Новости за 19.01.2022

The endangered Sumatran orangutan infant at New Orleans' zoo is being bottle-fed because his mother wasn't producing enough milk.

Aging leads to a decline in cellular fitness and loss of optimal protein function. Many age-related ailments, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, are caused by protein aggregation, a result of errors in protein folding. Yet, the mechanisms underlying how aging causes proteins to aggregate has largely remained a black box. In new research published Jan. 19 in Nature, researchers at Stanford University have traced this problem to age-dependent impairment of the machinery that produces new proteins.

Legalization of marijuana in California has helped some financial institutions in the state increase their assets at the same time many banks, feeling stifled by federal regulations, deny services to licensed growers, manufacturers and retailers, a new study shows.

Researchers have developed an adaptive liquid lens based on a new electrically responsive fluid called dibutyl adipate (DBA) that changes focal length when a voltage is applied. The lens is lightweight, compact and simple to fabricate, which makes it ideal for mobile phone cameras, endoscopes, eyeglasses and machine vision applications.

A study conducted by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Vaisala Inc., published yesterday in the Geological Society of America's journal Geology, discusses how advances in global lightning detection have provided novel ways to characterize explosive volcanism. Lead author Alexa Van Eaton says, "It's the perfect storm—explosive eruptions can create lightning that is detected around the world."

Research featured this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlights the progress of plant genomics and includes a roadmap for the enormous task of sequencing the genomes of plants worldwide.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have recently published work that lays the foundation for new ways of thinking about pathogen evolution. "Our research highlights that template-free modeling that uses machine learning is indeed superior to template-based modeling for the secreted proteins of the destructive fungal pathogen Magnaporthe oryzae," said Kyungyong Seong, first author of the paper published in the Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions (MPMI) journal.

Black holes are often described as the monsters of the universe—tearing apart stars, consuming anything that comes too close, and holding light captive. Detailed evidence from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, however, shows a black hole in a new light: Fostering rather than suppressing star formation. Hubble imaging and spectroscopy of the dwarf starburst galaxy Henize 2-10 clearly show a gas outflow stretching from the black hole to a bright star birth region like an umbilical cord, triggering the... Читать дальше...

About 2.4 billion years ago, Earth's atmosphere underwent what is called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). Prior to the GOE, early Earth had far less molecular oxygen than we have today. After the GOE, molecular oxygen began to increase in abundance, eventually making life like ours possible.

A team of researchers has discovered a jumping behavior that is entirely new to insect larvae, and there is evidence that it is occurring in a range of species—we just haven't noticed it before.

Computer simulations of snow cover can accurately forecast avalanche hazard, according to a new international study involving researchers from Simon Fraser University.

The goal of nuclear physics is to describe all matter from its simplest building blocks: quarks and gluons. Found deep inside protons and neutrons, quarks and gluons also combine in less common configurations to make other subatomic particles of matter. For scientists, producing these less-common particles in experiments is an interesting challenge. A new theory method aids in those efforts by predicting which less-common particles an experiment will produce.

Entropy, a physical property often explained as "disorder," is revealed as a creator of order with a new bonding theory developed at the University of Michigan and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for almost a quarter of global warming, is being studied around the world, from Arctic wetlands to livestock feedlots. A University of Washington team has discovered a source much closer to home: 349 plumes of methane gas bubbling up from the seafloor in Puget Sound, which holds more water than any other U.S. estuary.

Numbers like π, e and φ often turn up in unexpected places in science and mathematics. Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence also seem inexplicably widespread in nature. Then there's the Riemann zeta function, a deceptively straightforward function that has perplexed mathematicians since the 19th century. The most famous quandary, the Riemann hypothesis, is perhaps the greatest unsolved question in mathematics, with the Clay Mathematics Institute offering a $1 million prize for a correct proof.

Software development teams given the freedom to tackle their projects in whatever ways they choose are more productive and have more satisfied customers than teams that follow a central corporate standard, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin.

Party polarization tends to come before voter polarization, according to new research co-led by faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Nearly a decade ago, scientists discovered the power of CRISPR, a tool employed by bacteria to protect themselves against viral invaders. This system is now a fundamental research tool used for editing genomes. One of most popular CRISPR tool is CRISPR-Cas9, with which researchers can identify and then cut out or replace the targeted DNA within a cell.

During COVID-19 lockdowns, the internet was flooded with images from Delhi to Los Angeles, showing mountains typically hidden behind smog or clear blue skies where they were once gray.

A research group at the Politecnico di Milano analyzed the orientation of ancient Japanese tombs—the so-called Kofun. This study has never been carried out before, due to the very large number of monuments and the fact that access to these areas is usually forbidden. For these reasons, high-res satellite imagery was used. The results show that these tombs are oriented towards the arc of the rising sun, the Goddess Amaterasu that the Japanese emperors linked to the mythical origin of their dynasty.

A historic increase in Everglades funding was announced Wednesday by the Biden administration, with a plan to spend an unprecedented $1.1 billion to restore South Florida's famous wilderness.

When two people are on the same page in a conversation, sometimes their minds just "click." A Dartmouth study demonstrates that clicking isn't just a figure of speech but is predicted by "response times" in a conversation or the amount of time between when one person stops talking and the other person starts. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers at QuTech—a collaboration between the Delft University of Technology and TNO—have taken an important step for semiconductor spin qubits by surpassing the 99% barrier for two-qubit gate fidelity. They report on their findings in Nature on 19 January 2021 and are featured on the issue's cover. Two independent works from groups at UNSW Sydney and at RIKEN report similar results in the same issue of Nature.

Whether emblazoned on California's flag or described in myth, the bear stands as a potent symbol of courage and strength—a ferocious embodiment of the North American wilderness.

Archaeologists have identified the oldest surviving drinking straws. The long silver and gold tubes are over 5,000 years old and were likely used to drink beer from a communal vessel.