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Major Atlantic ocean current system might be approaching critical threshold

2021-08-06 12:08 The major Atlantic ocean current, to which also the Gulf stream belongs, may have been losing stability in the course of the last century. This is shown in a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, transports warm water masses from the tropics northward at the ocean surface and cold water southward at the ocean bottom, which is most relevant fo...

Archaeologists discover oldest human burial site in Africa

2021-08-05 12:03 In the Kenyan cave of Panga-ya-Saidi, archaeologists have discovered a burial site with an age of 78.3 thousand years, from the Middle Stone Age. According to scientists, this burial pit with skeletal remains can be called the oldest on the African continent found so far. The first bone fragments were identified in 2013, but only four years later, under the" floor " of Panga-ya-Saidi, at a depth of several...

The "bulkheads" between hepatocytes determine the unique structure of the liver

2021-08-04 13:11 Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from Germany and the U.S. have discovered structures responsible for the shape of bile canaliculi, a network of canals in the liver. Published in the Journal of Cell Biology, their study also reveals the gene essential for the formation of these structures, which the team compares to boat bulkheads. The body incorporates numerous tubular structures, such as bl...

Scientists have predicted mathematical abilities by measuring the levels of neurotransmitters

2021-08-03 14:12 Do you have any mathematical abilities? A new study shows that levels of two key neurotransmitters can predict a person's mathematical abilities, suggesting that brain chemistry may play a role for those who find math easy. The new study involved 255 subjects, from six-year-old schoolchildren to university students. The study focused on two neurotransmitters that are known to play a role in brain plast...

The heat wave caused the accelerated melting of the glaciers of Greenland

2021-08-02 10:24 According to Danish researchers, the Greenland ice sheet experienced a "massive melting" during a heat wave, as a result of which the temperature was more than 10 degrees above seasonal norms. Since Wednesday, the ice sheet covering the vast Arctic territory has been melting by about eight billion tons per day, which is twice the average norm in the summer, according to the website Polar Portal, which is r...

A new method for producing environmentally friendly plastic from pine juice has been discovered

2021-08-01 10:46 Researchers from the University of Florida have made a breakthrough in the field of environmentally friendly materials. They have discovered a new way of producing plastic based on pine sap, which has become an alternative to fossil fuels. According to the main author of the study, Justin Kennemur, this is an important step towards the development of modern polymers and the creation of new materials. Synthe...

Food systems transformation a ‘silver lining’ in COVID crisis: UN deputy chief

2021-07-31 19:16 A sustainable and prosperous planet can only be achieved through working together and in solidarity, the UN Deputy Secretary-General said on Wednesday at the end of a major global food security meeting. Amina Mohammed was speaking during her closing press conference at the Food Systems Pre-Summit in Rome, Italy. ‘A silver lining’ More than 500 delegates from 108 countries attended in-person, while thou...

The relationship between primate brain size and the number of social contacts has not been confirmed

2021-07-30 19:05 Swedish researchers repeated the calculations of the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who revealed in 1992 the relationship between the number of friends and the size of the brain of humans and primates, and found no confirmation of his theory. "The theoretical basis on which the Dunbar number was derived turned out to be very shaky. The brains of other primate species process information quite differe...

Archaeologists have found out when people started using fire

2021-07-29 11:46 RIA Novosti. Scientists conducted a comparative analysis of the appearance of signs of fire breeding at the sites of ancient man and found out that almost everywhere it happened about 400 thousand years ago-much earlier than previously thought. In addition, the authors argue that our ancestors already had a system of communication and knowledge transfer by this time, otherwise it is impossible to explain th...

What is an artificial heart and how does it work?

2021-07-28 11:43 Medical technologies have reached such a high level that today surgeons are able to perform even heart transplant operations. But there are very few donor organs, which is why patients who need them have to wait for them for a long time and sometimes do not live up to this moment. To increase the chances of life, surgeons often transplant artificial organs to people: engineers have already come up with mech...

CERN scientists have refuted early confirmation of some deviations from the Standard Model

2021-07-27 11:16 Scientists of the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN, working as part of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have experimentally verified one of the fundamental principles of the Standard Model of particle physics — the so-called principle of the universality of the lepton flavor. And, the results obtained by scientists contradict earlier results obtained at the time at the...

New brain-like computing device simulates human learning

2021-07-26 17:03 Researchers have developed a brain-like computing device that is capable of learning by association.Similar to how famed physiologist Ivan Pavlov conditioned dogs to associate a bell with food, researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Hong Kong successfully conditioned their circuit to associate light with pressure.The research will be published April 30 in the journal Nature Communicati...

The wing bones of pterosaurs have shown their ability to fly since birth

2021-07-25 11:38 The first vertebrates that really learned to fly were pterosaurs, which resembled something between lizards and birds. They were also the largest animals that ever took to the air: the wingspan of the pterosaurs of Quetzalcoatl may have reached up to 15 meters. At the same time, they could fly, apparently, from birth, without requiring training, like birds. It is still not completely clear whether newborn ...

An albino opossum proves CRISPR works for marsupials, too

2021-07-24 11:19 CRISPR has been used to modify the genes of tomatoes, humans, and just about everything in between. Because of their unique reproductive biology and their relative rarity in laboratory settings, though, marsupials had eluded the CRISPR rush—until now. A team of researchers at Japan’s Riken Institute, a national research facility, have used the technology to edit the genes of a South American species of opo...

Why do quantum effects only occur on the atomic scale?

2021-07-23 14:00 In fact, quantum effects are not limited to the atomic scale alone. There are several examples of macroscopic quantum behavior. Quantum physics describes matter and energy as quantum wave functions, which sometimes act as waves and sometimes as particles, but are actually more complex entities than just waves or particles. In fact, every object in the universe (from atoms to stars) acts according to quantu...

Three-layer graphene with a magic angle may be a rare magnet-resistant superconductor

2021-07-22 14:11 Physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have observed signs of a rare type of superconductivity in a material called three-layer graphene, twisted at a magical angle. The researchers report that this material demonstrates superconductivity in surprisingly high magnetic fields of up to 10 Tesla, which is three times higher than what the material is predicted to withstand if it were a conventi...

The fossil revealed the way of life of the tiny ancestor of the dinosaur-Yermungandra

2021-07-21 20:55 A newly discovered 308 million-year-old finger-sized fossil provides tantalizing clues about tiny dinosaur-like creatures that may be the forerunners of modern reptiles. The new species is a micro-dinosaur. They were small, lizard-like animals that roamed the Earth long before the appearance of real dinosaurs. The discovery sheds light on the evolution of various groups of animals, including amphibians an...

Viruses that attack bacteria contribute to their evolution and transformation into " superbugs”

2021-07-20 10:24 For the first time in history, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have discovered that bacteriophages (or simply phages) – tiny viruses that attack bacteria – are the key to starting a rapid bacterial evolution leading to the emergence of treatment-resistant "superbugs". The researchers showed that, contrary to the dominant theory in the field of evolutionary microbiology, the...

Biologists Discover New Species of Glowing Pumpkin Toadlet

2021-07-19 21:43 The bright orange amphibian, which shines green under UV light, is different from other pumpkin toadlets due to its appearance and callPumpkin toadlets look exactly like what their name suggests. Less than half an inch-long, these tiny, orange frogs hop around the sweltering forests along Brazil’s Atlantic coast. But how many species of these frogs are there? The question isn’t just important to biology, bu...

Studies show that only 7% of our DNA is unique to modern people

2021-07-18 10:52 What makes people unique? Scientists have taken another step towards solving an enduring mystery with the help of a new tool that can allow us to more accurately compare the DNA of modern humans and our extinct ancestors. According to the study, only 7% of our genome is uniquely shared with other people and is not shared by other early ancestors. "This is a fairly small percentage," said Nathan Schaefer, ...

UN deputy chief warns of ‘hurricane of humanitarian crises’

2021-07-17 10:48 There is a “bloody surge” impacting humanitarian crises around the world, with civilians in conflict zones paying the highest price, the UN deputy chief told the Security Council on Friday. Briefing on behalf of the UN chief, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, painted a grim picture of civilian executions, arbitrary arrests, detentions, forced displacement and sexual violence against children, on a ma...

A cure for a heart attack from the deadly poison of spiders has been created

2021-07-16 14:55 RIA Novosti. Australian scientists have developed a drug that can save the lives of many people who have suffered a myocardial infarction. Interestingly, the drug is based on a substance contained in the venom of one of the deadliest spiders in the world — the funnel spider of Fraser Island. After a heart attack, blood flow to the heart decreases, which leads to a lack of oxygen in the heart muscle. Lack o...

Biologists have found a protein that slows the development of Alzheimer's disease

2021-07-15 11:37 Molecular biologists have discovered that the rate of development of Alzheimer's disease directly depends on how much of the immune system signal protein interleukin-3 is located in the brain tissues. The main sign and possible cause of the development of Alzheimer's disease is the accumulation of beta-amyloid protein inside brain cells. It is a fragment of the APP protein, which plays an important...

An ancient inhabitant of a cave in the Caucasus turned out to be a carrier of the gene of the modern Western Eurasian population

2021-07-14 12:18 An international team of scientists has identified DNA from the soil in a Georgian cave. Thanks to this, the researchers were able to restore the human genome at the age of 25 thousand years, without having any skeletal remains. The Satsurblia cave in the west of Georgia was inhabited by people in different periods of the Paleolithic. However, the remains of only one human individual were found in it, dati...

Match matters: The right combination of parents can turn a gene off indefinitely

2021-07-13 18:02 Evidence suggests that what happens in one generation--diet, toxin exposure, trauma, fear--can have lasting effects on future generations. Scientists believe these effects result from epigenetic changes that occur in response to the environment and turn genes on or off without altering the genome or DNA sequence. But how these changes are passed down through generations has not been understood, in part, be...

Engineers have put tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses into one small chip

2021-07-12 08:46 MIT engineers have developed a chip the size of a piece of confetti, which consists of tens of thousands of artificial brain synapses. The latter are also known as mac memristors, they simulate the process of transmitting information to the human brain, only it all happens on a small piece of metal. Information about the new development was published in the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology.The resea...

Reliable early warning systems for natural disasters will help prevent the death of 23 thousand people a year

2021-07-11 08:37 Improving weather forecasting mechanisms and strengthening early warning systems for dangerous climate events will help save the lives of approximately 23 thousand people a year and bring economic benefits in the amount of US $ 162 billion. This is stated in a new report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The first report on gaps in the field of hydrometeorology was published today. Its author...

For the first time, physicists managed to form a crystal consisting exclusively of electrons

2021-07-10 09:16 For the first time in the history of science, a group of researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) managed to form an exotic crystal consisting exclusively of electrons on the surface of a semiconductor material and observe it. With this achievement, they confirmed the theoretical forecast put forward about 90 years ago, in 1934, by Eugene Wigner, which throughout thi...

TSU has learned how to obtain foamed magnesium

2021-07-09 08:53 Scientists of Togliatti State University (TSU) have developed a unique method for producing porous materials from magnesium and its alloys. The Federal Service for Intellectual Property has issued a patent for the invention. Low weight and high strength, as well as excellent damping properties* are the main advantages of foam metals, which at the same time retain all the advantages of the source material. ...

Neanderthal artists? Our ancestors decorated bones over 50,000 years ago

2021-07-08 09:13 Since the discovery of the first fossil remains in the 19th century, the image of the Neanderthal has been one of a primitive hominin. People have known for a long time that Neanderthals were able to effectively fashion tools and weapons. But could they also make ornaments, jewellery or even art? A research team led by the University of Göttingen and the Lower Saxony State Office for Heritage has analysed a...

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