Новости за 28.02.2022

A new paper co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert who studies the intersection of labor unions and politics has found that political parties whose manifestos contained greater percentages of pro-worker ideas were more appealing to voters.

A divided US Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday in an environmental regulation case with potentially far-reaching implications for the Biden administration's fight against climate change.

Labeling of plastic products needs a drastic overhaul, including a new "sustainability scale" to help consumers, researchers say.

An Oregon State University (OSU) researcher is a lead author of an international report released today that explores the impact of climate change-driven human migration.

Researchers led by a team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced a major theoretical and experimental breakthrough that allows scientists to predict, with an unprecedented precision, when a soft material will crack and fail. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have immediate implications for the engineering and manufacture of a wide range of polymers. They also provide insights into how natural soft materials—such as the connective... Читать дальше...

Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have become the first to experimentally observe a quirky behavior of the quantum world: a "quantum boomerang" effect that occurs when particles in a disordered system are kicked out of their locations. Instead of landing elsewhere as one might expect, they turn around and come back to where they started and stop there.

The Australian wildfires in 2019 and 2020 were historic for how far and fast they spread, and for how long and powerfully they burned. All told, the devastating "Black Summer" fires blazed across more than 43 million acres of land, and extinguished or displaced nearly 3 billion animals. The fires also injected over 1 million tons of smoke particles into the atmosphere, reaching up to 35 kilometers above Earth's surface—a mass and reach comparable to that of an erupting volcano.

The South Asian monsoon, also known as Indian summer monsoon (ISM), is crucial for the food security and socioeconomic well-being of 40% of the world's population. From a historical perspective, fluctuations in monsoon rainfall have been linked to the rise and fall of civilizations in the Indian subcontinent. Now researchers are increasingly concerned that global warming may threaten the stability of the monsoon system, but accurate predictions have been hampered by the lack of long-term climate data in the Indian subcontinent.

With lush green jungles brimming with wildlife, Costa Rica has become a global tourism hotspot—and government leaders would like to keep it that way. They worked with researchers from the Stanford Natural Capital Project to understand how nature supports the country's most visited and valuable tourist destinations. The team found that tourists flock to areas where roads and hotels make it easy to access Costa Rica's famous wildlife, including charismatic mammals like howler monkeys and reptiles like crocodiles. Читать дальше...

For the first time, Northwestern University-led astronomers may have detected an afterglow from a kilonova.

Unchecked climate change has already changed Florida permanently and irreversibly—and the world has a limited window to stop it from getting worse, according to a new global report from the world's top scientists.

New research by the inventors of a promising pathogen-repellent wrap has confirmed that it sheds not only bacteria, as previously proven, but also viruses, boosting its potential usefulness for interrupting the transmission of infections.

A new analysis by Glenn Stone, professor of anthropology and of environmental studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, examines how digital technologies are beginning to make inroads into agriculture in lower-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers have created a nanofiber material that outperforms its widely used counterparts—including steel plates and Kevlar fabric—in protecting against high-speed projectile impacts.

Atheists in the United States are more likely to conceal their beliefs if they're women, Republicans, southerners or if they've previously been religious, according to new research from Rice University and West Virginia University.

PG&E Corp. spent nearly $4.9 billion last year to prevent wildfires—and still wound up responsible for the second-largest fire in California history.

Researchers have developed a new metasurface-based antenna that represents an important step toward making it practical to harvest energy from radio waves, such as the ones used in cell phone networks or Bluetooth connections. This technology could potentially provide wireless power to sensors, LEDs and other simple devices with low energy requirements.

Black ash wetlands cover approximately 1.2 million acres of wetland forest in the western Great Lakes. They are an ecologically significant part of Minnesota's landscapes and provide critical habitat for wildlife.

In a new study, Stanford researchers demonstrate how to manipulate atoms so they interact with an unprecedented degree of control. Using precisely delivered light and magnetic fields, the researchers programmed a straight line of atoms into treelike shapes, a twisted loop called a Möbius strip and other patterns.

A team from the University of Illinois has revamped the popular crop growth simulation software BioCro, making it a more user-friendly and efficient way to predict crop yield. The updated version, BioCro II, allows modelers to use the technology much more easily and includes faster and more accurate algorithms.

Tightening a string, e.g. when tuning a guitar, makes it vibrate faster. But when strings are nano-sized, increased tension also reduces, or 'dilutes', the loss of the string's vibrational modes.

A research group led by Prof. Liang Eryuan from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found that trees may benefit from an earlier start of the growing season in cold humid areas, but not in dry areas.

During icy Midwest winters, a Chicagoan's step onto the sidewalk is often met with a familiar crunch underfoot. But salt, used to keep roads safe for driving and sidewalks safe for walking, comes with an ecological price: It ends up in our water, and once it's there, it's almost impossible to remove. As levels of chlorides continue to rise in Lake Michigan and exceed state limits in Chicago-area waterways, municipalities across the region are grappling with the urgent need to reduce the use of road salt in winter.

Sulfur dioxide is the main source of air pollution and easily forms a haze deteriorating the air quality. Therefore, various studies on the reduction of sulfide emissions generated during fossil combustion have been performed. Among them, the semi-dry flue gas desulfurization technology in powder-particle spouted beds (PPSBs) is considered a reliable and effective desulfurization method.

Hydrogels have an astonishing ability to swell and take on water. In daily life, they are used in dressings, nappies, and more to lock moisture away. A team of researchers has now found another use: quickly extracting large amounts of freshwater from air using a specially developed hydrogel containing a hygroscopic salt. The study, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, shows that the salt enhances the moisture uptake of the gel, making it suitable for water harvesting in dry regions.