Новости за 03.03.2022

You are probably familiar with the term that some people carry "a lot of extra baggage." Usually that term refers to that person's emotional history, but in genetics and our genomes, "extra baggage" can also describe the transposons lurking in our genomes, a historical record of our genomes surviving traumatic invasions during evolution. Transposons are repetitive DNA sequences that have the capability to move (transpose) from one location to another in the genome (an organism's complete set of genetic... Читать дальше...

A review of 22 large cities' climate adaptation plans finds that while most include meaningful actions to promote public health, fewer cities have involved their public health agencies in these plans. Mary Sheehan of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, and colleagues present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Climate on March 3.

Swarms of jellies have been seen more frequently in Puget Sound over the past several decades, and some biologists speculate these fast-growing jellyfish will do especially well in the warmer oceans of the future.

As the floodwaters rose in Southeast Queensland last week, my phone buzzed with texts from friends. We compared this event with the last catastrophic flood of 2011 and tried to calculate whether our homes would be affected this time. I live in Ipswich, not far from the now-flooded Bremer River.

Researchers at UCLA Health have found that Housing First, a national program to provide housing and support for homeless persons, was effective in helping homeless veterans access housing and remain in their homes five years after it was implemented.

Varvara, a 66-year-old retired factory worker in Kazan, Russia, keeps faith in her homeland despite a life of suffering and loss. "It was a tough time," she said. "The one thing that makes me happy is that we got through it and now I still have the hope that Russia will always be there."

Academic breaks after high school—even those lasting just a few months—can cause some students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to forgo enrolling in college altogether, according to new Cornell University research.

The traditional 9-to-5 work week has been replaced in many cases by hybrid hours tailored to individual needs.

The pandemic disrupted the daily operations of schools across the country, but is not responsible for teachers leaving the classroom—so far, at least—according to a Texas A&M University expert on teacher success and retention.

Climate change isn't a problem for the future. It's here, and California isn't remotely prepared to deal with the consequences.

Young harp seals diving for the first time can adapt their behavior depending on local environmental conditions, according to new research at the University of St Andrews.

Plans to allocate water from the Northern Territory's (NT) Daly River to cotton plantations could be based on overly optimistic expectations about streamflow, a new study of tree rings in the area has found.

Florida's emerging rental crisis is playing out in three major markets, with rents well above where they should be and sharp increases occurring just in the past year, according to a new study.

People are having children later than ever before. The average age of new parents in the United States has been rising for at least the past half century.

An ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS) designed and built by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) is the first scientific instrument to be delivered for integration onto NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft. Scheduled to launch in 2024 and arrive in the Jovian system by 2030, Europa Clipper will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter's moon Europa and investigate whether it could harbor conditions suitable for life.

While the large proportion of our genome that does not instruct our cells to form proteins has been harder to study than protein-coding genes, it has been shown to have vital physiological functions. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now developed new high-precision tools able to identify what these noncoding sequences do. The study, which is published in the journal Nature Genetics, may eventually contribute to the development of new, targeted drugs.

Antarctic waters have conditions in which objects and living creatures can freeze even under water. This is a major problem for marine travel in polar regions. So-called supercooled water has a temperature just below the freezing point. Due to the high salt content, water in Antarctica has a freezing point of about -1.9 °C, but is about 0.05 °C colder. The smallest disturbances such as grains of sand or surfaces can cause this supercooled water to freeze—with sometimes fatal consequences for creatures that cannot survive frozen.

A new calf was born to J pod of the southern resident orcas, Center for Whale Research director Ken Balcomb confirmed Tuesday morning.

When it comes to recording and stimulating brain activity, scientists can rely on a formidable tool: light. An international research team, coordinated by IIT- Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology), has developed nanometric light modulators that, fabricated on a micrometric optical fiber, make the fiber capable of studying neuronal tissue in deep regions of the brain. The new approach, published in Advanced Optical Materials and featured on the journal's front cover, lays... Читать дальше...

Those who have tried to pry a mussel from anything from wood to rock know how stubborn the underwater mollusks are—and their gluey secret has long captivated scientists. For years, researchers have attempted to replicate the extraordinary adhesive and its properties in the lab, targeting some of the eight proteins that mussels secrete and use to coat an organ called a foot that mussels use to attach to surfaces.

More than 20 years after the first release of the human genome, scientists at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, have for the first time deciphered the highly complex genome of the potato. Their impressive technical feat, published in Nature Genetics, will accelerate efforts to breed superior varieties.

Ambatovy mine, a major contributor to Madagascar's economy and a company which positioned itself as a leader in sustainable mining, is on track to deliver 'No Net Loss' of the unique forest habitat destroyed by the mine.

In a recent study, the research group at the University of Cologne's Institute of Organic Chemistry led by Professor Dr. Stephanie Kath-Schorr describes a novel method for the enzymatic production of synthetic messenger RNA (mRNA). While natural base modifications of mRNA are already being used—for example by BioNTech/Pfizer for the production of their coronavirus vaccine—this newly developed mRNA additionally contains site-specifically introduced, non-natural nucleotides. Nucleotides are molecules... Читать дальше...

On Feb. 4, 2022, SpaceX launched 49 satellites as part of Elon Musk's Starlink internet project, most of which burned up in the atmosphere days later. The cause of this more than US$50 million failure was a geomagnetic storm caused by the sun.

Researchers have overlooked especially minuscule gene fragments that are critical to the assembly of cellular machinery and could help better trace the evolutionary history of plants, says a new study led by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.