Новости за 03.01.2022

NASA's huge, new space telescope is doing well more than a week after liftoff, following a pair of problems overcome by ground controllers, officials said Monday.

New research by the Tennessee Education Research Alliance at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College reveals that Black and male teachers in Tennessee have received lower observation scores than white and female teachers every year since the state's evaluation system began in 2011. Those gaps among race and gender remain even when comparing similarly qualified teachers who perform the same according to other metrics, such as their value-added contribution to student achievement.

One afternoon, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Panama, a bored teenager with a slingshot and a clay ball accidentally shot entry and exit holes in a Cecropia tree trunk. These are "ant-plant" trees, which famously cooperate with fierce Azteca ants; the trees provide shelter and food to the ants, and in exchange the ants defend their leaves against herbivores. The next morning, to the student's surprise, the Azteca alfari ants living within the Cecropia trunk had patched up the wound.

Why the sun's corona reaches temperatures of several million degrees Celsius is one of the great mysteries of solar physics. A "hot" trail to explain this effect leads to a region of the solar atmosphere just below the corona, where sound waves and certain plasma waves travel at the same speed. In an experiment using the molten alkali metal rubidium and pulsed high magnetic fields, a team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), a German national lab, has developed a laboratory model... Читать дальше...

Research led by UC Davis Professor Garen Wintemute shows that violence indirectly impacts most Californians. Though relatively few may experience or witness a violent act, a large majority of surveyed Californians reported having an "experience of violence" (EV). These included hearing gunshots in their neighborhood, encountering a sidewalk memorial to a violent death or learning about a violent event through their social network. The research was published in the journal Injury Epidemiology.

Even American women who identify as quite passionate sports fans don't watch athletic events much more frequently than women who say they aren't as interested in sports, a new national study finds.

A new, Yale-led study suggests the 21st century will see an expansion of hurricanes and typhoons into mid-latitude regions, which includes major cities such as New York, Boston, Beijing, and Tokyo.

Between wildfires, drought, a trade war, and the COVID-19 pandemic, the last few years have been hard on California farmers. But recent research by agricultural economists from UC Davis and the University of Connecticut suggests that economic losses to California agriculture from recent supply chain disruptions may have an even greater economic impact. Their models estimate that there was a 17% decline in the value of containerized agricultural exports between May and September 2021, resulting from recent port congestion.

Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) are massive multi-protein complexes that act as passageways for the transport of molecules into and out of the nucleus. Given their central role in gene expression, growth and development, it is not surprising that NPC defects are linked to many diseases such as viral infections, cancers and certain neurodegenerative diseases, and that nuclear transport is a target for possible therapeutics.

Popular baby names, just like fashion styles and other pop culture trends, keep on changing. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed a mathematical model to understand why these behavioral patterns are constantly shifting, and it points to a tug-of-war between the need to stand out in the crowd and the need to fit in with the pack. The motives to conform and to be unique interact to produce complex dynamics when people observe each other in a social network. The results of the research... Читать дальше...

PSI scientists have shed light on an important component of the eye: a protein in the rod cells of the retina which helps us see in dim light. Acting as an ion channel in the cell membrane, the protein is responsible for relaying the optical signal from the eye to the brain. If a genetic disorder disrupts the molecular function in a person, they will go blind. Scientists have deciphered the protein's three-dimensional structure, preparing the way for innovative medical treatments. The study is published... Читать дальше...

The use of genetic information is now indispensable for modern plant breeding. Even though DNA sequencing has become much cheaper since the human genome was decoded for the very first time in 2003, collecting the full genetic information still accounts for a large part of the costs in animal and plant breeding. One trick to reduce these costs is to sequence only a very small and randomly selected part of the genome and to complete the remaining gaps using mathematical and statistical techniques.... Читать дальше...

When it comes to creating next-generation electronics, two-dimensional semiconductors have a big edge. They're faster, more powerful and more efficient. They're also incredibly difficult to fabricate.

California begins the new year in much better shape for escaping its drought thanks to a massive October atmospheric river and wet December that delivered more rain and snow so far than the state saw in all of its last paltry precipitation season.

From the Terminator to Spiderman's suit, self-repairing robots and devices abound in sci-fi movies. In reality, though, wear and tear reduce the effectiveness of electronic devices until they need to be replaced. What is the cracked screen of your mobile phone healing itself overnight, or the solar panels providing energy to satellites continually repairing the damage caused by micro-meteorites?

A strong earthquake struck off the coast of eastern Taiwan on Monday evening with shaking felt in the capital Taipei, but authorities said there were no immediate reports of widespread damage or injuries.

Pop Rocks is a popular brand of popping candy manufactured and sold by Zeta Espacial S.A. The candies are just sugar and carbon dioxide, but making your own version of them at home is harder than it looks.

A recent study suggests that eating human food has a pronounced effect on the microbiome of black bears. Specifically, researchers from North Carolina State University and Northern Michigan University found that wild bears who consumed a lot of processed foods had far less diversity in the microbial ecosystems of their guts.

They're prickly on the outside, sweet on the inside, and beloved for their iconic pink shells and pearly, fragrant fruit. In the US, you might encounter them as a flavorful ingredient in bubble tea, ice cream or a cocktail. You can also peel them and eat them fresh.

Farmers are to be paid to help restore natural habitats and rewild Britain in government plans aimed at filling the gap left by EU subsidies, according to reports.

Recent news stories told of the Lummi Nation, west of Bellingham, describing a tiny, invasive crab—about 3 inches across the shell—as an "environmental disaster" and "one of the most destructive" aquatic creatures in the world.

Over the past decade, the pollution of rivers in China has been effectively controlled. The percentage of grade I (highest water quality) to III cases increase greatly, and the pollutant concentrations have generally declined. However, the water quality and ecological status of lakes have not been improved as expected, despite massive efforts on pollution management during 2008-2018. "This contradiction between the continuous decline of water quality and a large amount of investment in water pollution... Читать дальше...

In a Physics Review Letters paper published on Dec 15th, an international research team, led by Cai Yifu, Professor of the University of Science and Technology of China, and his collaborators discovered the hypothetical possibility of resonantly generating primordial gravitational waves within the high energy physics when the universe was in the babyhood. The originally invisible gravitational wave signals can be amplified by parametric resonance by 4 to 6 orders of magnitude or even larger through this phenomenon... Читать дальше...

Pulsars are neutron stars. They are formed when an old star explodes as a supernova, so you would expect to find them in the center of its supernova remnant. But not always. Astronomers have learned that some pulsars are ejected from its remnant. The Very Large Array has discovered one pulsar that is quite a kick.

A collaborative research project between the University of Haifa and the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology has found that "morning people" and "night people" differ from each other in their gut microbiome—the bacterial populations that inhabit the digestive tract.