Новости за 29.02.2024

A greater understanding of how plants and microbes work together to store vast amounts of atmospheric carbon in the soil will help in the design of better bioenergy crops for the fight against climate change.

An ecological imbalance in a lake can usually be attributed to increased nutrient inputs. This results in increased phytoplankton growth, oxygen deficiency, toxic cyanobacterial blooms and fish deaths. Until now, controls in lake management have focused primarily on phosphorus inputs to counteract this effect.

Researchers report February 29 in the journal Cell Reports that the Golgi ribbon, an organelle structure previously thought to be exclusive to vertebrates, is also present in animal taxa, including mollusks, earthworms, and sea urchins.

Writing a commentary in the 50th anniversary issue of Cell, Fu Qiaomei and E. Andrew Bennett, both of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, explored the contribution of paleogenomics to our understanding of the evolution of modern humans.

For more than a decade, invasive Asian honeybees have defied evolutionary expectations and established a thriving population in North Queensland, much to the annoyance of the honey industry and biosecurity officials.

Several areas of the globe—including the Bay of Bengal, the Philippines, and the Caribbean Sea—are likely to experience record-breaking average surface air temperatures in the year period up to June 2024 as a result of the ongoing El Niño phenomenon. The modeling results, published in Scientific Reports, also suggest that there is an estimated 90% chance of record-breaking global mean surface temperatures occurring over the same period under a moderate or strong El Niño scenario.

Roughly 4 billion years ago, Earth was developing conditions suitable for life. Origin-of-life scientists often wonder if the type of chemistry found on the early Earth was similar to what life requires today. They know that spherical collections of fats, called protocells, were the precursor to cells during this emergence of life. But how did simple protocells first arise and diversify to eventually lead to life on Earth?

For a long time, it was thought that amorphous solids do not selectively absorb light because of their disordered atomic structure. However, a new uOttawa study disproves this theory and shows that amorphous solids actually exhibit dichroism, meaning that they selectively absorb light of different polarizations.

African countries will suffer significant economic loss after 2050 if global warming is not limited to below 2°C, a new study by the Center for Global Development has found.

Improved neutron mirrors can increase the efficiency of material analysis in neutron sources such as the European Spallation Source. The improved mirror has been developed by researchers at Linköping University by coating a silicon plate with extremely thin layers of iron and silicon mixed with boron carbide. Their study has been published in the journal Science Advances.

Playing a different soundtrack is, physically speaking, only a minute change of the vibration spectrum, yet its impact on a dance floor is dramatic. People long for this tiny trigger, and as a salsa changes to a tango completely different collective patterns emerge.

Should we worry, as massive book-banning efforts imply, that young people will be harmed by certain kinds of books? For over a decade and through hundreds of interviews, my colleague, literacy professor Peter Johnston, and I have studied how adolescents experience reading when they have unfettered access to young adult literature. Our findings suggest that many are helped rather than harmed by such reading.

In a paper published February 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a research team describes the discovery of 18 never-before-seen species of bacteria of the Enterococcus type that contain hundreds of new genes—findings that may offer new clues into antibiotic resistance as scientists hunt for ways to curb these infections.

Crushed rock can remove about 3–4 metric tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) per hectare per year and improve crop yields, results of a pioneering study have shown.

Researchers from the University of Tsukuba have developed an innovative methodology for measuring the electrical conductivity of microbial communities. This methodology holds promise for the development of batteries and electrochemical sensors using microorganisms and may serve as a pivotal tool in elucidating the role of electricity within microbial ecosystems.

A research team led by Prof. Dr. Yang Yong from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed a remarkable quantum tunneling phenomenon across double potential barriers. They found that quantum tunneling is dominant at low temperatures and continues to play a nontrivial role at temperatures up to about 600 K.

Great apes, human's closest living relatives, are knocking on the door of extinction.

In a recent publication in the journal Trends in Chemistry, researchers from the University of Twente delve into the potential of 3D printing ceramics in micro-optics. These tiny ceramic structures can potentially be used to generate light and store information. "Let's make ceramics so small they can manipulate light."

Wolves from Colorado's new pack expanded their roaming range over the past 35 days to the state's northwesternmost county and across the Continental Divide, according to a map state officials released Feb. 28.

Big Tech stocks created, and have so far dominated, the trillion-dollar club in the U.S. For the first time, there's a race brewing for an outsider to join their ranks.

A basic premise of how plants grow is that shoots grow up and roots grow down. A new study, published in Plant Physiology, reveals the answer to a fascinating question: why do weeping tree varieties defy this natural growth pattern?

An increasing number of seismologists are using fiber optic cables to detect seismic waves on Earth—but how would this technology fare on the moon, and what would it tell us about the deep layers of our nearest neighbor in space?

A new species and genus of fairy lantern, tiny glass-like white plants that feed on fungi, has been discovered in Japan. In a country known for its extensive flora research, the discovery of a new plant genus is extremely rare and has not occurred in almost 100 years.

Gravitationally speaking, the universe is a noisy place. A hodgepodge of gravitational waves from unknown sources streams unpredictably around space, including possibly from the early universe.

Scientists from Australia and the United States have found a new way to alter the DNA of bacterial cells—a process used to make many vital medicines including insulin—much more efficiently than standard industry techniques.