Новости за 09.02.2022

Life has two choices: Survive or go extinct. And surviving isn't easy. Scientists often debate why species become specialized or generalized in regard to their diet. Specialist species may be better able to procure food by hunting prey or selecting leaves. However, being a generalist allows animals to adapt to how much food is available. Both paths have tradeoffs. Generalists are essentially "jacks of all trades and masters of none," while specialists are masters of their specific trade.

Researchers at UC Davis have discovered a signaling mechanism that allows bacteria like Salmonella to evade destruction by the host's immune system.

A long-term study in the Southern Ocean reveals a clear correlation between warming waters, decreased sea ice, and reduced abundance of Antarctic silverfish. These small, abundant fish are important prey for penguins, seals, and other regional marine life, in a role similar to that played by anchovies or sardines in more temperate waters.

The Velcro-like cellular proteins that hold cells and tissues together also perform critical functions when they experience increased tension. A new University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign study observed that when tugged upon in a controlled manner, these proteins—called cadherins—communicate with growth factors to influence in vitro tumor growth in human carcinoma cells.

A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science has found concrete evidence that more than 85 percent of the grouper and snapper studied are overfished as a direct result of increasing human demand for seafood.

Researchers studying giant Amazonian waterlilies grown at the University of Oxford's Botanic Garden have unraveled the engineering enigma behind the largest floating leaves in nature.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space.

A computational analysis of more than 1 million Tweets from Swedish speakers has found little evidence for significant polarization within this network on the topic of immigration—even after Sweden's 2015 refugee crisis. Elizaveta Kopacheva and Victoria Yantseva of Linnaeus University, Sweden, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 9, 2022.

Surveys conducted in Germany suggest that public trust in science rose after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, while revealing different patterns of trust among different subpopulations. Rainer Bromme of the University of Münster, Germany, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 9, 2022.

Rare earth elements are hard to get and hard to recycle, but a flash of intuition led Rice University scientists toward a possible solution.

Researchers have developed a novel strategy for using Facebook data to measure cultural similarity between countries, revealing associations between immigration patterns and people's food and drink interests. Carolina Vieira of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on February 9, 2022.

Converting carbon dioxide (CO2) and ethane—an underutilized component of natural gas—into things we need would be a great way to put a potent greenhouse gas and an unused reservoir of hydrocarbons to work. But driving such reactions specifically toward one desired product or another can be a challenge. Discovering the underlying principles that determine the behavior of catalysts—the chemical "deal makers" that bring reactants together—could provide the key to more selective reactions.

Tae Seok Moon, associate professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has taken a big step forward in his quest to design a modular, genetically engineered kill switch that integrates into any genetically engineered microbe, causing it to self-destruct under certain defined conditions.

ETH Zurich researchers have created artificial colors by 3D printing certain nanostructures inspired by those of a butterfly. This principle can be used in the future to produce color screens.

Employees or managers who view themselves as professional are more vulnerable to unethical behavior such as conflicts of interest, a new Cornell study finds.

A team of researchers affiliated with several universities in Germany has developed a novel way to store energy captured from the sun for use in conversion to hydrogen fuel. In their paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry, the group describes how they produced a molecule capable of holding energy captured from the sun that could then be used later to produce hydrogen fuel.

Researchers in Lund have discovered an antitoxin mechanism that seems to be able to neutralize hundreds of different toxins and may protect bacteria against virus attacks. The mechanism has been named Panacea, after the Greek goddess of medicine whose name has become synonymous with universal cure. The understanding of bacterial toxin and antitoxin mechanisms will be crucial for the future success of so-called phage therapy for the treatment of antibiotic resistance infections, the researchers say. Читать дальше...

Earth's core, the deepest part of our planet, is characterized by extremely high pressure and temperature. It is composed of a liquid outer core and solid inner core.

The kagome pattern, a network of corner-sharing triangles, is well known amongst traditional Japanese basket weavers—and condensed matter physicists. The unusual geometry of metal atoms in the kagome lattice and resulting electron behavior makes it a playground for probing weird and wonderful quantum phenomena that form the basis of next-generation device research.

Metals usually soften when they expand under heating, but a research team led by a City University of Hong Kong (CityU) scholar and other researchers have discovered a first-of-its-kind super-elastic alloy that can retain its stiffness even after being heated to 1,000 K (726.85 degrees Celsius) or above, with nearly zero energy dissipation. The team believes that the alloy can be applied in manufacturing high-precision devices for space missions.

Hydrogen is considered a vital component of the energy transition: it can be produced from solar or wind power and therefore stores green energy in the form of an environmentally friendly energy carrier, providing energy at night and during periods of calm winds. Hydrogen also acts as a climate-neutral fuel for fuel-cell cars and trucks, enabling greater ranges than battery-powered vehicles. Common pressure gas tanks for hydrogen vehicles, however, are still too bulky and their cylindrical shape is difficult to accomodate. Читать дальше...

Scientists from the Natural History Museum, London (United Kingdom), and the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, Grenoble (France), have found that some pollen has survived mass extinctions thanks, in part, to its nanofoam wall structure. This may explain why the survival of certain plants. It is the first time scientists have described a biological nanofoam structure. Their results are published in Science Advances.

In a recent study from Lund University in Sweden, researchers discovered that metabolic changes affect how blood cells are formed during embryonic development. They found a previously unknown metabolic switch with a key role in how different types of blood cells develop. This means blood cell formation can be directed towards producing natural killer cells in the laboratory to ultimately be used in a new anti-cancer treatment.

Since the discovery of CRISPR/Cas9, also known as molecular scissors, scientists around the world have been working to improve the revolutionary technique for altering DNA that earned Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna the Nobel Prize in 2020. The method enables deep exploration of the human genome and shows enormous potential for curing genetic diseases. While the precise alterations made by CRISPR/Cas9 were initially less predictable, scientists around the world are now working on further... Читать дальше...

Smartwatches, fitness trackers and other Internet of Things devices could get a significant boost to their battery life thanks to new, environmentally friendly energy research from the University of Surrey's Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) and the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil.