Новости за 29.12.2021

Shunning climate-changing fossil fuels is turning out to be more difficult than promised in Illinois.

A research team led by Prof. Zhang Guofan and Prof. Li Li from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) has revealed evolutionary mechanisms of environmental adaptation in estuarine oysters.

Immunologists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have identified biochemical "switches" that control development of regulatory T cells and offer a novel strategy for treatment of autoimmune diseases and cancer. The research appeared earlier this month in the journal Cell Reports.

Reported in three major soybean-producing countries in South America (Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), Cercospora leaf blight (CLB) is a global threat to soybean. CLB causes dark-purple lesions on leaves and premature defoliation, which can diminish soybean production.

Just two weeks after launching from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft has opened its "eye" and returned its first images from space—a major operational milestone for the spacecraft and DART team.

Part of the magic of Uluru is the way it tricks your senses. Deep orange by day, at sunrise and sunset it appears to change color, becoming a more vibrant shade of red, and then almost purple.

Taxonomy was once the domain of white-coated scientists with years of university training. While this expertise is still important, everyday Australians are increasingly helping to identify species through citizen science apps. Rapid advances in smartphone and tablet cameras are helping to popularize this activity.

2021 may turn out to be the most critical year in our efforts to combat climate change. After four years of inaction and backpedaling by the Trump administration, the U.S. under President Biden is attempting to make up for lost time. A lot has happened here and around the world—some of it good, some of it not so good. As the year draws to a close, let's take a look at where we stand.

An international team of researchers has found and excavated the remains of a young man killed approximately 3,600 years ago by a tsunami created by the eruption of Thera—a volcano located on what is now the island of Santorini. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how the remains were found and how they were identified as belonging to a victim of the Thera tsunami.

Using ESA's XMM-Newton spacecraft, an international team of astronomers has conducted X-ray observations of the most distant known gravitationally lensed quasar—J0439+1634. Results of the study, published December 20 on the arXiv pre-print server, shed more light on the properties of this source.

Europeans have been living with euro banknotes and coins for 20 years now, but many still point the finger at the single currency for covertly driving up consumer prices—despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.

Twenty years after arriving in Europeans' wallets, euro banknotes will get a new look with help from the public, a process officials hope will make citizens feel closer to the single currency.

Human DNA can be extracted from the 'cement' head lice used to glue their eggs to hairs thousands of years ago, scientists have found, which could provide an important new window into the past.