago, has been conducted using the plant organs found separately in a stratum of limestone from the Natural Park of Garraf, in Olivella (Barcelona).

Around the world, bacterial communities live in all kinds of habitats, from the human body to water and soil. Each community consists of a unique composition of species, called the microbiome. Each species harbors thousands of genes that encode both common functions and functions specific to the habitat. Scientists around the world have started to sequence microbiomes in individual habitats to understand the functional diversity of bacteria within them. However, little is known about where these... Читать дальше...