Новости за 10.01.2022

The notion that some computational problems in math and computer science can be hard should come as no surprise. There is, in fact, an entire class of problems deemed impossible to solve algorithmically. Just below this class lie slightly "easier" problems that are less well-understood—and may be impossible, too.

Dig this: Catalysis appears to function because of holes.

In the particle world, sometimes two is better than one. Take, for instance, electron pairs. When two electrons are bound together, they can glide through a material without friction, giving the material special superconducting properties. Such paired electrons, or Cooper pairs, are a kind of hybrid particle—a composite of two particles that behaves as one, with properties that are greater than the sum of its parts.

In the fields of chemistry and materials, most successful, widely used machine learning schemes introduced over the last decade aim to model molecular energies or interatomic potentials. Accordingly, the representations used to map atomic configurations into vectors of descriptors or features used as model inputs reflect fundamental properties of the interatomic potential such as invariance to permutation between identical atoms, rigid rotation or inversion of the molecular structure. They also reflect... Читать дальше...

Ordinary matter behaves very differently when subjected to extreme temperatures and pressures, such as that inside stellar and planetary cores. Conventional rules of condensed matter physics and plasma physics are not applicable in such scenarios. In particular, an extreme state known as "warm dense matter" (WDM) straddles the boundary of condensed matter physics and plasma physics.

The recovery of the fisher, a charismatic, long-tailed forest carnivore, will likely be hindered by the increasing frequency and intensity of future wildfires, new research by Oregon State University indicates.

AMOLF researchers, collaborating with researchers from the Erasmus MC, have discovered a genetic mechanism that ensures that a nerve cell retains its identity once it has differentiated. This concerns a neuron in the worm C. elegans that can detect salt. Its identity is activated by a genetic switch during the cell's development. Jeroen van Zon and his colleagues have discovered how it is possible that this switch never spontaneously switches off again. The research was published in the scientific journal eLife.

Ecological communities on the Oregon coast are being subtly destabilized by the pressures of climate change despite giving an appearance of stress resistance, new research by Oregon State University shows.

Marine life hitching a ride on ocean-crossing ships poses a threat to Antarctica's pristine ecosystems, with the potential for invasive species to arrive from almost anywhere across the globe, say the authors of a new study.

You're likely familiar with the idea of the sterile mule: a hybrid animal born of a horse and a donkey that is unable to breed.

Nearly 700 people died due to natural disasters in the contiguous United States in 2021—the most since 2011, said a federal weather agency in a report released Monday.

Trevor Franklin, a doctoral student in Cornell's Robert Frederick Smith School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, was preparing a study about anti-fouling surfaces when he noticed something strange.

Almost 100 billion tons of CO2 could be pulled out of the atmosphere by the end of the century. That is, if high-income countries switch to a plant-based diet. The double carbon profit of returning farmland to its natural state would equal about 14 years' worth of agricultural emissions, researchers from Leiden University write in Nature Food.

Atomic environment fingerprints, or structural descriptors, are used to describe the chemical environment around a reference atom. Encoding information such as bond-lengths to neighboring atoms or coordination numbers, these fingerprints are used, for example, as inputs in machine learning approaches or to eliminate redundant structures in structural searches

COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted employment for minority populations resulting in higher unemployment rates and healthcare concerns, according to a Rutgers study.

Student evaluations, in the form of anonymous online surveys, are ubiquitous in Australian universities. Most students in most courses are offered the opportunity to rate the "quality" of their teachers and the course they take.

A joint research team led by Profs. Lin Yangting and Lin Honglei from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) observed water signals in reflectance spectral data from the lunar surface acquired by the Chang'E-5 lander, providing the first evidence of in-situ detection of water on the Moon.

Many African cities struggle to supply safe, potable water to their residents. One of the main reasons for this is urbanization; cities' populations grow rapidly as more people move to them from rural areas.

In a new report now published on Royal Society Open Science, Mohammed Taha Amen and a team of scientists in bio-nanosystem engineering, chemical engineering and microbiology at the Chonbuk National University of South Korea, and the Zagazig University, Egypt, showed the possibility of using rainwater as a sustainable analyte in an air-cathode microbial fuel cell (MFC). The results showed how the constructs could work within a specific temperature range, under aerobic and anaerobic environments.

The disruption in the global supply chain that caused shortages in everything from coffee to automotive parts to computer chips beginning in mid-2019 will be around for at least a few more months, according to most experts.

Although time is in short supply in the war against the lionfish invasion in the Atlantic and Caribbean, a University of Alberta study suggests taking time to plan the where, when and who of this fight will give wildlife officials the best shot at keeping the voracious trespassers at bay.

American households have most of their wealth in retirement savings (33 percent) and in their home equity (29 percent). Of that, home equity exceeded $25 trillion, according to latest Federal Reserve data. Not surprisingly, homeowners with mortgage debt are loathe to give up their homes in foreclosures and may defy financial logic to avoid defaulting on their loans.

We are now producing more food more efficiently than ever, and there is plenty to go around for a human population of 7 billion. But it is coming at a drastic cost in environmental degradation, and the bounty is not reaching many people.

An international team of astronomers reports the detection of a new sub-Jupiter-mass alien world orbiting an M-dwarf star. The newly found exoplanet, designated OGLE-2014-BLG-0319Lb, turns out to be about half as massive as Jupiter. The discovery was detailed in a paper published December 30 on the arXiv pre-print repository.

Southern California cougars often make the news with their litters of oh-so-cute kittens, but a UCLA-led study suggests that these mountain lions may soon find it much harder to reproduce due to a lack of genetic diversity.