Новости за 25.08.2022

ETH Zurich researchers have developed a model that explains how nerve cells in the brain connect during development. Their model reveals that the crucial factor is progressive cell division. This process leads naturally to the formation of molecular addresses that lets neurons navigate.

New research from Cornell offers insights into a line of CRISPR systems, which could lead to promising antiviral and tissue engineering tools in animal and plants.

Using new scientific tools, University of Cincinnati archaeologists discovered that an ancient Greek leader known today as the Griffin Warrior likely grew up around the seaside city he would one day rule.

Extreme heat and wildfire smoke are each hazardous to our health, but recent studies suggest that when we're exposed to both at the same time, the impact can be greater than their combined individual effects. Now, UCLA researchers and colleagues have determined just how often Californians experience this dangerous double whammy.

When we burn fossil fuels, it not only produces carbon dioxide, a driver of climate change, but it also consumes the oxygen we breathe. However, the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere produced by plants is nearly balanced by the amount consumed by animals, keeping it at around 21% of the atmosphere. This raises a big question relevant to our survival and the future of biodiversity: what keeps the levels of oxygen in our atmosphere relatively constant?

In times of war, factories retool to support the needs of battle. Assembly lines change course from turning out car parts to machine guns, or from building washing machines to aircraft engines.

After a tantalizing year-and-a-half wait since the Mars Perseverance Rover touched down on our nearest planetary neighbor, new data is arriving—and bringing with it a few surprises.

Scientists on NASA's Perseverance mission made a surprising discovery about the composition of rock in Jezero Crater, one that will help them get a better idea of when water existed on Mars, and ultimately, help them understand if the red planet was ever habitable to microbial life.

Jiping Huang's group (Department of physics, Fudan University) and Cheng-Wei Qiu's group (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore) collaborated to complete this study published in National Science Review. They found a new mechanism to generate asymmetric temperature profiles without dynamic modulation. Specifically, graded thermal conductivities could induce the imitated advection in pure and passive conduction, which has a similar temperature field effect to the realistic advection. Читать дальше...

A UBC Okanagan researcher is suggesting changes to fur trapping practices to help prevent the accidental amputation of grizzly bear toes.

Biologist Michelle Smith discovered the wonders of the ocean while taking a field course in Friday Harbor, Washington, as a doctoral student.

Citizen science is increasingly recognized as an important vehicle for democratizing science and promoting the goal of universal and equitable access to scientific data and information. IIASA researchers actively contribute to the development of this scientific approach and have recently published a primer aimed at both established and aspiring practitioners of citizen science to highlight key issues and how to address them.

Unfavorable environmental conditions represent considerable stress for plants. A high level of salt content (sodium chloride, NaCl) in the soil is just such a stressor that has a negative impact on plants. Salinization is a serious problem in agriculture especially in dry regions of the world. Biologists at the University of Münster have now discovered, for the first time, that salt stress triggers calcium signals in a special group of cells in plant roots, and that these signals form a "sodium-sensing niche." Also... Читать дальше...

From the White House to community-based organizations, numerous groups and initiatives are encouraging girls and women to pursue STEM education. Will it pay off?

Traditional methods produce medicines with specific parameters, but in many cases without meeting the individual needs of patients. In fact, conventional medicines tend to be based on adult doses, so pediatric and elderly patients require doses tailored to their age. What is more, certain groups of patients also need specific dosage form alternatives to facilitate the oral administration of drugs. In this respect, rapidly disintegrating tablets are emerging as a good option as they dissolve the moment they are placed on the tongue. Читать дальше...

A recent survey by University of Toronto Scarborough students not only gleaned important information from hundreds of households across Toronto, it provided critical insights on the act of surveying diverse communities that could help other researchers boost participation in future projects.

Two new approaches could help scientists use existing sequencing technology to better-distinguish RNA changes that affect how genetic code is read.

In a recent study to be published in Space Physics, an international team of researchers discuss an in-depth study examining the long-term physiological effects of solar radiation on astronauts with emphasis on future astronauts traveling to Mars to include steps we can take to help mitigate the risk of such solar radiation exposure. The researchers hailed from the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, India, United States, Italy, Greece, and Germany, and their study helps us better understand the in-depth... Читать дальше...

Seen from above, the world's greatest rivers can be recognized by their serpentine curves. But how do these shapes form, do they alter over time and does this matter? We turned to our river system expert, Carmelo Juez.

With a rise in the number of wildfires in Saskatchewan and beyond each year, burnt landscapes stripped of plant life are becoming more common. Most creatures find a burnt environment uninhabitable, but a University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team has discovered how certain species of insects use these scorched lands as a safe location to lay eggs.

In a trio of papers, published simultaneously in the journal Science, Ron Pinhasi from the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology and Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS) at the University of Vienna and Songül Alpaslan-Roodenberg from the University of Vienna and Harvard University, Iosif Lazaridis and David Reich at Harvard University—together with 202 co-authors—report a massive effort of genome-wide sequencing from 727 distinct ancient individuals with which it was possible to test longstanding archaeological... Читать дальше...

Evolutionary chromosomal changes may take a million years in nature, but researchers are now reporting a novel technique enabling programmable chromosome fusion that has successfully produced mice with genetic changes that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale in the laboratory. The result may provide critical insights into how rearrangements of chromosomes—the tidy packages of organized genes, provided in equal number from each parent, which align and trade or blend traits to produce offspring—influence evolution.

Wildlife hunting motivations and resulting ecological consequences vary depending on the socio-economic context across Africa and Europe, according to a study publishing August 25 in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Mona Bachmann at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues. Despite these shifts, the intensity of hunting varies less than commonly expected across this North-South context.

Research published this week in Science offers the clearest picture yet of the reverberating consequences of land mammal declines on food webs over the past 130,000 years.

Whether in photosynthesis or in a photovoltaic system: if you want to use light efficiently, you have to absorb it as completely as possible. However, this is difficult if the absorption is to take place in a thin layer of material that normally lets a large part of the light pass through.