Новости за 01.06.2022

A new study shows how small seabirds have mastered the art of working smarter, not harder, when soaring at sea.

NASA on Wednesday announced it has awarded contracts to two companies to develop the next generation of spacesuits for missions to the International Space Station and the Moon.

The appendages that protrude from a mosquito's head hold the sensory systems that account for nearly all of its ability to detect and respond to a wide range of chemical signals that are critical for its reproduction and its survival. At the molecular level, these systems rely on genes that make up three families of chemosensory receptors. These genes include gustatory (taste) receptors, ionotropic receptors and odorant receptors that collectively facilitate a wide range of essential behaviors.

A disease in elk that causes deformed hooves and eventually leads to lameness and death is also associated with abnormal, asymmetrical antlers, a Washington State University-led study of hunter reports has found.

Not long ago, the idea of photographing a black hole was as quixotic as photographing a unicorn. Now, scientists have not one but two images of two different supermassive black holes—and they both look as magical as flaming doughnuts.

In between Earth's rigid tectonic plates above and its convecting mantle below is a hot and soft layer known as the asthenosphere. At mid-ocean ridges, upwelling of the hot asthenosphere to the surface of the seafloor forms new ocean crust.

Solar energy is a popular candidate for a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. A solar cell, or photovoltaic (PV) cell, converts sunlight directly into electricity. However, the conversion efficiency has not been enough to enable widespread applications of solar cells.

Disbanding city police departments and shifting law enforcement responsibilities to county governments appears to have no effect on overall crime rates and leads to fewer police-related deaths, according to new Rice University research. But the same study indicates those communities may be less likely to report their crime statistics to the FBI.

Increasing sustainable use of the world's forests would support economic recovery while providing environmentally friendly wood construction materials, according to a United Nations report co-authored by an Oregon State University researcher.

In collaboration with the group of Professor Mordechai Segev (Technion, Israel Institute of Technology), physicists from the group of Professor Alexander Szameit (University of Rostock) have demonstrated a novel type of mechanism that can prevent light waves from spreading freely. So far, the underlying physical effect had been considered far too weak to fully arrest wave expansion. In their recent experiments, the physicists observed that such light localization is nevertheless possible, demonstrating... Читать дальше...

A cave in southern Spain was used by ancient humans as a canvas for artwork and as a burial place for over 50,000 years, according to a study published June 1, 2022, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by José Ramos-Muñoz of the University of Cadiz, Spain, and colleagues.

A lava lake in a crater of Kīlauea spent ten years sloshing and churning before the volcano gave a bigger belch.

Molecular machines that kill infectious bacteria have been taught to see their mission in a new light.

Usually, increasing agricultural productivity depends on adding something, such as fertilizer or water. A new Stanford University-led study reveals that removing one thing in particular—a common air pollutant—could lead to dramatic gains in crop yields. The analysis, published June 1 in Science Advances, uses satellite images to reveal for the first time how nitrogen oxides—gases found in car exhaust and industrial emissions—affect crop productivity. Its findings have important implications for increasing... Читать дальше...

A team of botanists from Guinea and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK have sounded the death knell for a plant in the Saxicolella genus that is endemic to a single location in Guinea. The sad discovery was made by Kew botanist Dr. Martin Cheek who investigated the plant's last-known co-ordinates using Google Earth satellite scans, following a taxonomic review of the Saxicolella genus published this week in the scientific journal Kew Bulletin.

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope will release its first full-color images and spectroscopic data on 12 July 2022.

Deep in the forests of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in India lives a colorful gecko species that only now revealed its true identity. Meet Eublepharis pictus, also known as the Painted Leopard Gecko.

Copper fungicides have been widely used due to their wide sterilization spectrum, low cost and low drug resistance.

Proteins are like machines. For some diseases, it can be useful to turn these machine off or on when they are too active or not active enough. One way to control switching in a protein, such as a nuclear receptor, is to put a drug "in the pocket" of the drug. For her Ph.D. research, Iris van de Gevel looked at controlling two receptors: RORγt, a receptor that is overactive in autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, and PPARγ, a receptor that plays an important role in type 2 diabetes.

Clouds have a significant impact on Earth's energy budget. Cloud cover fluctuations can influence temperature, the water cycle, and incoming solar radiation.

Imagine we could do what green plants can do: photosynthesis. Then we could satisfy our enormous energy needs with deep-green hydrogen and climate-neutral biodiesel. Scientists have been working on this for decades. Chemist Chengyu Liu will receive his doctorate on 8 June for yet another step that brings artificial photosynthesis closer. He expects it to be commonplace in fifty years.

In conventional wisdom, producing a curved space requires distortions, such as bending or stretching a flat space. A team of researchers at Purdue University have discovered a new method to create curved spaces that also solves a mystery in physics. Without any physical distortions of physical systems, the team has designed a scheme using non-Hermiticity, which exists in any systems coupled to environments, to create a hyperbolic surface and a variety of other prototypical curved spaces.

An ancient bout of global warming 56 million years ago that acidified oceans and wiped-out marine life had a milder effect in the Gulf of Mexico, where life was sheltered by the basin's unique geology—according to research by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

Life as a part-time retail worker can be tough.

The global scientific community has issued another warning that increasing climate change and biodiversity loss will together reinforce negative impacts on people around the world, including food insecurity, health risks and disrupted livelihoods, as well as involuntary displacements leading to social unrest. The latest assessment reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warn that... Читать дальше...