Новости за 26.05.2022

It seemed like a straightforward question to biology professor Paul Mensink: Are plastic bags that hold curbside recyclables better or worse for the environment than blue boxes?

In a finding that has important ramifications for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, RIKEN researchers have discovered how three chaperone molecules in yeast cells work together to break up beta-sheet-rich fibrillar protein aggregates known as amyloid fibrils.

The recent string of mass shootings has once again captured the attention of the American public. The tragic shootings in an elementary school in Texas, a grocery store in New York, a church in California and locally in the streets of downtown Sacramento have many people wondering what can be done to prevent such tragedies.

Reducing levels of the nutrient phosphorus to control harmful algal blooms in places like Lake Erie is actually advantageous to toxic cyanobacteria strains, which can lead to an increase in toxins in the water, according to a new modeling study.

You don't have to be an engineer to know that water and electronics don't mix. But if you want to use a sensing circuit to study small-scale features in a community of cells, the electronics must find a way to accommodate the cell's aqueous environment. The circuit also cannot affect the cells in a way that invalidates the data.

Driven by technological, societal and political change, renewable energy technologies are progressively replacing fossil fuels.

Nearly 22% of Republican legislators in the country have joined at least one far-right Facebook group, with Missouri ranking among the top five, a watchdog organization found in a study released this month.

In our solar system, there are several thousand examples of co-orbital objects: bodies that share the same orbit around the sun or a planet. The Trojan asteroids are such an example. We have not yet observed any similar co-orbitals in extrasolar systems, despite discovering more than 5,000 exoplanets. In a new study published in Icarus by Anthony Dobrovolskis, SETI Institute, and Jack Lissauer, NASA Ames Research Center, the authors theorize that some Trojan exoplanets form, but the ones that are... Читать дальше...

A theoretical breakthrough in understanding quantum chaos could open new paths into researching quantum information and quantum computing, many-body physics, black holes, and the still-elusive quantum to classical transition.

The federal suspension of prescribed burns pending a review of how recent fires lit during extreme drought escaped boundaries is reverberating in the West—and complicating Colorado efforts to revive ailing forests and reduce the severity of wildfires.

Tribes and environmental groups are challenging how the state manages water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a major source for much of California, arguing the deterioration of the aquatic ecosystem has links to the state's troubled legacy of racism and oppression of Native people.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed protections for some Bristol Bay drainages, a move that—if finalized—would effectively block attempts to develop an open pit mine to extract gold, copper, silver and molybdenum in a Southwest Alaska region that sustains the world's biggest sockeye salmon runs.

For the first time, an entirely new class of super-reactive chemical compounds has been discovered under atmospheric conditions. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, in close collaboration with international colleagues, have documented the formation of so-called trioxides—an extremely oxidizing chemical compound that likely affects both human health and our global climate.

Darwinian evolution is the process by which natural selection promotes genetic changes in traits that favor survival and reproduction of individuals. How fast evolution happens depends crucially on the abundance of its "fuel": how much genetic difference there is in the ability to survive and reproduce. New research by an international research team with participation of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) has now discovered that the raw material for evolution is much... Читать дальше...

In a new study published today in the journal Science, the team from Cardiff University has been able to pinpoint exactly how the tilting and wobbling of the Earth as it orbits around the Sun has influenced the melting of ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2 million years or so.

Tackling the climate crisis can only be achieved by "placing people at the heart of climate action," researchers say. The research team, led by the University of Exeter, warn against relying solely on breakthroughs in climate science and technology. Instead, they say social science can help engage people and societies, and ensure a green transition that is both effective and promotes other goals such as well-being, equity and fairness.

The brilliant blue of the Hope Diamond is caused by small impurities in its crystal structure. Similar diamond impurities are also giving hope to scientists looking to create materials that can be used for quantum computing and quantum sensing.

Aggrecan, a major component of proteoglycan (PG) having chondroitin sulfate (CS) in cartilaginous tissues, has become increasingly popular as an ingredient in health food. In fact, proteoglycans from salmon nasal cartilage demonstrate biological properties such as antiaging, inhibition of angiogenesis, and attenuation of inflammatory responses. Commercially available chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs) have only been prepared from salmon nasal cartilage. Although the head cartilage was found in other edible bony fishes... Читать дальше...

In the U.S., the direct monetary cost of incarcerating a single inmate averages $33,000 per year, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. But that number doesn't include collateral consequences, like financial strain on the offender's family, difficulty offenders have in finding employment after release and the increased likelihood they will offend again once released.

Recent intense heatwaves in India and widespread US droughts have highlighted the need for a global approach to tackling chronic water shortages.

Testicles of most mammals are cooled in the scrota, and elevated testicular temperatures lead to spermatogenesis failure and male infertility. A research team led by Shosei Yoshida at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Japan detailed this process using organ culture and revealed that spermatogenesis is impaired at multiple steps in a delicate temperature-dependent fashion.

A team of researchers from the U.K. and the U.S. has found that in addition to human garbage, the North Pacific "garbage patch" also has an abundance of neuston organisms. In their paper posted on the bioRxiv site, the group describes their study of material in the patch of sea and what sorts of creatures they found living in it.

A large team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in the U.S., Spain, France and Finland has found that frequent dust devils and daytime upslope winds are the reason for Mars's constant atmospheric haze. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their study of data from the first 216 sols of Perseverance rover's trek across the surface of parts of the red planet and what they learned from it.

Astronomers from the University of Arizona (UA) and elsewhere report the discovery of a new ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. The newfound galaxy, designated Tucana B, is the first quenched and isolated object of this type identified in the extreme outskirts of the Local Group. The finding is reported in a paper published May 18 on the arXiv pre-print server.