Новости за 22.09.2022

Workplace violence is a pervasive problem with tremendous costs for individuals, organizations, and society. A new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) focuses on convenience-store robberies, one of the most common forms of workplace violence, and finds that robbers are significantly more likely to injure employees who are present on the sales floor rather than behind the cash register when a robbery begins. But industry standard safety training... Читать дальше...

Developing life-saving medicines can take billions of dollars and decades of time, but University of Central Florida researchers are aiming to speed up this process with a new artificial intelligence-based drug screening process they've developed.

Efforts to improve the yields of staple cereal crops like maize and rice at scale in Africa remain seriously hampered by the effects of poor soil fertility. The lack of adequate information to base an effective fertilizer recommendation upon often results in inefficient nutrient use by crops and low crop yields. A root cause of poor crop response to applied nutrients is generalized fertilizer recommendations that fail to account for variability in factors such as the climate, soil properties, and water availability. Читать дальше...

Engineered living materials promise to aid efforts in human health, energy and environmental remediation. Now they can be built big and customized with less effort.

Super-thin planet nurseries have a boosted chance of forming big planets, according to a study announced this week at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada, Spain. An international team, led by Dr. Marion Villenave of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), observed a remarkably thin disk of dust and gas around a young star, and found that its structure accelerated the process of grains clumping together to form planets.

Animals on the early branches of the tree of life, such as jellyfish and sea sponges, defy the usual conventions of aging. Some show abilities to regenerate damaged or missing tissues, halt or reverse aging, and in the case of at least one jellyfish species show a form of "immortality." A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Harvard Medical School takes a detailed look at a group of proteins called sirtuins, linked to protection against cellular injury and aging... Читать дальше...

According to satellite observations, Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum extent on Sept. 18, 2022. The ice cover shrank to an area of 4.67 million square kilometers (1.80 million square miles) this year, roughly 1.55 million square kilometers (598,000 square miles) below the 1981-2010 average minimum of 6.22 million square kilometers (2.40 million square miles).

On Thursday, Sept. 29, at 2:36 a.m. PDT (5:36 a.m. EDT), NASA's Juno spacecraft will come within 222 miles (358 kilometers) of the surface of Jupiter's ice-covered moon, Europa. The solar-powered spacecraft is expected to obtain some of the highest-resolution images ever taken of portions of Europa's surface, as well as collect valuable data on the moon's interior, surface composition, and ionosphere, along with its interaction with Jupiter's magnetosphere.

"This lake wasn't here 50 years ago."

Gray and white flecks skitter erratically on a computer screen. A towering microscope looms over a landscape of electronic and optical equipment. Inside the microscope, high-energy, accelerated ions bombard a flake of platinum thinner than a hair on a mosquito's back. Meanwhile, a team of scientists studies the seemingly chaotic display, searching for clues to explain how and why materials degrade in extreme environments.

Researchers from Western University have developed a material that could eventually improve the way drugs are administered to patients, by allowing doctors to "see" exactly whether drugs are reaching the targets and working properly.

A dollop of margarine or spread can go a long way to livening up a slice of toast, a piping hot ear of corn or other food. But that enhanced flavor can also come with a side helping of worry over consuming saturated fats, which are used as solidifying agents in some margarines and spreads and give them their butter-like properties.

With a single sample of water or soil, researches can analyze the DNA of everything that is living in that environment. During her research, Ph.D. candidate Beilun Zhao discovered a way to analyze not only the kind of species, but also the age of the species in a water sample. The method showed its first success with the great pond snail and is the first step to a whole new world of environmental research.

During the growing and harvest seasons, vegetable producers often begin their day before sunrise and finish as the last light is seeping into the horizon. These long days are normal but varied. Challenges such as pests, disease, climate change, and weather make each day and each growing season unique and unpredictable.

Tiny aerosol particles that are suspended in the air can absorb and scatter sunlight radiation and contribute to create clouds affecting climate, reduce the visibility over cities and affect air traffic, and lower air quality. Aerosols in large pollution plumes, called brown clouds, can be transported long distances by the wind and reach other continents from the originating one. The variable composition of particles in brown clouds includes an unhealthy mix of organic molecules and ozone found in smoke.

If global warming persists, blue lakes worldwide are at risk of turning green-brown, according to a new study which presents the first global inventory of lake color. Shifts in lake water color can indicate a loss of ecosystem health. The new research was published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Quantum computers and communication devices work by encoding information into individual or entangled photons, enabling data to be quantum securely transmitted and manipulated exponentially faster than is possible with conventional electronics. Now, quantum researchers at Stevens Institute of Technology have demonstrated a method for encoding vastly more information into a single photon, opening the door to even faster and more powerful quantum communication tools.

Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) production in the northern United States is limited due to the perceived barriers of a short growing season and relatively cool summer temperatures, yet recent studies have shown yield in northern regions can be greater than the national average when sweet potatoes are grown with plastic mulch. A study, now published in HortTechnology, was conducted in northwest Washington to evaluate the productivity of "Covington" sweet potato with polyethylene (PE) and soil-biodegradable... Читать дальше...

Caladiums are ornamental aroids highly valued for their attractive foliage that rivals the display of many flowers. Aroid is a common name for a large species of plants in the Araceae family. This family of plants is also often called the Philodendron or Arum family. There are over 100 genera and 3,750 species of aroid plants, most of which are from the tropics.

California's reservoirs will enter fall in a slightly better position than last year, but the Golden State should prepare for more dryness, extreme weather events and water quality hazards in 2023, officials say.

The quality of ground-based astronomical observations delicately depends on the clarity of the atmosphere above the location from which they are made. Sites for telescopes are therefore very carefully selected. They are often high above sea level, so that less atmosphere stands between them and their targets. Many telescopes are also built in deserts, as clouds and even water vapor hinder a clear view of the night sky.

Research on decomposition often focuses on environmental factors like temperature or humidity, but researchers at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville have taken a closer look at contributions from the inside of the body. One factor that may play an important role is the body mass index (BMI) of a decomposing body, they report this week in mSphere.

Researchers found out that salen is able to effectively bind a number of proteins of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Scientists used the method of molecular docking and discovered that salen shows activity to the non-structural protein nsp14, which prevents the destruction of the virus. The new finding could be useful for the creation of new drugs and effective treatments for coronavirus infection. The results of the study are published in Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds.

Chemists and physicists at the University of Amsterdam shed light on a crucial aspect of friction: how things begin to slide. Using fluorescence microscopy and dedicated fluorescent molecules, they are able to pinpoint how and when the friction at the contact between two objects is overcome and sliding starts to occur. They report on the details of this important transition from static to dynamic friction in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Quantum computers have the potential to vastly exceed the capabilities of conventional computers for certain tasks. But there is still a long way to go before they can help to solve real-world problems. Many applications require quantum processors with millions of quantum bits. Today's prototypes merely come up with a few of these compute units.