Новости за 17.05.2024

"Urgent" action is needed to address an "insidious" and systemic bullying problem within the world of astronomy and geophysics, a report warns.

When one of the elders in the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska asked if he could keep bees on the reservation, Tim Rhodd's answer was straightforward: "Absolutely."

Environmental data science and machine learning (ML) are increasingly vital for addressing ecological challenges. However, these technologies can inadvertently perpetuate biases present in their training data, leading to socioecological inequities. The field faces issues such as data integrity, algorithmic bias, and model overfitting, which necessitate a deeper understanding and more equitable approaches.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM), originating from both natural and human activities, is a complex mixture of organic substances that can vary by season, location, and environmental conditions. DOM impacts the coagulation process, membrane fouling, and the potential for disinfection by-product (DBP) formation, necessitating dynamic water treatment adjustments to maintain compliance with drinking water standards.

The Venus flower basket sponge, with its delicate glass-like lattice outer skeleton, has long intrigued researchers seeking to explain how this fragile-seeming creature's body can withstand the harsh conditions of the deep sea where it lives.

It turns out plastics in the ocean do more than suffocate turtles, fish and other marine life.

Plants have special corrective molecules at their disposal that can make retrospective modifications to copies of genes. However, it would appear that these "Tipp-Ex proteins" do not have permission to work in all areas of the cell, only being used in chloroplasts and mitochondria.

A team of researchers from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC) in Portugal, together with Åbo Akademi University in Finland, the AI4Life consortium, and other collaborators, have developed an innovative open-source platform called DL4MicEverywhere. The paper, "DL4MicEverywhere: Deep learning for microscopy made flexible, shareable, and reproducible," was published in the journal Nature Methods.

The shimmering of butterfly wings in bright colors does not emerge from pigments. Rather, photonic crystals are responsible for the play of colors. Their periodic nanostructure allows light at certain wavelengths to pass through while reflecting other wavelengths. This causes the wing scales, which are in fact transparent, to appear so magnificently colored.

The patterns of dispersal of early humans across continents and islands are hotly debated, but according to a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Pleistocene hunter-gatherers settled in Cyprus thousands of years earlier than previously thought.

Considerable progress has been made in curbing the trade of big cat-derived products in South Korea, but some illegal trade remains, reports a new study led by a UCL researcher.

Recognizing and respecting the different ways nature is valued can enable better environmental decision-making, according to new research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

The chemical industry is a cornerstone of global development, driving innovation, and providing essential products that support our modern way of life.

It's a scene straight out of a mystery novel: The skeletons of two unrelated men show signs of remarkably similar injuries. One is missing about one-fifth of his lower left leg, while the other is missing the same length of bone, down to the centimeter, on his right.

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered that a protein responsible for the synthesis of a key plant material evolved much earlier than suspected. The research published in The Plant Cell, explores the origin and evolution of the biochemical machinery that builds lignin, a structural component of plant cell walls with significant impacts on the clean energy industry.

Recently, an international team led by Prof. Ge Jian from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a search for rare weak signals in quasar spectral data released by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) program using deep learning neural networks.

Scripps Research chemists have accomplished a long-elusive feat in synthetic chemistry: the invention of a broadly useful method for constructing "gamma chiral centers" on simple starting compounds called carboxylic acids. The method significantly extends the ability of chemists to build and modify complex pharmaceutical molecules and other valuable chemical products.

A molecular biologist at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences may have found a new "rule of biology."

Marine microbes control the flux of matter and energy essential for life in the oceans. Among them, the bacterial group SAR11 accounts for about a third of all the bacteria found in surface ocean waters.

Genome editing is making inroads into biomedical research and medicine. By employing biomolecule modeling tools, a Japanese research team is accelerating the pace and cutting the cost of zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) technology, a primary gene editing tool.

Pottery types and decoration have been used extensively by archaeologists to differentiate and describe cultures. The (past) contents and the actual function of the vessels have less often been the focus of research.

A new study published in Science and led by Monash University biologists reveals that the energy cost of reproduction is far greater than previously believed.

A unique collaboration between two UT Southwestern Medical Center labs—one that studies bacteria and another that studies viruses—has identified two immune proteins that appear key to fighting infections. The findings, published in PLOS Pathogens, could lead to new strategies for treating microbial infections and even cancer, the authors said.

In solid materials, magnetism generally originates from the alignment of electron spins. For instance, in the ferromagnet iron, the overall net magnetization is prompted by the alignment of spins in the same direction.

More than 300 million years ago, all sorts of arachnids crawled around the Carboniferous coal forests of North America and Europe. These included familiar ones we'd recognize, such as spiders, harvestmen and scorpions—as well as exotic animals that now occur in warmer regions like whip spiders and whip scorpions.