Новости за 29.12.2022

Kathleen Ferris stared across a desert valley dotted with creosote bushes, wondering where the water will come from to supply tens of thousands of new homes. In the distance, a construction truck rumbled along a dirt road, spewing dust.

Sandwiched here between the Pacific Ocean and Kona Airport—atop a dusty volcanic desert—dozens of 50-gallon water tanks gurgle and bubble away; each home to a solitary, wild-caught octopus and a couple of floating, plastic bath toys.

With the move of its last two chimps, a former Los Angeles County animal sanctuary that was abruptly closed in 2019 is now empty of its animal charges, state officials said Wednesday.

The honeybees looked perfectly healthy, buzzing about their boxy wooden hive on a warm autumn day in central Pennsylvania.

The dynamic change mechanism of the seasonal peak rate of photosynthesis, also known as GPPmax (Maximum Gross Primary Productivity), has become a hot topic in carbon cycle research. In the Northern Hemisphere, the GPPmax of vegetation is closely related to the year-on-year variation of the ecosystem carbon sink function.

A new paper, published in the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering journal, found that pine needles could be used to produce renewable fuels and value-added chemicals, such as preservatives used in agriculture, using only water as a solvent.

The higher the temperatures, the faster physiological processes are. But there is an exception: the so-called circadian clock, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle in organisms. A fascinating question for scientists is why the inner clock runs in an almost unchanging way despite fluctuations in temperatures. This is a phenomenon known as temperature compensation. Studies indicate that different molecular mechanisms contribute to this.

Professor Park Chi-Young's team successfully developed an atypical porous polymer material that can completely remove phenolic organic contaminants in water at ultra-high speeds. The porous material developed can efficiently remove not only microplastics in the water but also very small-sized volatile organic compounds (VOCs) based on photothermal effect. At the same time, it is expected to be utilized as a high-efficiency adsorption material that can be commercialized in the future as it has cost... Читать дальше...

Researchers have developed a transparent temperature sensor capable of precisely and quickly measuring temperature changes caused by light. This technology is expected to contribute to the advancement of various applied bio devices that rely on sensitive temperature changes.

All children argue. And while this can be tedious for parents and caregivers, it's not necessarily a problem.

Kids on TV and in movies always seem to be keeping hamsters and gerbils as pets. They're small, look cute, and don't need to be taken for a walk. So why don't we all have hamsters and gerbils as pets in Australia?

Have you played the puzzle game Tangram?

Seema and her husband did quite well when they first opened a samosa stall in the local market of a town in Bihar state, northeastern India.

Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new "hot Jupiter" exoplanet. The newfound alien world, estimated to be nearly three times as massive as Jupiter, orbits a rapidly rotating star known as TOI-778. The finding is reported in a paper published December 16 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Ammonia (NH3) is an important fertilizer and chemical for human society; however, its production by the traditional Haber-Bosch process consumes substantial fossil fuel energy and produces massive carbon dioxide emissions. Powered by renewable energy, electrocatalytic reduction of nitrogen (N2) to NH3 under eco-friendly and mild conditions provides a highly attractive solution for carbon neutrality.

A team of researchers at Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, working with a colleague at the University of Texas at Austin and another from Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia, has found evidence of ripe conditions for planet formation in the vicinity of two closely orbiting protostars.

To find out how many scientists a region needs to become a leader in a discipline, researchers at Complexity Science Hub tracked millions of scientists moving across the globe. Their result: there is no critical mass of scientists, but you have to be a pioneer. Regions can catch up later, but this costs a lot.

Scientists from the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) have presented roughly 1.5 years of observational data, calculating new limits on the lifetime of heavy dark matter particles that have masses between 105 and 109 giga-electron volts.

A study conducted by researchers from the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin revealed the evolution of ossification patterns in the backbones of four-legged vertebrates. Antoine Verrière and his colleagues were able to reconstruct the patterns of how the bones in the vertebral column formed in the ancestor to all land vertebrates based on a large dataset of modern and fossil vertebrates with the inclusion of rare new data from the 300-million-year-old reptile Mesosaurus tenuidens. The results are published this week in Scientific Reports.

What if there were a gadget that could within short order check whether you have COVID or the flu—or maybe it would even pick up that you have diabetes without knowing it? The device could figure all this out without you having to go to a doctor or a laboratory.

A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, working with a colleague from Temple University, has found that transcriptional adaptation appears to play a role in inherited epigenetic changes.

As Mauna Loa erupted in late November 2022 for the first time since 1984, the emissions produced vog or volcanic smog. Vog—a mixture of ash, sulfur dioxide and other gases—may cause breathing difficulties, headaches, a sore throat, watery eyes and more to those living near and/or downwind of the vog plume.

Though humans, along with other vertebrate and invertebrate organisms, don't photosynthesize, we're definitely the downstream beneficiaries of the life forms that do. Phototrophic organisms at the bottom of the food chain convert abundant sunlight into the energy that ultimately powers all other life.

The tracking of cold-water creatures offers insights into the worrisome effects of global warming.

Multiple researchers at the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) are taking part in an ambitious research program spanning several top research institutions to study senescent cells. Senescent cells stop dividing in response to stressors and seemingly have a role to play in human health and the aging process. Recent research with mice suggests that clearing senescent cells delays the onset of age-related dysfunction and disease as well as all-cause mortality.