Новости за 08.06.2022

With Canada getting closer to moving all its spent nuclear fuel to a single facility, and encasing each fuel container in bentonite clay, researchers are studying whether that clay could support microbial life—which could eat away at the metal containers.

New research by Australia's national science agency, CSIRO, shows Australian coastal plastic pollution has decreased by 29 percent, the surprise discovery revealed as part of a broader project assessing waste reduction efforts.

Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable aspect of operating any spacecraft, which routinely sustain many impacts over the course of long and productive science missions in space. Between May 23 and 25, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope sustained an impact to one of its primary mirror segments. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data.

A team of Brown University researchers has developed a new responsive material that is able to release encapsulated cargo only when pathogenic bacteria are present. The material could be used to make wound dressings that respond quickly to burgeoning infections, but only deliver medication on demand.

Every day, plants around the world perform an invisible miracle. They take carbon dioxide from the air and, with the help of sunlight, turn it into countless chemicals essential to both plants and humans.

Using radio transmitters, scientists have gained new insights into the behavior of medium ground finches in the Galapagos Islands. A study led by McGill University researchers reveals daily movement patterns covering an area equivalent to the size of 30 soccer fields.

A new study, published in Biological Conservation, finds that two conservation strategies provide complementary benefits to native birds found in coffee-growing regions. Setting aside forest conserves more forest specialists and breeding birds, while growing coffee under a shade tree canopy protects more generalists and non-breeding birds.

As electronic, thermoelectric and computer technologies have been miniaturized to nanometer scale, engineers have faced a challenge studying fundamental properties of the materials involved; in many cases, targets are too small to be observed with optical instruments.

An international research team has for the first time combined data from heavy-ion experiments, gravitational wave measurements and other astronomical observations using advanced theoretical modeling to more precisely constrain the properties of nuclear matter as it can be found in the interior of neutron stars. The results were published in the journal Nature.

In a joint experimental-theoretical study published in Nature, physicists at the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK), together with collaborators from RIKEN, Japan, investigated the magnetic properties of the isotope helium-3. For the first time, the electronic and nuclear g-factors of the 3He+ ion were measured directly with a relative precision of 10–10. The electron-nucleus magnetic interaction (zero-field hyperfine splitting) was measured with an accuracy improved by two orders of magnitude. Читать дальше...

In Sweden, a study that sent fictitious applications in response to real housing ads has found that male applicants with foreign-sounding names received fewer callbacks than male applicants with a name that signals Swedish ethnicity. Hemrin Molla and colleagues at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on June 8, 2022.

As U.S. cities rethink the role of law enforcement in nonviolent 911 emergencies, new Stanford research uncovers the strongest evidence yet that dispatching mental health professionals instead of police officers in some instances can have significant benefits.

Research led by the University of Southampton has revealed that an abrupt change in climate conditions in the North Atlantic around 800 years ago played a role in a decline in Atlantic salmon populations returning to rivers. Subsequent human exploitation of salmon combined to reduce their populations still further.

SEPALLATA (SEP) genes are the plant-specific MIKC-type MADS-box genes, belonging to the class E genes in the ABCE model of flower organ development.

Are school choice programs contributing to segregation in American schools?

Girls in high school enjoy playing sports to develop friendships, strength and for the competition but are more likely to stop playing two years earlier than boys, a Flinders University analysis has found.

Freezing rain is a typical weather disaster in winter and early spring over many regions of the world, even tropical areas. It develops as supercooled water (below 0 °C) in the air and freezes immediately after depositing on cold surfaces. In southern China, freezing rain mainly happens in the mountainous areas.

Rutgers researchers have discovered that nitrogen-fixing bacteria hidden within leaf cells could lead to more efficient and sustainable methods of crop cultivation.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have uncovered critical new details about fusion facilities that use lasers to compress the fuel that produces fusion energy. The new data could help lead to the improved design of future laser facilities that harness the fusion process that drives the sun and stars.

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have produced a porous and stable material in which the cavities can be used to store various substances. The material can be used both in the pharmaceutical industry and for filtration at the molecular level.

Solar flares are among the most violent explosions in our solar system, but despite their immense energy—equivalent to a hundred billion atomic bombs detonating at once—physicists still haven't been able to answer exactly how these sudden eruptions on the sun are able to launch particles to Earth, nearly 93 million miles away, in under an hour.

A recent experiment detailed in the journal Nature is challenging our picture of how electrons behave in quantum materials. Using stacked layers of a material called tungsten ditelluride, researchers have observed electrons in two-dimensions behaving as if they were in a single dimension—and in the process have created what the researchers assert is a new electronic state of matter.

Using state of the art sensor technologies, experts at the University of Nottingham have found that calves reared on farms not only vary significantly in their movement and space patterns, but also that some calves are more predictable in their behavior compared to others.

A new dataset featuring hundreds of satellite images of whales has been published to support the development of artificial intelligence systems which will aid crucial conservation work.

Being odd can be a good thing, particularly when you are a microscopic cellular organism trying to go places.