Новости за 12.09.2022

As elementary schoolers, we learned the order of the planets. Maybe your teacher even had a snappy mnemonic like "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas" or "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos" after Pluto was axed from the planetary lineup.

A study co-led by physicists at UC Riverside and UC Irvine has found that dark matter halos of ultra-diffuse galaxies are very odd, raising questions about physicists' understanding of galaxy formation and the structure of the universe.

Southwest of Sacramento, California, the branching arms of waterways reach into a patchwork of farm fields and pastures. Canals and wetlands fringed with reeds meet a sunbaked expanse of dry meadows.

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Texas at Austin have defined the structure of a substrate-bound iron 2-oxoglutarate (Fe/2OG) enzyme to explore whether these enzymes could be used to create a wide array of molecules. They probed the enzyme's active site to determine its ability to bind with different substrates. Additionally, rather than oxygen-addition, they saw that Fe/2OG enzymes likely utilize cations—highly reactive species—to drive desaturation during catalysis. Читать дальше...

USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and collaborators from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment have tested how soil disturbance influences the response of U.S. Great Plains rangeland to climate change. The results showed that disturbance and subsequent plant invasion are key factors to consider when predicting the impact of climate change on these ecosystems.

A University of Houston mechanical engineer has developed a sprayable ice-shedding material that is 100 times stronger than any others. The new durable coating material has been tested by Boeing under erosive rain conditions at 385 miles per hour and has outperformed current state-of-the-art aerospace coating technologies.

A research team of environmental scientists from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has developed a circular process for eliminating the risk posed by phosphoric acid plant wastewater. The process turns the environmentally toxic wastewater into clean water while recovering valuable acids. Phosphoric acid is the main ingredient in industrial fertilizers, a massive industry worldwide.

Determining what killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period has long been the topic of debate, as scientists set out to determine what caused the five mass extinction events that reshaped life on planet Earth in a geological instant.

New research published in PNAS today showed that, out of 26 countries, Indonesia accounted for 58.2% of the tropical deforestation directly caused by industrial mining activities. Brazil, Ghana and Suriname also stood out in the study, which underscored the need for stronger measures to protect tropical forests from destructive economic activities like mining.

Strange diamonds from an ancient dwarf planet in our solar system may have formed shortly after the dwarf planet collided with a large asteroid about 4.5 billion years ago, according to scientists.

A new study led by Oregon State University suggests leaves in forest canopies are not able to cool themselves below the surrounding air temperature, likely meaning trees' ability to avoid damaging temperature increases, and to pull carbon from the atmosphere, will be compromised in a warmer, drier climate.

A new device has been fabricated that can demonstrate the quantum anomalous Hall effect, in which tiny, discrete voltage steps are generated by an external magnetic field. This work may enable extremely low-power electronics, as well as future quantum computers.

Dr. Sabina Quader, senior research scientist of the Innovation Center of NanoMedicine, together with Dr. Joachim van-Guyse, assistant professor at Leiden University, has published a review article titled "Bioresponsive Polymers for Nanomedicine-Expectations and Reality!" in the journal Polymers.

After 1,000 days in orbit around the Earth, the CHEOPS space telescope shows almost no signs of wear. Under these conditions, it could continue to reveal the fascinating details of many exoplanets for many years to come. CHEOPS is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, led by the University of Bern (UNIBE) in collaboration with the University of Geneva (UNIGE).

COVID-19 vaccine companies influence each other's stock prices as well as market volatility, a team of scientists has found. It turned out that some companies (e.g., British-Swedish and American) have more influence, while others (e.g., Chinese) have less. Such conclusions were reached by economists who analyzed the stock price of major vaccine companies: Moderna, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Sinopharm and AstraZeneca. They tracked the indicators in dynamics: before and after the vaccine release. Читать дальше...

On July 28, the research team led by Prof. Huang Jianguo at the Zhejiang University College of Life Sciences published an article titled "Climate warming leads to advanced fruit development period of temperate woody species but divergent changes in its length" in the journal Global Change Biology.

When the Children's Environmental Health Initiative (CEHI) launched the Texas Flood Registry in April 2018, the goal was to develop a needs assessment focusing on health and housing impacts of the greater Houston area, which was still recovering less than one year after Hurricane Harvey's devastating landfall.

If first graders Jamaal and Connor each verbally shared a story, would the teacher fairly assess the narratives?

A new Stanford University-led study in Costa Rica reveals that restoring relatively narrow strips of riverfront forests could substantially improve regional water quality and carbon storage. The analysis, available online and set to be published in the October issue of Ecosystem Services, shows that such buffers tend to be most beneficial in steep, erosion-prone, and intensively fertilized landscapes—a finding that could inform similar efforts in other countries.

A 5,000-year-old container, discovered behind a butcher's shop, is being exhibited at Kirkcaldy Galleries having been recently conserved by experts. Conservation has been completed as part of a wider project to find out more about the human remains and objects found on Kirkcaldy High Street in June 1980.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope imaged these two overlapping spiral galaxies named SDSS J115331 and LEDA 2073461, which lie more than a billion light-years from Earth. Despite appearing to collide in this image, the alignment of the two galaxies is likely just by chance—the two are not actually interacting. While these two galaxies might simply be ships that pass in the night, Hubble has captured a dazzling array of other, truly interacting galaxies.

Nanomolding of topological nanowires could speed the discovery of new materials for applications such as quantum computing, microelectronics and clean-energy catalysts, according to an article co-authored by Judy Cha, professor of materials science and engineering at Cornell.

Many travelers say they would prefer to stay at eco-friendly hotels, but lodging facilities don't benefit financially from acquiring certification for green business practices, new research shows.

For years, scientists and online databases presumed the presence of clubroot—one of the main diseases on cruciferous crops (such as broccoli, cabbage, and kale)—in Mexico. However, no evidence to support this supposition existed until a team of researchers, led by Mauricio Luna and Legnara Padrón-Rodríguez of the University of Veracruz, donned their detective caps to pinpoint the clubroot pathogen.

The bacteria that reside in the human gut ("the gut microbiome") are known to play beneficial and harmful roles in human health. Because these bacteria are transmitted through milk, mothers can directly impact the composition of bacteria that their offspring harbor, potentially giving moms another pathway to influence their infant's future development and health. A study of wild geladas (a non-human primate that lives in Ethiopia) provides the first evidence of clear and significant maternal effects... Читать дальше...