Новости за 22.12.2021

Researchers have discovered that using a thin-film coating of copper or copper compounds on surfaces could enhance copper's ability to inactivate or destroy the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19.

Twenty-three percent of collared moose that died in Northeastern Minnesota over the past 15 years were infected with Parelaphostrongylus tenuis, a brain worm parasite transmitted by white-tailed deer that is one of the biggest threats to adult moose mortality in Minnesota.

Up here in the macro world, we all feel fatigue now and then. It's the same for bundles of carbon nanotubes, no matter how perfect their individual components are.

As the discovery of the new omicron variant illustrates, new COVID-19 variants will continue to regularly emerge. In an effort to make sense of these new variants, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed methods to quantify how much more or less transmissible they are, which could have far-reaching implications for public health in terms of COVID-19 risk and the vaccination levels required to obtain herd immunity.

When winds loft fine desert dust high into the atmosphere, iodine in that dust can trigger chemical reactions that destroy some air pollution, but also let greenhouse gases stick around longer. The finding, published today in the journal Science Advances, may force researchers to re-evaluate how particles from land can impact the chemistry of the atmosphere.

A large, unconventional anomalous Hall resistance in a new magnetic semiconductor in the absence of large-scale magnetic ordering has been demonstrated by Tokyo Tech materials scientists, validating a recent theoretical prediction. Their findings provide new insights into the anomalous Hall effect, a quantum phenomenon that has previously been associated with long-range magnetic order.

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

When it comes to studying lungs, humans take up all the air, but it turns out scientists have a lot to learn from lizards.

British people tend to overestimate the prevalence of different minority demographics, beliefs, and behaviors among the public, according to a study publishing December 22 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Researchers at Aalto University have shown that a nanoparticle suspension can serve as a simple model for studying the formation of patterns and structures in more complicated non-equilibrium systems, such as living cells. The new system will not only be a valuable tool for studying patterning processes but also has a wide range of potential technological applications.

Which factors determine how fast a quantum computer can perform its calculations? Physicists at the University of Bonn and the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology have devised an elegant experiment to answer this question. The results of the study are published in the journal Science Advances.

While conventional electronics relies on the transport of electrons, components that convey spin information alone may be many times more energy efficient. Physicists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart have now made an important advance in the development of novel materials for such components. These materials may also be the key to quantum computers that are less susceptible to interference.

The growing interest in deep-space exploration has sparked the need for powerful long-lived rocket systems to drive spacecraft through the cosmos. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have now developed a tiny modified version of a plasma-based propulsion system called a Hall thruster that both increases the lifetime of the rocket and produces high power.

Mobility shaped the human world profoundly long before the modern age. But archaeologists often struggle to create a timeline for the speed and impact of this mobility. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at the Danish National Research Foundation's Centre for Urban Network Evolutions at Aarhus University (UrbNet) has now made a breakthrough by applying new astronomical knowledge about the past activity of the sun to establish an exact time anchor for global links in the year 775 CE.

New research published today has demonstrated that tiny graphene neural probes can be used safely to greatly improve our understanding of the causes of epilepsy.

Most of us are familiar with "spinach teeth," the harmless but gritty-chalky mouthfeel caused by the vegetable.

Scientists in Switzerland and Germany have achieved efficient electron-beam modulation using integrated photonics—circuits that guide light on a chip. The experiments could lead to entirely new quantum measurement schemes in electron microscopy.

A little wiggle room might be just what the doctor ordered.

For generations, scientists have relied on a handful of organisms to study the fundamentals of biology. The usual suspects—fruit flies, zebrafish, and mice, among others—all have short lifespans, small body size, can be bred through multiple generations in the laboratory, and have been developed for genetic investigations. These research organisms leave out a whole swath of biological diversity and scientists have lacked access to a cultured octopus laboratory organism—until now. Introducing the pygmy zebra octopus (O. Читать дальше...

Populations of peninsular spiders that make aerial spider webs and move around the air by ballooning (using the silk threads as parachutes) present a more homogeneous genetics structure and are better connected between them. However, species of nocturnal spiders, which hunt on the ground and have a low dispersal capacity, show less genetically connected populations and are more vulnerable to local extinction processes due to environmental factors.

Astronomers have produced the most comprehensive image of radio emission from the nearest actively feeding supermassive black hole to Earth.

Ever since graphene—a thin carbon sheet just one-atom thick—was discovered more than 15 years ago, the wonder material became a workhorse in materials science research. From this body of work, other researchers learned that slicing graphene along the edge of its honeycomb lattice creates one-dimensional zigzag graphene strips or nanoribbons with exotic magnetic properties.

The smallest fish in the world, the Paedocypris, measures only 7 millimeters. This is nothing compared to the 9 meters of the whale shark. The small fish shares many of the same genes and the same anatomy with the shark, but the dorsal and caudal fins, gills, stomach and heart, are thousands of times smaller! How do organs and tissues of this miniature fish stop growing very quickly, unlike those of their giant cousin? A multidisciplinary team led by scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE)... Читать дальше...

There is renewed debate in California and other states over whether to ban offshore oil and gas drilling, two months after a ruptured underwater pipeline off Huntington Beach spewed tens of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the ocean.

Stable and high oxide-ion conductors based on a new hexagonal perovskite-related oxide has been reported by scientists at Tokyo Tech, Kojundo Chemical Laboratory Co. Ltd. and Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in a recent study. These high-performance oxide-ion conductors could pave the way for the development of solid electrolytes for next-generation batteries and clean energy devices such as solid oxide fuel cells.