Новости за 01.07.2022

A Mozambican park welcomed its first white rhinos in 40 years on Friday after 19 of the threatened animals completed a 1,600-kilometre (thousand-mile) truck ride from South Africa, conservationists said.

New research shows two widely used computer models that predict summer melt pond formation on sea ice greatly overestimate their extent, a key finding as scientists work to make accurate projections about Arctic climate change.

One way cells can control the activities of their genes is by adding small chemical modifications to the DNA that determine which genes are turned on or off. Methyl groups are one of these chemical modifications or tags. Researchers have found that in bacteria DNA methylation plays a role in regulating virulence, reproduction and gene expression. In other organisms, including humans, DNA methylation is essential in regulating tissue-specific gene expression, which defines the nature of a cell, for instance... Читать дальше...

Kamptozoa and Bryozoa are two phyla of small aquatic invertebrates. They are related to snails and clams (collectively called mollusks), bristleworms, earthworms, and leeches (collectively called annelids), and ribbon worms (nemertea). But their precise position on the tree of life, and how closely related they are to these other animals, has always puzzled evolutionary biologists. Previous studies have consistently moved them around. What's more, while Kamptozoa and Bryozoa were originally considered to form one group... Читать дальше...

Curing debilitating genetic diseases is one of the great challenges of modern medicine. During the past decade, development of CRISPR technologies and advancements in genetics research brought new hope for patients and their families, although the safety of these new methods is still of significant concern.

Many of us know the conventional theory of how the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago: in Earth's fiery collision with a meteorite, and a following global winter as dust and debris choked the atmosphere. But there was a previous extinction, far more mysterious and less discussed: the one 202 million years ago, which killed off the big reptiles who up until then ruled the planet, and apparently cleared the way for dinosaurs to take over. What caused the so-called Triassic-Jurassic Extinction, and... Читать дальше...

A new paper published in Science Advances synthesizes the impact of metal and coal mines on salmon and trout in northwestern North America, and highlights the need for more complete and transparent science to inform mining policy.

Halobenzoquinones (HBQs), as new emerging disinfection by-products (DBPs), are frequently detected in potable and swimming pool waters. In fact, HBQs are also precursors of other DBPs such as currently regulated trihalomethanes (THMs), which pose a high risk to the public health and the environment. When UV is applied during the chlorination process, the DBPs formation may be quite different from that under chlorine alone or UV alone. However, there remain many questions that require further investigation. Читать дальше...

A photodetector is a kind of optoelectronic device that can detect optical signals and convert them into electrical signals. These devices include photodiodes, phototransistors and photoconductors.

Recently, a team led by Prof. Huang Qing at the Institute of Intelligent Machines, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has reported the fabrication of ultrasensitive biosensors based on Surface-enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) to detect the cancer metastasis related programmed death ligand (PD-L1) biomarker.

Americans were more likely than people living in the UK to feel threatened by China's growth as a world power, a new survey shows.

Magnetars are some of the most fascinating astronomical objects. One teaspoon of the stuff they are made out of would weigh almost one billion tons, and they have magnetic fields that are hundreds of millions of times more powerful than any magnetic field that exists today on Earth. But we don't know much about how they form. A new paper points to one possible source—mergers of neutron stars.

The excessive emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, is rapidly raising the average global temperature. Capturing the carbon dioxide and converting it to useful fuels and chemicals can be an ideal way to reduce carbon dioxide concentration and ease this serious environmental problem.

Seabird reserves in northeast England and Scotland have been closed to visitors after a suspected outbreak of bird flu, officials said on Friday.

A study reveals an unprecedented change in the fire regime in Europe which is related to climate change. The affected areas are in Southern, Central and Northern Europe but this historical change in Europe's fire regime is more intense in the Mediterranean area. The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, is led by Jofre Carnicer, lecturer of Ecology at the Faculty of Biology, and member of the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona and the Centre for Ecological... Читать дальше...

Stars with the mass of the sun or larger are typically accompanied by one or more orbiting companion stars. The system forms when gravity contracts the gas and dust of an interstellar cloud until clumps develop that are dense enough to coalesce into stars. Multiple stellar systems develop, according to one model, when the cloud has a slight spin. That generates a disk that then fragments to produce multiple stars.

Most cells can defend themselves against viruses after they have been activated by the body's own messenger substances (interferons). This happens with the help of proteins that recognize invading virus components and interfere with virus replication. One of these proteins is the myxovirus resistance protein B (MxB). It can inhibit many viruses, for example HIV and herpes viruses. But until now it was not clear how it does this.

The Supreme Court Thursday issued a ruling limiting the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants.

The effect of temperature on the performance of the semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) is an important research point. Amer Kotb and his colleagues from the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have for the first time investigated the effect of high temperatures on the performance of various SOAs, including conventional SOAs, carrier reservoir (CR)-SOAs, reflective SOAs (RSOAs), and photonic crystal (PC)-SOAs at different speeds.

Within the solar system, most of our astrobiological research is aimed at Mars, which is considered to be the next-most habitable body beyond Earth. However, future efforts are aimed at exploring icy satellites in the outer solar system that could also be habitable (like Europa, Enceladus, Titan, and more). This dichotomy between terrestrial (rocky) planets that orbit within their a system's habitable zones (HZ) and icy moons that orbit farther from their parent stars is expected to inform future... Читать дальше...

On June 24, the Supreme Court released a decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, upholding the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The court also ruled 5-4 to overturn Roe v. Wade, a 1973 decision that protects pregnant people's right to privacy without excessive government restriction.

A hallmark of environmental science is understanding how ecosystems respond to global change. Much of this research focuses on short-term ecosystem responses, such as how an ecosystem responds to a sudden onset of drought. But previous conditions can modify that response. In the same way a formative childhood experience might change how an adult responds to stress, legacy effects can change the direction or magnitude of ecosystem responses to disturbance.

Rice has a long history as a staple food in Japan and other parts of Asia. The results of a new study by an international research collaboration suggest that the emergence of cultivated rice from wild rice plants is the result of three gene mutations that make the seeds (i.e. the grains of rice) fall from the plant less easily.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to more people choosing to become "microworkers," a new study shows.

A team of researchers at the Harbin Institute of Technology, in China, working with a colleague in the U.S., has developed a new kind of aerogel for use in flexible thermal insulation material applications. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they made their aerogel and how well it worked when extreme heat was applied.