Новости за 27.06.2022

In many Missouri backyards, a carpet of small purple or white violets is a sure sign of spring.

Even with plenty of fish in the sea, sea dragons stand out from the crowd.

The endangered southern resident killer whale population isn't getting enough to eat, and hasn't been since 2018, a new University of British Columbia (UBC) study has determined.

Though it's early in the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, the number of storms is tracking behind the frenetic pace of 2021 and 2020.

What is the common thread among mRNA vaccines, genomic drugs, NASA's mission to the moon and the harnessing of nuclear power? They all have been products of science convergence, where knowledge from multiple scientific disciplines is integrated into new overarching knowledge that propels modern civilization. In the last 70 years, convergence has achieved more than what science achieved in all its previous multi-millennial history combined.

At a Toronto Port Lands construction site on the city's waterfront, keen-eyed workers recently spotted plants that had sprouted from soil recently exposed by the removal of tons of earth. The plants were hard stem bulrush and cattails, which are commonly found in freshwater marshes.

In a 600-gallon tank overlooking Port Everglades, small pieces of brain coral and massive star coral grow serenely below the surface of the water. Although some of these pieces are the size of a quarter, all 2,376 fragments at this nursery could make a difference.

One of the James Webb Space Telescope's four primary scientific instruments, known as the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph instrument (NIRISS) has concluded its post-launch preparations and is now ready for science.

The earth doesn't give up its secrets easily—not even in the "Cradle of Humankind" in South Africa, where a wealth of fossils relating to human evolution have been found.

As climate change alters environments across the globe, scientists have discovered that in response, many species are shifting the timing of major life events, such as reproduction. With an earlier spring thaw, for example, some flowers bloom sooner. But scientists don't know whether making these significant changes in life history will ultimately help a species survive or lead to bigger problems.

Understanding how birds respond to climate change is a critical area of research that Elizabeth Derryberry, associate professor in the UT Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and her colleagues are racing to understand, including the increased prevalence and intensity of heat waves. In a new study published online in Molecular Ecology, the researchers examined how heat impacts the behavior and physiology of Zebra finches.

A new study by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) in collaboration with experts from the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), published in the journal Nature, has revealed the existence of a new family of marine bacteria whose genetic capacity, through the immense number of biosynthetic gene clusters in their genomes (BGCs), could lead to numerous biotechnological applications.

Whether or not a solid can emit light, for instance as a light-emitting diode (LED), depends on the energy levels of the electrons in its crystalline lattice. An international team of researchers led by University of Oldenburg physicists Dr. Hangyong Shan and Prof. Dr. Christian Schneider has succeeded in manipulating the energy-levels in an ultra-thin sample of the semiconductor tungsten diselenide in such a way that this material, which normally has a low luminescence yield, began to glow. The... Читать дальше...

Scientists from the Ural Federal University and the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have created new fluorescent chemical compounds (fluorophores) for photodynamic therapy of cancerous tumors, the latest method of treating cancer. The compound is suitable simultaneously for the diagnosis of tumor processes by staining the affected tissues and their further treatment by destroying tumor cells without harm to healthy ones. The results of the primary studies were published in the Dyes and Pigments journal.

When the COVID pandemic broke out and Italy experienced a strict lockdown, news stories started reporting anecdotal evidence about women forced to live under the same roof with abusive partners. However, scholars such as Selin Koksal, a Ph.D. Candidate in Public Policy at Bocconi University in Milan specializing in population and gender, lacked reliable data sources to track the phenomenon.

The COVID-19 pandemic has driven the digital transformation of university education. Over the last two years, the rest of the world's higher education centers have joined the pioneering universities which were created and established in an exclusively online format, like the UOC. And today, the vast majority offer at least some courses that are entirely digital. However, although the university ecosystem has changed, the rankings that rate and position them still fail to take this format into account.

Illinois officials this month announced that Asian carp would now be called "copi" in an attempt to make the fish more desirable for eating. Joseph Parkos, the director of the Illinois Natural History Survey's Kaskaskia, Ridge Lake and Sam Parr biological stations in Illinois, spoke with News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates about scientific initiatives to study and control carp/copi fish populations and the potential for rebranding to aid those efforts.

Microplastics are known to collect in ecosystems and nanoplastics occur from the breaking down of microplastics. Nanoplastics are plastic particles of sizes less than 100 nm and when they are in water, they are dispersed in a colloidal form. Nanoplastics might be more prevalent than microplastics, but it is hard to analyze and study them in-depth due to their size. In zebrafish, however, nanoplastics have been found in various organs including the brain, which may be an indicator that it crosses the blood-brain barrier.

Ask any scientist—for every "Eureka!" moment, there's a lot of less-than-glamorous work behind the scenes. Making discoveries about everything from a new species of dinosaur to insights about climate change entails some slogging through seemingly endless data and measurements that can be mind-numbing in large doses.

Owing to the high competition and the prevalence of natural selection, many male insects must develop alternative tactics to mate with a female. Weaker males who lose in a competition (or loser males) may resort to hovering or sneaking around in order to find a mate. Recent studies have also shown that alternative mating behavior is influenced by environmental factors such as food availability, predation, and population density. For example, scorpionflies—which are often used to study the mating... Читать дальше...

Researchers at McMaster University have unlocked an evolutionary mystery of a deadly pathogen responsible for fueling the superbug crisis: it can reproduce by having sex.

Life on Earth began in the oceans. In the search for life on other planets, the potential for liquid water is therefore a key ingredient. To find it, scientists have traditionally looked for planets similar to our own. Yet, long-term liquid water does not necessarily have to occur under similar circumstances as on Earth. Researchers of the University of Bern and the University of Zurich, who are members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS, report in a study published in the journal Nature Astronomy... Читать дальше...

People who become wealthy in the United States may tend to boast of their humble beginnings, but new research finds that they may, in fact, be less sympathetic to the difficulties of being poor than those who were born rich.

Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have discovered the mechanism behind the rapid growth of ultra-thin nanowires or "whiskers" in organic compounds. Nanowires are both a desirable technological innovation and a hazard when they short electronics: understanding how they grow is crucial for applications. Curiously, filaments were found to grow from large crystalline fronts by following bubbles of gas. Importantly, trace impurities could suppress bubble formation and whisker growth, allowing control over crystal structure.

Cocrystal engineering is a strategy for assembling organic molecules via the non-covalent interaction force, avoiding harsh experimental conditions (i.e., high temperature and high pressure). By selecting the appropriate components, the donor-acceptor (D-A) molecules can be assembled like the jigsaw puzzle. Under the intermolecular interaction, such as π–π interactions, hydrogen bonds, and halogen bonds, cocrystal can not only display the intrinsic properties of its components but also show some novel properties... Читать дальше...