Новости за 14.02.2022

Several dozen small impact craters, 10-70-m in size, have been discovered in southeastern Wyoming. A team of U.S. and German geoscientists found these ancient craters in exposed sedimentary layers from the Permian period (280 million years ago). After discovering the first craters, the team initially suspected that they are a crater-strewn field, formed by the breakup of an asteroid that entered the atmosphere. However, with the discovery of more and more craters over a wide area, this interpretation was ruled out.

El Salvador, like other Central American countries, has suffered repression and human rights violations ever since colonial times. Indeed, social injustice in the country persisted and was a major trigger of the 1980-1992 armed conflict.

As ice sheets began melting at the end of the last ice age, a series of cataclysmic floods called the Missoula megafloods scoured the landscape of eastern Washington, carving long, deep channels and towering cliffs through an area now known as the Channeled Scablands. They were among the largest known floods in Earth's history, and geologists struggling to reconstruct them have now identified a crucial factor governing their flows.

For female common yellowthroats, beauty isn't just skin—or features—deep. New research provides evidence that large or showy physical features of males attract females because they signal high-quality male genes, such as those linked with robust immunity or stress resistance.

Restoration efforts for kelp forests may be most effective in areas where the bedrock seafloor is highly contoured, research by Oregon State University suggests.

As debates have raged on throughout the COVID-19 pandemic—from lockdowns, to mask mandates, to vaccinations—experts have sought to pinpoint the origins of the virus. Most research has centered on Wuhan, China, where the first cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed. Evidence suggests the virus passed from animals to humans at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, a live animal and seafood market that is home to commonly eaten seafood and livestock—but also exotic animals and protected species from around the world.

At the interface between two media, light is partly reflected backwards into the medium from where it came and partly transmitted into the neighboring medium, like a light ray entering a sparkling pool of water. The light wave patterns that arise from these processes can be usefully tailored using photonic metamaterials, which offer emergent electromagnetic responses that differ fundamentally from those of natural materials.

Fisheries managers and researchers may now predict how early fish will spawn in response to warming waters due to climate change, both in the oceans and in freshwaters.

With the early assessment of sustainable, newly developed chemicals and products it is possible to assess a potential risk of toxic substances being released at a later point in product cascades. This has been revealed in a proof-of-concept study jointly coordinated by Goethe University Frankfurt and RWTH Aachen University. In the course of the study the toxicity of sustainable biosurfactants, potentially applied in, e.g., bio-shampoos, and of a new technology for the economical deployment of plant... Читать дальше...

Lactic acid bacteria are essential in creating fermented foods like yogurt, cheese and sauerkraut. Certain strains are also used as probiotics to improve human gut health.

In a study published in the journal Nature, University of South Florida researcher Amelia Shevenell and her colleagues documented the evolution of Antarctica's ice sheets some 20 million years ago. The research is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

A key technical challenge in creating new sulfur-based medicines has been overcome by scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), leading to the prospect of many new therapeutic 'weapons' in the fight against disease and illness.

In a new Nature Astronomy study, an international team led by astrophysicists from the University of California, Irvine and Pomona College report how, when tiny galaxies collide with bigger ones, the bigger galaxies can strip the smaller galaxies of their dark matter—matter that we can't see directly, but which astrophysicists think must exist because, without its gravitational effects, they couldn't explain things like the motions of a galaxy's stars.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed and demonstrated a new technique for controlling directed evolution in bacteria. The technique can be used to better engineer microorganisms for use in biopharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing.

Six mummified children thought to have been sacrificed hundreds of years ago, apparently to accompany a dead nobleman to the afterlife, have been unearthed in a tomb near Lima, archaeologists reported.

While many studies have hinted at the existence of dark matter, a material that does not absorb, reflect or emit light, this elusive substance has not been directly observed so far. Over the past few decades, many teams worldwide have thus theorized about its possible properties and composition in the hope to identify possible strategies for detecting it in the universe.

A group of 60 scientists called for a moratorium on solar geoengineering last month, including technologies such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This involves a fleet of airplanes releasing aerosol particles—which reflect sunlight back to outer space—into the atmosphere, cooling down the Earth.

At the conclusion of COP26 in November, summit chairman Alok Sharma praised the "heroic efforts" by nations showing they can rise above their differences and unite to tackle climate change, an outcome he said "the world had come to doubt."

A global analysis has found that kids whose schools closed to stop the spread of various waves of the coronavirus lost educational progress and are at increased risk of dropping out of school. As a result, the study says, they will earn less money from work over their lifetimes than they would have if schools had remained open.

An international team of astronomers has performed spectroscopic observations of a nearby Type I superluminous supernova known as SN 2018bsz. The observational campaign sheds more light on the properties of this supernova, suggesting that it showcases aspherical circumstellar material. Results of the study were presented in a paper published February 3 on arXiv.org.

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Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have used computer simulations to model how a composite material reacts to loading. They studied a particle model of a pillar of stiffer material in a soft matrix, finding a concentration of force around the pillar with a broadness that differed from theory. The team found this was due to subtle changes in density near the pillar, a new principle to be considered in composite material design.

A scientific team from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HUB) and the Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (Leibniz-FMP) discovered a previously unknown localisation of the porcine sperm protein AWN, strengthening the assumption that this protein is involved in sperm-egg fusion. The new findings are important for assisted reproduction. The results were published in the journal Biology of Reproduction.

ETH physicists have modified one of the major schemes for quantum error correction and put it into practice, demonstrating that they can substantially prolong the lifetime of quantum states—a crucial ingredient for future large-scale quantum computers.

A team of German astronomers, led by Professor Klaus Werner of the University of Tübingen, have discovered a strange new type of star covered in the by-product of helium burning. It is possible that the stars might have been formed by a rare stellar merger event. The results are published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.