Новости за 01.04.2024

Every year, the South Asian monsoon season brings heavy rain to over a billion people in the Indian subcontinent between June and September. The rain falls in oscillations: Some weeks see 1 to 4 inches of water, while other weeks are mostly dry. Predicting when these dry and wet periods will occur is critical for agricultural and urban planning, enabling farmers to know when to harvest crops and helping city officials prepare for flooding. However, while weather predictions are mostly accurate within one or two days... Читать дальше...

Spectrometers are crucial scientific instruments in various research fields and have consistently served as indispensable tools for foundational research. However, the unwieldy size of conventional spectrometers poses challenges for cost-effective and compact mobile platforms.

Dielectric metasurfaces represent one of the cutting-edge research and application directions in optics. They not only possess the advantage of low loss but also enable the realization of device thicknesses at subwavelength scales. Moreover, they can freely modulate light in multiple dimensions, such as amplitude, phase, and polarization.

A challenge in promoting the industrial application of photocatalysis technology for environment remediation lies in the design of high-performance photocatalysts. These photocatalysts should be endowed with efficient photo-carrier separation and intense redox potentials to boost photocatalytic pollutant removal.

Do you wish you could see a total solar eclipse every day? With a new online tool called Eclipse Watch, you can observe the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, in real time with eclipse-like images from space as we count down to the next total solar eclipse on Earth.

Trichoderma spp. are globally distributed and are considered significant fungal resources. They are widely studied and applied due to their economic and ecological importance, offering numerous benefits, such as producing enzymes and antibiotics, aiding in plant growth, and protecting them from pathogens.

Propylene is one of the most important petrochemical raw materials, ranging second after ethylene. To meet the ever-increasing demand, alternative technologies for propylene production are in urgent need, among which the propane dehydrogenation (PDH) has been considered as the most promising one.

More than 80 percent of EU agriculture subsidies support polluting livestock and animal product farming, undermining the bloc's climate targets, a study published Monday found.

A new public relations and crisis communications study tracked 10 years of data and used big data analytic tools to capture shifts in how corporate interests and the public discussed a complex legal situation regarding a widely used herbicide—and how those dynamics related to stock price. The bottom line? When the company took an aggressive stance, its stock price dropped.

Superfluorescence (SF), as a cooperative radiation effect originating from vacuum quantum fluctuations, is an ideal platform for studying many-body correlation mechanisms in an exciton ensemble, and for developing optically ultrafast techniques on bright quantum light sources. Recently, the observations of superfluorescence effects based on different radiative materials or under different working temperatures have been a hot topic. However, current works mainly focus on studying and discussing the establishment of SF itself.

The optical frequency comb, a spectrum of optical radiation composed of evenly spaced and phase-coherent narrow spectral lines, was initially developed for precise time and frequency measurements. Over the past two decades, it has shown broad application prospects in fields such as astronomy, cosmology, optical atomic clocks and quantum key distribution. However, the implementation of magnonic frequency combs for high-precision magnonic frequency measurements remains a challenge.

We've all heard the classic saying "leaves of three, let it be," which means don't touch the poison ivy. But just how accurate is that timeless phrase? While this specific mnemonic device exists to deter people from touching poison ivy, it turns out there are also many harmless three-leaf native plants. How is one to tell the difference between itchy poison ivy and those harmless three-leaf native plants?

When fighting corruption, countries often rely too much on repression and forget about prevention measures, which are frequently inadequate or nonexistent. Furthermore, despite the progress made in implementation of the main international anticorruption treaties, substantial challenges persist. There are even indications of regression across various domains, including criminalization and law enforcement, and international cooperation.

For many, spring heralds fresh air and exercise on the golf course. But do players risk exposure to unsafe levels of pesticides used to beautify and maintain a golf course's green grass?

NASA's VIPER—short for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover—now stands taller and more capable than ever, thanks to its mast.

The time-tested strategy of "divide and conquer" took on a new, high-tech meaning during neutron experiments by scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They discovered that the problems they faced while attempting to 3D print a one-piece collimator could be solved by instead developing a "Frankenstein design" involving multiple body parts—and some rather obvious scars.

Recent studies have shown that rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations and consequential warming may compromise the community structure and functioning of the cold tundra ecosystems. However, in addition to carbon uptake, natural vegetation—particularly forests—can physically cool neighboring areas by releasing certain cooling molecules.

Perfect absorption arises from the strong interaction of valence electrons with light in a conducting material. Optical metamaterial is an effective approach to exploit the superior photon capture capability. Thus, the perfect absorbers could be achieved by nanoscale resonant plasmonic and metamaterial structures.

An enormous meteor spelled doom for most dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But not all. In the aftermath of the extinction event, birds—technically dinosaurs themselves—flourished.

A team of scientists led by researchers at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences have developed an innovative method to link the genetics and function of individual microbes living without oxygen deep below Earth's surface. Measuring both of these attributes—and, more importantly, linking them together—has long been a challenge in microbiology but is critical for understanding the role of microbial communities in global processes like the carbon cycle.

An international team of scientists has built the largest and most detailed bird family tree to date—an intricate chart delineating 93 million years of evolutionary relationships between 363 bird species, representing 92% of all bird families.

Universe Today has explored the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, and cosmochemistry, and how this myriad of intricately linked scientific disciplines can assist us in better understanding our place in the cosmos and searching for life beyond Earth.

Scientists at Uppsala University have discovered a new class of antibiotics with potent activity against multi-drug resistant bacteria, and have shown that it cures bloodstream infections in mice. The new antibiotic class is described in an article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Invasive species have rapidly colonized new ground exposed by melting glaciers in the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, according to new research.

Among the many chemicals we use every day, ammonia is one of the worst for the atmosphere. The nitrogen-based chemical used in fertilizer, dyes, explosives and many other products ranks second only to cement in terms of carbon emissions, due to the high temperatures and energy needed to manufacture it.