Новости за 26.10.2022

A flash of lightning, and then—something else. High above the storm, a crimson figure blinks in and out of existence. If you see it, you are a lucky witness of a sprite, one of the least-understood electrical phenomena in Earth's upper atmosphere. But if you catch it on camera, your photo could contribute to a ground-breaking scientific discovery.

As America's largest investment to fight climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act positions the country to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. But as it edges the United States closer to achieving its international climate commitment, the legislation is also expected to yield significant—and more immediate—improvements in the nation's health.

To guide the design and synthesis of electrocatalysts toward highly efficient oxygen evolution reactions (OER), researchers from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology have summarized four common strategies to improve the OER performance of layered double hydroxides (LDHs) as well as identifying active sites for LDHs.

The number 13, telekinesis and witchcraft play a part in a person's mistrust of science and vaccines, including the COVID-19 shot, according to research from West Virginia University sociologists.

When we encounter metals in our day-to-day lives, we perceive them as shiny. That's because common metallic materials are reflective at visible light wavelengths and will bounce back any light that strikes them. While metals are well suited to conducting electricity and heat, they aren't typically thought of as a means to conduct light.

Climate predictions suggest the mid-Atlantic will face more frequent and severe rainstorms in coming years. This leads to the question of what to do with all that additional rainwater. Throughout the region, many places are already facing more powerful floods that overwhelm the pipes and drainage systems built to handle stormwater.

Scientists around the world are researching how anti-cancer drugs can most efficiently reach the tumors they target. One possibility is to use modified bacteria as "ferries" to carry the drugs through the bloodstream to the tumors. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now succeeded in controlling certain bacteria so that they can effectively cross the blood vessel wall and infiltrate tumor tissue.

New research in the journal Marketing Science, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and University of Washington, finds a 10% increase in TV product placement for cigarettes increases sales by 2% for the tobacco brand shown on-screen. Furthermore, it has the same effect on its direct competitors' sales as well.

Across virtually every sector, the greening of the global economy is unfolding far too slowly to stave off climate catastrophe, according to a sobering report Wednesday from a consortium of research organisations.

A team of researchers from Cornell University has sequenced the Honeycrisp apple genome, a boon for scientists and breeders working with this popular and economically important cultivar.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope was specially designed to detect the faint infrared light from very distant galaxies and give astronomers a glimpse at the early universe. The nature of galaxies during this early period of our universe is not well known nor understood. But with the help of gravitational lensing by a cluster of galaxies in the foreground, faint background galaxies can be magnified and also appear multiple times in different parts of the image.

Topological materials, an exotic class of materials whose surfaces exhibit different electrical or functional properties than their interiors, have been a hot area of research since their experimental realization in 2007—a finding that sparked further research and precipitated a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2016. These materials are thought to have great potential in a variety of fields, and might someday be used in ultraefficient electronic or optical devices, or key components of quantum computers.

Researchers from Northwestern University have made a significant advance in the way they produce exotic open-framework superlattices made of hollow metal nanoparticles.

Government plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions aren't enough to avoid catastrophic global warming, with the planet on track to heat up between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by the end of the century compared to pre-industrial times, according to a new report from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A new low-cost sensor designed to resemble a sea turtle egg enables scientists to monitor nests remotely and predict when hatchlings will emerge almost to the day—providing valuable information for conservation efforts and turtle nest management. Erin Clabough of the University of Virginia and Samuel Wantman of Nerds Without Borders led the research, which publishes on October 26 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.

Hydrogen is essential to the modern economy, and expanding its utility in a more sustainable society is a major global priority. Now, in a study recently published in Science Advances, researchers from Osaka University have made exciting progress toward eliminating many of the remaining bottlenecks in using hydrogen as an energy carrier.

Researchers at MIT have developed a technique for precisely controlling the arrangement and placement of nanoparticles on a material, like the silicon used for computer chips, in a way that does not damage or contaminate the surface of the material.

Belief that the COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax—that its severity was exaggerated or that the virus was deliberately released for sinister reasons—functions as a "gateway" to believing in conspiracy theories generally, new research has found.

An analysis of 10 million comments on the social media platform Reddit suggests that public interest in male versus female politicians is relatively equal, but that gender biases exist across the platform. Sara Marjanovic and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on October 26, 2022.

A synthetic carbon-based crystalline material called graphdiyne (GDY) has become a probable key element in driving the next significant leap in battery technology—one not seen since lithium surpassed lead and other heavy metals in the early 1990s.

Asbestos is a toxic substance that is found in older buildings, as well as in cosmetics and products for children. As testing for its presence can be problematic, Hiroshima University Professor Akio Kuroda has been working on a novel solution.

Stereochemistry, or the study of spatial arrangements of the atoms in a molecule, is a highly explored subdiscipline of organic chemistry. It has led to the synthesis of numerous chiral compounds—compounds with non-superimposable mirror images or enantiomers—which have found applications in fields ranging from biosensing to nanotechnology and drug delivery.

Imperial researchers have devised a cheaper, more efficient, and sustainable way to produce a breast cancer drug in South Africa.

Satellite navigation is headed closer to users. ESA's Navigation Directorate is planning an in-orbit demonstration with new navigation satellites that will orbit just a few hundred kilometers up in space, supplementing Europe's 23 222-km-distant Galileo satellites. Operating added-value signals, these novel so-called 'LEO-PNT' satellites will investigate a new multi-layer satnav system-of-systems approach to deliver seamless Positioning, Navigation and Timing services that are much more accurate, robust and available everywhere.

Aspherical components in optical systems can increase the free design variables without introducing new aberrations. That brings improved imaging quality and reduced size and weight. Aspheric components are widely used in high-end optoelectronic instruments, such as space and ground-based astronomical telescopes, deep space exploration platforms and earth observation optics.