Новости за 17.08.2022

On the hottest summer days, you may find yourself dozing off in the middle of the day. In some parts of the world, it's a cultural norm to schedule "siestas" and shutter businesses during the warmest hours of the day. As it turns out, biology, not just culture, may be behind this.

Imagine you go to a theme park with your family and you ask a park employee to take a group photo. A celebrity walks by in the background and waves at the camera, stealing the focus of the photo. Surprisingly, this concept of "photobombing" is relevant to astronomers looking for habitable planets, too.

The French weather service warned Wednesday of new flash flooding risks after fierce rainstorms lashed much of the country overnight, providing a measure of relief for parched landscapes after a summer of record drought.

Seafaring drones on Lake Superior will soon allow a team of Cornell University scientists to examine fresh details about the abundance and distribution of forage fish—species, such as zooplankton and shrimp, which provide nourishment for sportier marine species higher on the food chain.

The harder you hit something—a ball, a walnut, a geode—the more likely it is to break open. Or, if it does not break open, it's more likely to at least lose a little bit of its structural integrity, the way new baseball gloves do when players pummel them to make them softer and more flexible. Cracks—massive or tiny—form and bear a silent, permanent witness to the impact.

Researchers have discovered Homo sapiens did indeed live and survive in the Kalahari Desert more than 20,000 years ago.

Climate models had until recently not been performing very well predicting variation in the spring rainfall over northeast China, home to some of the country's main cereal production. This uncertainty potentially puts the food security of the country—and even the world—at risk. Researchers have however now identified the problem: a previously unidentified major shift that occurred in the mid-1980s in atmospheric flows from the North Atlantic as a result of a weakening jet stream.

A unique initiative is helping Indigenous people in India exchange knowledge about locally available foods to improve dietary diversity—part of the UN Sustainable Development Goal related to food security and nutrition.

Dispersion paints are mostly used in households for painting walls and ceilings. An interdisciplinary research team from the University of Bayreuth has now analyzed the chemical composition of two typical dispersion paints and discovered a large number of solid particles within them that are only a few micro- or nanometers in size. Studies on biological test systems showed that these particles can harm living organisms.

The San Andreas Fault in California is renowned for its large and infrequent earthquakes. However, some segments of the San Andreas Fault (SAF) instead are characterized by frequent quakes of small to moderate magnitude and high rates of continuous or episodic aseismic creep. With tectonic strain released in a quasi-steady motion, that reduces the potential for large earthquakes along those segments.

We do it every day but barely give it a thought: chewing our food. But the "simple" process of masticating food may have played a crucial role in the evolution of our jaws, facial muscles and teeth.

Throughout evolution, prey animals have adopted a range of strategies to evade their predators. But often these elaborate strategies come at a cost. For example, looking out for and fleeing from predators involves a great deal of cognitive capacity and energy. Camouflage, on the other hand, may complicate the animals' search for mates, and it largely limits their freedom of movement to the matching background.

Often instead of making partner, women in public accounting firms appear to be sidelined into less prestigious, less powerful director positions, a study has found.

The study of liquid droplets and their behavior upon impingement is of major importance in many fields, including agriculture, engineering, and medicine. Droplet behavior prediction has use in spray painting and pesticide sprays, inkjet technology for printing, and aerosol generation during rainfall. A deeper understanding of this phenomenon is, therefore, imperative not only for advancing our knowledge of fluid physics but also technology.

While volunteering at an Indian orphanage in 1984, Dr. David Buck found his passion for helping those most in need during an encounter with the greatest humanitarian in human history—Mother Teresa. That unforgettable experience put him on a decades-long path to reshaping how communities care for the underserved.

Lungs are essential to many vertebrates including humans. However, four living amphibian clades have independently eliminated pulmonary respiration and lack lungs, breathing primarily through their wet skin. Little is known of the developmental basis of lung loss in these clades.

In the face of climate change, breadfruit soon might come to a dinner plate near you.

A small study did not find evidence that wolves or dogs could understand the reputation of humans as "generous" or "selfish" with food, after direct or indirect interactions. Hoi-Lam Jim and colleagues at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Austria, present the findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 17, 2022.

The reconstructed megalodon (Otodus megalodon) was 16 meters long and weighed more than 61 tons. It was estimated that it swam at around 1.4 meters per second, required over 98,000 kilo calories every day and had a stomach volume of almost 10,000 liters. These results suggest that the megalodon could travel long distances and was capable of eating whole prey up to 8 meters long. Notably, this is the size of modern killer whales, today's top ocean predator. An ability to eat large apex predators of... Читать дальше...

Researchers at Stockholm University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences have developed a novel value chain for production of textile and bio-fuel from fast-growing poplars. By applying sustainable catalysis on these poplars grown on marginal land in Nordic climates, the demand for cotton can be reduced. Consequently, considerable areas of productive agricultural land can be converted from cotton to food production.

Our many different organ systems are in constant communication with each other. During exercise, for example, muscles send out signals to fat and liver tissue to release their energy sources. While these communication networks play a critical role in our bodies every day, it has been historically difficult to uncover such pathways. Scientists at Scripps Research, University of Southern California and elsewhere have now successfully created a model to label and track the protein signals that enable organ-to-organ communication.

The rapid development of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) mega constellations has significantly contributed to several aspects of human scientific progress, such as communication, navigation, and remote sensing. However, unrestrained deployment of constellations has also strained orbital resources and increased spacecraft congestion in LEO, which seriously affects the safety of in-orbit operations of many space assets.

New research highlights the increasing threat of microplastics to global farming and food production.

A new technique for freezing cells for use in biomedical research, based on polymer technology developed at the University of Warwick, has been validated in study, paving the way for faster results for scientists in their research.

Images of damaged coastlines, oily sheens, containment booms and endangered wildlife are part of every offshore oil spill.