Новости за 17.12.2021

Improved understanding is a necessary first step in the process of managing the loss of an archaeological site, and the Seaford Head Project is trialing ways of achieving this including 3D modeling and surveying the site with drones. The project will also trial the use of podcasts and videos to engage local communities in a conversation about coastal change and how they feel about the eventual, inevitable loss of historic sites.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have developed an effective computational method to simulate the crazy-quilt movement of free electrons during experimental efforts to harness on Earth the fusion power that drives the sun and stars. The method cracks a complex equation that can enable improved control of the random and fast-moving moving electrons in the fuel for fusion energy.

The Earth's climate is an extremely complex system that is driven by the subtle balance of many different processes—a key one of which is the air-sea exchange of CO2. Monitoring the ocean's uptake of CO2 is key to our understanding of climate change, and scientists at EPFL and at the Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography (MIO, France) have recently discovered a new part of the process. They identified a new source of organic phosphorus delivered from the atmosphere which potentially will help phytoplankton and microalgae growth... Читать дальше...

Understanding how surface and subsurface waters are affected by drought, fire, warming, and increased human demand requires computer models that can represent complex environments. Predictions are especially difficult for what scientists call patterned land cover. In Arctic permafrost landscapes, this patterning is caused by intense freezing and subsequent thawing. This can also overturn soil layers, resulting in a pattern of raised polygons of organic-rich soil and vegetation with surface water between the polygons. Читать дальше...

For millennia, vast expanses of the Arctic Ocean have been untouched by humans, ocean where narwhals and other marine mammals lived undisturbed. Now that climate change is causing sea ice to melt, there has been an uptick of human activity in the Arctic. This has resulted in significantly more noise from an array of human sources, including seismic surveys, mine blasts, port projects and cruise ships.

By mixing a small peptide with equal amounts of its mirror image, a team of scientists at UC Santa Cruz has created an unusual protein structure known as a "rippled beta sheet" and obtained images of it using X-ray crystallography. They reported their findings in a paper published December 8 in Chemical Science.

Every 6 minutes someone is told they're going blind. One of the major causes of human blindness is a disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which causes progressive degeneration of the retina and vision loss. Approximately one-tenth of Retinitis Pigmentosa cases worldwide are caused by mutations in the rhodopsin gene. Researchers from ITQB NOVA and IGC had now identified a crucial mechanism for the production of Rhodopsin, the light-sensitive protein of photoreceptors, using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and human cells as models.

Despite its prior status as a luxury commodity, silver became widely used for coinage in the Roman world from the 7th century BCE onward and provided a standardized monetary system for ancient Mediterranean civilizations. However, the sources of silver used to produce Roman coinage have largely been used up, making it difficult to determine which deposits Roman miners exploited.

Giant, long-necked sauropods, thought to include the largest land animals ever to have existed, preferred to live in warmer, more tropical regions on Earth, suggesting they may have had a different physiology from other dinosaurs, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and the University of Vigo.

The world likely will generate more electricity from the dirtiest source this year than ever before, indicating just how far the energy transition still needs to run in the fight against climate change.

Atomic-scale magnetic patterns resembling a hedgehog's spikes could result in hard disks with massively larger capacities than today's devices, a new study suggests. The finding could help data centers keep up with the exponentially increasing demand for video and cloud data storage.

Confronted with a jet-black globular fish with razor-sharp teeth, prickly skin and a strange stalk protruding from its head, lifeguards at Swami's Beach in Encinitas, California, immediately knew they had something extraordinary on their hands.

In late December, SpaceX-24 will deliver a payload to the International Space Station. Three new experiments that will help scientists better understand specific biological and physical phenomena will be on board.

Composite hydrogels can incorporate natural polymers and bioactive glass as promising materials for bone regeneration. However, the applications of such constructs are limited by poor compatibility between organic and inorganic phases. In a new study now published in Science Advances, Xinxin Ding, and a research team in medicine, in Shanghai China, formed an electrostatically reinforced hydrogel (abbreviated CAG) with improved interfacial compatibility. To accomplish this, they introduced amino-functionalized... Читать дальше...

When the average person consumes information through sources like television, radio, a website, or a newspaper, they might do it with a critical eye. What is the viewpoint of the news outlet? Has it been trustworthy in the past? Is there another source for this information to get a second opinion?

Lead-free vacancy-ordered perovskite Cs2M4+X6 (X=Cl-, Br- or I-) nanocrystals feature low toxicity, high stability and unique optical properties.

Rice production is critical to food security worldwide. However, the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae (M. oryzae) causes destructive disease and huge yield loss worldwide. Exploiting and breeding rice with broad-spectrum resistance to rice blast is therefore of great value for ensuring global food production.

Researchers at University of Surrey, University of York, University of Edinburgh, and Argonne National Laboratory have recently revisited and solved some of the long-standing puzzles associated with the decay of 185Bi, the heaviest known proton-emitting nucleus. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, outlines crucial new results obtained using two advanced setups at Argonne National Laboratory's ATLAS facility, namely the Fragment Mass Analyzer (FMA) and the Argonne Gas-Filled Analyzer (AGFA).

A pretty special gift unwrapping will soon take place—a piercing tool built by ESA will open a moon soil container from Apollo 17 that has gone untouched for nearly 50 years. The opening will allow the extraction of precious lunar gases which may have been preserved in the sample.

Big cats are among the most widespread top predators on Earth. Lions stalk zebra in the African savanna, tigers ambush antelope in the forests of Asia and jaguars hunt deer in the jungles of South America. They play an important role in ecosystems by regulating the numbers of these herbivores, in turn, reducing the deterioration of vegetated habitats and maintaining species diversity.

The Galápagos Islands are known for their extreme isolation and unusual animal life, with rare species inhabiting the islands. But little was known about the soils until a group of scientists began studying them in earnest in 2016. The December 15th Soils Matter blog describes the soil formation on this remote archipelago of nineteen islands.

How did supermassive black holes form? What is dark matter? In an alternative model for how the universe came to be, as compared to the 'textbook' history of the universe, a team of astronomers propose that both of these cosmic mysteries could be explained by so-called "primordial black holes."

Ian Baker, a physicist specializing in camera imaging, who works for Leonardo U.K. Ltd., a British defense company, has discovered that a bristly type of mouse hair has structures that resemble those in some manmade optical sensors. In his paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Baker suggests that mouse and other mammalian fur may serve as infrared antennas—allowing its owner to sense heat.

The Smart Polymer Materials group led by Prof. Chen Tao at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has synthesized a supramolecular multicolor fluorescent polymeric hydrogel for soft biomimetic skins with adaptive color-changing behaviors. The study was published in Advanced Functional Materials.

NASA is set for another Apollo moment with the launch of its new James Webb Space Telescope as early as Dec. 24, barring complications. Billed as NASA's most ambitious telescope to date, its purpose is to fundamentally alter our understanding of the universe.