Новости за 20.12.2021

A team of University of Georgia (UGA) researchers is hard at work in Miami to help leaders there tackle a problem that affects nearly every city in the world: Plastic pollution.

An unknown culprit has been removing oxygen from our atmosphere for at least 800,000 years, and an analysis of air bubbles preserved in Antarctic ice for up to 1.5 million years has revealed the likely suspect.

When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted global production and distribution, it shone a spotlight on the fault lines running through some of the world's supply chains, which—according to a group of Stanford human rights researchers—have long been fraught with problems.

Complex risks to human health and wellbeing have been neglected by governments and NGOs because of a failure to appreciate the complex nature of environmental risks, a new report including research from the University of York warns.

One day Prof. Eldad Tzahor peered into a microscope in his lab and saw steak. As part of Tzahor's research into repairing muscle tissue, Dr. Tamar Eigler, a postdoctoral fellow in his lab at the Weizmann Institute of Science, had been experimenting with cultured muscle stem cells. One of these experiments had produced the surprising sight that appeared before Tzahor's eyes: The cells had started fusing into tiny fibers that thickened rapidly, within hours creating large muscle fibers resembling those in whole cut meat.

A 443-acre tidal wetland habitat restoration project in Oregon's Tillamook Bay designed to reduce flooding and improve salmon habitat has also brought a host of other socioeconomic benefits to the community, a new report from Oregon State University researchers shows.

Consumers' choices about health products are influenced heavily by public information. A new study analyzed how media outlets responded to the endorsement of weight-loss products by TV personality Dr. Oz. The study found that media tended to amplify rather than rectify misleading information, resulting in the further spread of misinformation. The authors call for government oversight to lessen the risk of spreading inaccuracies.

The US federal government's current approach to research security concerns is causing a significant number of researchers to feel unwelcome in the United States, leading them to consider taking their talents to other countries, thereby jeopardizing the nation's security, according to a new report by the American Physical Society (APS).

It's hard to imagine a more inhospitable world than our closest planetary neighbor. With an atmosphere thick with carbon dioxide, and a surface hot enough to melt lead, Venus is a scorched and suffocating wasteland where life as we know it could not survive. The planet's clouds are similarly hostile, blanketing the planet in droplets of sulfuric acid caustic enough to burn a hole through human skin.

Thyme and oregano possess an anti-cancer compound that suppresses tumor development, but adding more to your tomato sauce isn't enough to gain significant benefit. The key to unlocking the power of these plants is in amplifying the amount of the compound created or synthesizing the compound for drug development.

Every so often, the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud throw galactic snowballs made up of ice, dust and rocks our way: 4.6-billion-year-old leftovers from the formation of the solar system.

A new study has shed new light on why large mammals died out at the end of the ice age, suggesting their extinction was caused by a warming climate and expansion of vegetation that created unsuitable habitat for the animals. The findings, published in the journal PNAS, have major implications for proposals to prevent the soils in the Arctic today from thawing by re-introducing animals such as bison and horses.

Racial bias can unconsciously seep into many aspects of life, causing people to unknowingly act in discriminatory ways. Even when not ill-intentioned, this type of discrimination can still have serious consequences—and a new study suggests this can extend to how we communicate electronically.

Shrubs in the desert Southwest have increased their water use efficiency at some of the highest rates ever observed to cope with a decades-long megadrought. That's the finding of a new study from University of Utah researchers, who found that although the shrubs' efficiency increases are unprecedented and heroic, they may not be enough to adapt to the long-term drying trend in the West.

Mountain spring water is often touted as the cleanest water you can drink. But a new study from the University of Georgia revealed this isn't the case.

A researcher at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy has identified the proteins necessary for efficient regeneration of skeletal muscles after acute injury and in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). Ashok Kumar, Else and Philip Hargrove Endowed Professor of Pharmacological and Pharmaceutical Sciences, is reporting his findings in eLife.

Some engineered living materials can combine the strength of run-of-the-mill building materials with the responsiveness of living systems. Think self-healing concrete, paint that changes color when a specific chemical is detected or material that could reproduce and fill in a crack when one forms. This would revolutionize construction and maintenance, with wide-reaching economic and environmental implications.

Animal cells are bound by a structure called a cell cortex—and this structure, researchers say, is a bit like a tent.

Solutions to a 55-year-old problem in boiling water reactors—which represent a third of nuclear power reactors in the United States—are on the way now that the problem has been emulated with ion beams.

Sneezes, rain clouds, and ink jet printers: They all produce or contain liquid droplets so tiny it would take several billion of them to fill a liter bottle.

During the pandemic, physical summits were replaced by Zoom meetings, and global political leaders had to quickly adjust. How did they visually convey their status in this new world of digital diplomacy? A new study from Lund University in Sweden analyzed over 50 photos from the first virtual G20 meeting in 2020.

More than 66 million years ago, an asteroid impact led to the extinction of almost three-quarters of life on Earth. The little life that was left had to struggle, and research into its tenacity can provide key insights into how organisms survive environmental challenges. In a new study, scientists at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences discovered how some species of single-celled algae lived through the mass extinction, a finding that could change how we understand global ocean processes.

When cells are exposed to ionizing radiation, more destructive chain reactions may occur than previously thought. An international team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg has for the first time observed intermolecular Coulombic decay in organic molecules. This is triggered by ionizing radiation such as from radioactivity or from space. The effect damages two neighboring molecules and ultimately leads to the breaking of bonds—like the ones in DNA and proteins. Читать дальше...

Environmental groups took the first step Monday toward suing the Environmental Protection Agency over water pollution that caused a catastrophic number of manatee deaths this year from starvation.

When we think of evolution, many of us conjure the lineage from ape to man, a series of incremental changes spanning millions of years. But in some species, evolution happens so quickly we can watch it in real time.