Новости за 17.01.2022

Accidentally trapping sharks, seabirds, marine mammals, sea turtles and other animals in fishing gear is one of the biggest barriers to making fisheries more sustainable around the world. Marine protected areas—sections of the ocean set aside to conserve biodiversity—are used, in part, to reduce the unintentional catch of such animals, among other conservation goals.

A global effort to map the genomes of all plants, animals, fungi and other microbial life on Earth, is entering a new phase as it moves from pilot projects to full-scale production sequencing. This new phase of the The Earth BioGenome Project, or EBP, is marked with a collection of papers published this week in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, describing the project's goals, achievements to date and next steps.

NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars on Aug. 6, 2012, and since then has roamed Gale Crater taking samples and sending the results back home for researchers to interpret. Analysis of carbon isotopes in sediment samples taken from half a dozen exposed locations, including an exposed cliff, leave researchers with three plausible explanations for the carbon's origin—cosmic dust, ultraviolet degradation of carbon dioxide, or ultraviolet degradation of biologically produced methane.

There is too much focus on online radicalisation, says Joe Whittaker, when this is just one of the factors that make someone become a terrorist. In fact, Whittaker's research shows that terrorists who use the internet are less successful in achieving their goal than those who stay offline. He will defend his dissertation on 19 January.

Research suggests the failure of the Truman administration to pursue rapprochement with Chinese Communists before the founding of the People's Republic of China was not based on ideological distance or domestic politics, as has previously been suggested.

Since 2019, SpaceX has been launching an increasing number of internet satellites into orbit around Earth. The satellite constellation, called Starlink, now includes nearly 1,800 members orbiting at altitudes of about 550 kilometers. Astronomers have expressed concerns that that these objects, which can appear as streaks in telescope images, could hamper their scientific observations.

Year-to-year fluctuations in seawater temperature are partly responsible for the much slower ups and downs in the abundance of marine fish stocks. This is the conclusion from a worldwide study by Wageningen University & Research, among others. Fish biologists have observed slow fluctuations in fish stocks for centuries, but the causes remained largely unclear. This study shows that fluctuations on timescales of decades are naturally present in fish populations due to their sensitivity to water temperature.

Marine biologist, photographer and videographer Jacinta Shackleton, has posted a video on Instagram of a female blanket octopus (with its psychedelic cape on full display) she came across earlier this month while snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. In her post, she notes that the blanket octopus is very rarely seen because it normally spends its time out in the open ocean.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have observed the globular cluster Messier 14 and its peculiar multiple stellar populations. Results of the observational campaign, published January 7 on arXiv.org, deliver important insight into the nature of this cluster.

What if video games, instead of being an obstacle to literacy, could actually help children improve their reading abilities? A team from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) has joined forces with scientists from the University of Trento in Italy to test an action video game for children, which would enhance reading skills. The results, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrate improved reading abilities after just twelve hours of training. Notably, these gains persist over time, to... Читать дальше...

Individuals living with Type 1 diabetes must carefully follow prescribed insulin regimens every day, receiving injections of the hormone via syringe, insulin pump or some other device. And without viable long-term treatments, this course of treatment is a lifelong sentence.

If a new report from the Financial Wellness Lab of Canada at Western University is any indication, moving from a financially stressed situation to a more comfortable level in a relatively short period of time may not be an impossible feat.

As required by the Climate Change Act 2008, the government has today submitted the Third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) to Parliament.

Recognized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the term "nature-based solutions" (NbS) refers to those that bring together human well-being, environmental sustainability and biodiversity benefits. NbS are also key elements to post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery strategies. NbS include a variety of elements, starting from ecosystem-based climate change mitigation to ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction measures. While the techniques behind NbS may not be new... Читать дальше...

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, U.K., and Duke University, U.S., have created a new family of polymers from sustainable sources that retain all of the qualities of common plastics, but are also degradable and mechanically recyclable.

There's more to this image of Mars than first meets the eye: nestled in the detail of the cliff face that cuts through this scene are signs of geology in motion. Zooming in reveals several boulders that have fallen from the cliff edge, leaving small dimples in the soft material as they tumbled down-slope.

The world's first inventory of subglacial lakes has been compiled by an international team led by the University of Sheffield, providing researchers with a comprehensive directory of where the lakes are and how they are changing in a warming climate.

Ecologists need to understand wild animal behaviors in order to conserve species, but following animals around can be expensive, dangerous, or sometimes impossible in the case of animals that move underwater or into areas we can't reach easily.

Recently, there has been growing demand for DeNOx catalysts that can treat nitrogen oxides (NOx) at low temperatures to increase energy efficiency when processing flue gas in industrial combustion facilities. NOx are emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels and are the leading cause of ultrafine particles (UFPs) formed via chemical reactions in the atmosphere.

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the urgency for science to continue unraveling how viruses infect and how immune systems respond to such threats.

Developed by the American economist Richard Thaler in the late 2000s, the theory behind "nudging" theory is based on the principle that our choices are not only determined by our ability to reason, but are also influenced by certain biases such as our emotions, our memories, the opinions of others or the configuration of our environment. Focusing on these elements can therefore be more effective in getting us to change certain behaviors than a ban or an awareness-raising campaign.

Several days of frigid temperatures around Michigan didn't put much of a dent into the record-warm Great Lakes.

A team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and university scientists has developed an electronic nose to sniff out whitefly infestations of tomato plants.

Arsenic has been leaching into the lake from tailings at the abandoned Long Lake Gold Mine, which operated intermittently until 1937 and produced approximately 200,000 metric tons of tailings, discharged directly to the environment without containment.

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from Japan show that high-frequency plasma waves in the geospace can generate low-frequency plasma waves through wave-particle interactions by heating up low-energy ions, unveiling a new energy transfer pathway in collisionless plasma.