Новости за 24.11.2022

Bats have lived with coronaviruses for millennia. Details are still hazy about how one of these viruses evolved into SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID in humans. Did it go directly from bats to humans or via another animal species? When? And why? If we can't answer these questions for this now-infamous virus, we have little hope of preventing the next pandemic.

The James Webb Space Telescope unveiled its latest image of celestial majesty on Wednesday, an ethereal hourglass of orange and blue dust being shot out from a newly forming star at its center.

A new study published in Science reports results from the first-ever global field assessment of the ecological impacts of grazing in drylands. An international research team has found that grazing can have positive effects on ecosystem services, particularly in species-rich rangelands, but these effects turn to negative under a warmer climate.

Rice University researchers have engineered a key light-activated nanomaterial for the hydrogen economy. Using only inexpensive raw materials, a team from Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics, Syzygy Plasmonics Inc. and Princeton University's Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment created a scalable catalyst that needs only the power of light to convert ammonia into clean-burning hydrogen fuel.

A team of researchers at the University of Agder's, Center for Coastal Research, working with a colleague at the Institute of Marine Research, both in Norway, has found that when protected areas for lobsters are established in overfished parts of the sea, the lobsters tend to grow bigger. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes their study of lobsters inside and outside of protected zones off the coast of Norway.

New research led by a team of scientists from The University of Manchester has shown that intensive grassland management impairs the capacity of soils to buffer extreme droughts, which are becoming more frequent and intense.

A study published in Science analyses multiple rocks found at the bottom of Jezero Crater on Mars, where the Perseverance rover landed in 2020, revealing significant interaction between the rocks and liquid water. Those rocks also contain evidence consistent with the presence of organic compounds.

If you're cooking a meal for Thanksgiving or just showing up to feast, you're part of a long human history—one that's older than our own species.

A group of researchers at Sofia University has found evidence that suggests the reason that a wormhole has never been observed is that they appear almost identical to black holes.

Feeding cats and dogs wet food has a much larger climate impact than dry food, a new study found, suggesting small changes by pet owners can massively reduce their carbon footprint.

University of Pittsburgh researchers have designed cancer-fighting nanoparticles that co-deliver a chemotherapy drug and a novel immunotherapy, according to a new Nature Nanotechnology study published today.

The heat wave that hammered western North America in late June and early July 2021 was not just any midsummer event. Over nine days, from British Columbia through Washington and Oregon and beyond, it exceeded average regional temperatures for the period by 10 degrees C (18 F), and on single days in some locales, by an astounding 30 C, or 54 F. Among many new daily records, it set a new national benchmark for all of Canada, at 121.3 F in Lytton, British Columbia. The next day, the entire town burned... Читать дальше...

Building on the CRISPR gene-editing system, MIT researchers have designed a new tool that can snip out faulty genes and replace them with new ones, in a safer and more efficient way.

To effectively replicate the movements of humans and animals, robots should integrate muscle-like structures. These artificial muscles should attain an optimal performance across all relevant actuation parameters, including energy density, strain, stress, and mechanical strength.

A large team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions across Italy has used DNA found in the dental calculus of ancient peoples to help trace changes to the human diet during the transition from hunting to agriculture in Italy over thousands of years. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes their study of calcified plaque found on the teeth of people living during the Copper, Neolithic and Paleolithic Ages to learn more about changes wrought by a move from hunting for food to growing it.

Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new ultra-short-period exoplanet. The newfound alien world, designated HD 20329 b, orbits its host star in slightly less than one day. The finding was presented November 4 on arXiv.org.

Delegates at a global summit on trade in endangered species will decide Thursday whether to approve a proposal to protect sharks, a move that could drastically reduce the lucrative and often cruel shark fin trade.

A new model explains that water evaporating from the Arctic Ocean due to a warming climate is transported south and can lead to increased snowfall in northern Eurasia in late autumn and early winter. This information will allow for more accurate predictions of severe weather events.

The chances of being struck by lightning are less than one in a million, but those odds shortened considerably this month when more than 4.2 million lightning strikes were recorded in every Australian state and territory over the weekend of 12-13 November.

People from minority groups who speak with 'non-standard' accents face discrimination in job interviews, researchers from The University of Queensland have found.

James Cook University scientists say a more direct approach should be taken to conservation planning—with greater focus on the real impact of conservation actions and less attention paid to targets or actions that misrepresent progress.

SpaceX's 26th commercial resupply mission (CRS) is scheduled to launch to the International Space Station from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in late November. The Dragon spacecraft carries scientific experiments and technology demonstrations that explore growing plants in space, creating nutrients on-demand, in-space construction, and more.

An international team of astronomers have turned a new technique onto a group of galaxies and the faint light between them—known as 'intra-group light'—to characterize the stars that dwell there.

Scientists on a research vessel in Antarctica watched the front of a glacier disintegrate and their measurements "went off the scale." As well as witnessing disruptions on the ocean surface, they recorded "internal" underwater tsunamis as tall as a house, a phenomenon that has been previously missed in the understanding of ocean mixing and in computer models.

A research group led by 2014 Nobel laureate Hiroshi Amano at Nagoya University's Institute of Materials and Systems for Sustainability (IMaSS) in central Japan, in collaboration with Asahi Kasei Corporation, has successfully conducted the world's first room-temperature continuous-wave lasing of a deep-ultraviolet laser diode (wavelengths down to UV-C region).