Новости за 08.02.2022

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, media reports warned of skyrocketing domestic violence.

A public earthquake early warning system in Greece and Italy could give people vital seconds' notice of a major earthquake, according to a new study led by UNiversity college London (UCL) researchers.

Many agronomic weeds are developing resistance to available herbicides, making them harder and harder to kill. With few effective chemicals left and no new herbicide classes on the horizon, farmers are going back to older products that still offer the promise of crop protection.

In the time of COVID-19, when intimate relationships have been strained and human connections fleeting, singles are kissing hookups goodbye in favor of settling down—and getting vaccinated at a higher rate to make it happen.

Environmental organisation Sea Shepherd on Tuesday filed a legal complaint against the owners of a large fishing vessel after tens of thousands of dead fish were spotted off France's Atlantic coast.

Being stressed about doing well on a test might not be limited to humans, according to a new study led by researchers at Georgia State University.

New research from the University of Georgia has shown, for the first time, that compounds used to fight fungal diseases in plants are causing resistance to antifungal medications used to treat people.

Could a laser send a spacecraft to Mars? That's a proposed mission from a group at McGill University, designed to meet a solicitation from NASA. The laser, a 10-meter wide array on Earth, would heat hydrogen plasma in a chamber behind the spacecraft, producing thrust from hydrogen gas and sending it to Mars in only 45 days. There, it would aerobrake in Mars' atmosphere, shuttling supplies to human colonists or, someday perhaps, even humans themselves.

For many years, researchers at Uppsala University have been exploring the genetic origins of the Scandinavian gray wolf population, which was founded by only three immigrating wolves. In their new study the scientists show that, after five generations of inbreeding, between 10 and 25 percent of the original genetic variation has been eliminated.

Astronomers from Italy and Spain have observed a binary system known as HD 189733, using ESA's XMM-Newton satellite. Results of the observational campaign, published January 28 on arXiv.org, deliver essential information regarding the peculiar X-ray variability of this binary.

Transistors based on semiconductor materials are widely used electronic components with many remarkable properties. For instance, they have a nonreciprocal electrical response, which means that they can isolate two parts of a circuit in such a way that one of the parts (the input section) can influence the other part (the output section), but not the other way around. In addition, transistors can amplify voltage signals, and thereby can supply energy to a system. Non-energy conserving interactions... Читать дальше...

Scientists have uncovered the source of a mysterious 2021 tsunami that sent waves around the globe.

In the world of fundamental particles, you are either a fermion or a boson but a new study from the University of Cambridge shows, for the first time, that one can behave as the other as they move from one place to another.

A team of researchers from the University of California, Baylor University and Sonoma State University, has found that male northern elephant seals are willing to risk their lives to eat more so that they will have a greater chance of mating. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes how they attached tracking devices to elephant seals over a nine-year period and what they learned from the data they obtained.

World leaders, scientists and major companies gather in France this week to boost efforts to protect the oceans, which cover 70 percent of the planet but receive far less attention than land ecosystems.

Thousands of migratory birds have failed to make their annual visit to Albania's western coast this winter, experts say, pointing to climate change, overfishing and urbanisation as likely factors.

Optical evanescent microsensors have attracted considerable research interests since they can detect unlabelled molecules and monitor their interactions in real time and in situ with ultrahigh sensitivity, fast response, and miniature footprint. However, these sensors utilize the weak tail of evanescence field rather than the peak of the electromagnetic field on the sensing surface, limiting their sensitivities. Very recently, scientists from Professor Xiao Yun-Feng's group at Peking University, collaborating with Dr. Читать дальше...

Deforestation fires in Brazil and Indonesia accounted for 3 percent and 7 percent, respectively, of the planet's total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in 2019 and 2020, finds a new study in Frontiers in Climate. Of that amount, fires in peatlands contributed to between 40 percent and 60 percent of the GHG emission impact, showing a severe underrepresentation by previous estimations. The researchers urge better forest and peatland protection policies.

As part of HS2's archaeology program, archaeologists have excavated a Roman town in Fleet Marston, near Aylesbury, discovering more about what life was like in Roman Britain, two thousand years ago. Archaeologists from COPA JV, working on behalf of HS2's Enabling Works Contractor Fusion JV, excavated at the site for over a year, uncovering parts of the town sitting along a major Roman road.

For the first time, researchers have found a cost-effective and convenient way to apply a silver-based antimicrobial clear coating to new or existing textiles. Their method uses polyphenols, commonly found in food items notorious for staining clothes such as wine and chocolate. A range of textile types can be treated by the researchers' method, and items can be washed multiple times without losing the antimicrobial and therefore anti-odor property.

There are many ways in which the genetic material DNA can be damaged, resulting in the development of diseases such as cancer. Certain forms of DNA damage are associated with so-called R-loops. These are three-stranded structures consisting of two DNA strands and one RNA strand, whereby one of the DNA strands forms the loop. The level of R-loops needs to be strictly regulated to avoid genomic instability and consequent damage. Researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz have... Читать дальше...

A study recently published in Current Biology described the impact of ancient migrations on some complex traits (physiology and appearance) of contemporary Europeans. The study was led by Dr. Davide Marnetto from the Institute of Genomics of the University of Tartu, Estonia and University of Turin, Italy and Prof. Luca Pagani from the University of Padova, Italy.

By systematically analyzing epigenetic changes in angiogenesis-stimulated vascular endothelial cells, Professor Takashi Minami (Kumamoto University, Japan) and his team have found a unique epigenetic modification (bivalent histone-mark switch) specific to critical transcription factors that induce genes essential for angiogenesis and revealed that the histone modifiers responsible for this modification are vital for postnatal angiogenesis.

Phosphorus is one of the most important nutrients for plants. Among other functions, it is needed to create substances for the plant's immune system, for the healthy development of seeds and for root growth. A team of researchers led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong have now demonstrated how a root symbiosis with fungi is driven at the molecular level by the plant's phosphate status.

It has long been known that Mars once had oceans due in part to a protective magnetic field similar to Earth's. However, the magnetic field disappeared and new research may finally be able to explain why. Researchers recreated conditions expected in the core of Mars billions of years ago and found that the behavior of the molten metal thought to be present likely gave rise to a brief magnetic field that was destined to fade away.