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Scientists have discovered flying skyrmions

2021-11-03 11:09 Topological optics and topological photonics have become "hot" fields of science since the 1980s after singularities in magnetic fields were discovered. And the relatively recent Nobel Prize, awarded for the discovery and study of topological features in condensed matter physics, has further spurred the interest of the scientific community, because all this opens up prospects for the implementation of non-t...

Chemists of St. Petersburg State University synthesized the smallest nanoparticles for the determination of heavy metal ions in water

2021-11-02 10:56 Scientists of St. Petersburg State University, together with specialists from Sirius University and the Academic University, have created the smallest nanoparticles of metal-organic polymers that will determine the content of heavy metals in water. Metal-organic polymers, or metal-organic framework structures (MOX), are compounds in which metal ions are interconnected by organic linker molecules. Using dif...

New method maps brain activity despite uncertainties in patient head structure

2021-11-01 10:50 Skoltech researchers have proposed a method for interpreting brain activity data that proved to be up to five times more accurate than the conventionally used technique in cases when MRI data contained artifacts or only a low-resolution head model was available. Reported in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, the findings are of use for treating drug-resistant epilepsy and understanding cognitive processe...

Studies of fossils show how tusks evolved — they originated in "very strange animals" called dicynodonts

2021-10-31 14:51 Most people imagine an elephant when they think of animals with tusks. But many other animals have tusks, including warthogs, hippos, Arctic walruses and even a guinea pig-like animal called a daman. Although the size of animals and their canines may vary, they all have one thing in common: they are found only in mammals. Fish, reptiles or birds with fangs are unknown. Despite the fact that this is an iconi...

For the first time, nuclear reactions occurring in the bowels of supernovae were reproduced in laboratory conditions

2021-10-30 17:57 One of the most important unresolved issues of modern science is the determination of the sources of origin of some of the chemical elements heavier than iron. This applies to about 30 elements with so-called "p-nuclei", which account for about one percent of the total number of heavy elements in the Solar System, but whose astrophysical origin remains a mystery. Due to the fact that, for a number of unders...

Sharpest images ever reveal the patchy face of living bacteria

2021-10-29 17:42 The sharpest images ever of living bacteria have been recorded by UCL researchers, revealing the complex architecture of the protective layer that surrounds many bacteria and makes them harder to be killed by antibiotics. The study, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA and done in collaboration with scientists at National Physical Laboratory, King’s College Lond...

Only ‘real equality’ can end vicious cycle of poverty

2021-10-28 10:59 Although poverty and privilege “continue to reproduce themselves in vicious cycles”, it is possible to break the chain and shift the paradigm, an independent UN human rights expert told the General Assembly on Wednesday. Presenting his report, The persistence of poverty: how real equality can break the vicious cycle, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Shutter, said that “wi...

Japan drone maker's flying motorcycle to hit the skies next year

2021-10-27 19:26 OYAMA, Japan -- On a nearly empty racetrack in the foothills of Mt. Fuji, a Tokyo-based drone startup unveiled its vision for the future of transport: a flying motorcycle able to hit speeds of up to 100kph. In a scene straight out of a sci-fi film, the driver fired up the Xturismo, which rose several meters off the ground and cruised along the track for about a minute and a half. Reporters and guests -- al...

‘No time to lose’ curbing greenhouse gases: WMO

2021-10-26 12:16 Last year, heat-trapping greenhouse gases reached a new record, surging above the planet's 2011-2020 average, and has continued in 2021, according to a new report published on Monday by the UN weather agency.The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin contains a “stark, scientific message” for climate change negotiations at the upcoming UN climate conference, known as COP26, in Glasg...

Fossil fuel production ‘dangerously out of sync’ with climate change targets

2021-10-25 15:04 Despite increased climate ambition and net-zero commitments, governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of energy from fossil fuels in 2030, than the amount that would limit global warming to the Paris Agreement level of 1.5°C. That’s according to the 2021 Production Gap Report, released this Wednesday by leading research institutes and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).Over the next tw...

Humans did not cause woolly mammoths to go extinct -- climate change did

2021-10-24 11:15 For five million years, woolly mammoths roamed the earth until they vanished for good nearly 4,000 years ago – and scientists have finally proved why. The hairy cousins of today’s elephants lived alongside early humans and were a regular staple of their diet – their skeletons were used to build shelters, harpoons were carved from their giant tusks, artwork featuring them is daubed on cave walls, and 30,000...

Uridine turned out to be a promising remedy for coronary heart disease

2021-10-23 11:53 Scientists from the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Experimental Medicine used uridine (pyrimidine nucleoside, an RNA component) to protect rat myocardial tissue from ischemic and reperfusion damage and identified a possible mechanism of its protective action. Cardiovascular diseases have been the main cause of death in most count...

Wake up T cells. A New Approach to Cancer Immunotherapy

2021-10-22 12:36 Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a new way to get the immune system to attack a patient's tumors. To do this, they remove tumor cells from the body, expose them to chemotherapy drugs, and then return them back to the tumor. After that, the patient's own T cells are activated, which begin to destroy the tumor.Immunotherapy is a promising cancer treatment strategy by st...

Chemists from St. Petersburg State University have discovered a compound that can "turn on" under the action of a laser

2021-10-21 12:26 Scientists from St. Petersburg State University, together with researchers from the St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Research Center for Environmental Safety of the Russian Academy of Sciences, have developed a new organic compound, the biological activity of which is increased under the influence of a laser. The created phosphonate will allow a more accurate...

The brain does not look for the shortest path when planning a route

2021-10-20 11:47 Scientists at MIT have found that our brains are not optimized to find the shortest route. Instead, he chooses the path that most accurately indicates the final direction. For a computer, route planning is one of the most computationally complex tasks, but humans cope with it surprisingly efficiently, and on different scales. However, observations show that the routes that a person chooses systematically d...

Photosynthesizing Microorganisms Can Produce Oxygen in Brain Blood Vessels of Tadpoles

2021-10-19 12:47 Biologists at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich have developed a method that allows tadpoles of African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis) to ‘breathe’ by introducing green algae or cyanobacteria into their bloodstream to supply oxygen. The team’s method provides enough oxygen to effectively rescue neurons in the brains of oxygen-deprived tadpoles. “The algae actually produced so much oxygen that they co...

Ancestors of primates and marsupials left trees to survive the late Cretaceous extinction

2021-10-18 18:55 The mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous 66 million years ago was characterized by a worldwide ecological catastrophe and a rapid turnover of species. Arboreal (tree-dwelling) species were particularly at risk of extinction due to the large-scale destruction of the forest environment caused by wildfires from the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid. A new study by scientists at Cornell and Cambridge Un...

The Gulf Stream and Kuroshio currents are synchronized on a ten-year scale

2021-10-17 11:16 Scientists have found that the ocean currents of the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio are synchronized on a ten-year time scale. In a paper published in the journal Science, the group describes a study of decades of satellite weather data and the relationship between two ocean currents.The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and extends beyond the southern tip of Florida. It then follo...

With clock ticking, sustainable transport key to Global Goals

2021-10-16 10:10 From electric cars and buses to zero-carbon producing energy sources, new and emerging technologies along with innovative policy changes, are critical for combating climate change. But to be effective, they must ensure that transport strategies benefit everyone, including the poorest, according to a new UN multi-agency report launched on Tuesday. The “clock is ticking on our 2030 timeline” to achieve the S...

Ytterbium based infrared light source of record intensity

2021-10-15 10:09 Scientists from the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute with colleagues from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the A.N.Nesmeyanov Institute of Organoelement Compounds, the N.D.Zelinsky Institute of Organic Chemistry and the N.E. NS Kurnakov synthesized new materials based on the rare earth metal ytterbium. They are capable of emitting infrared light with record efficiency in response to exposure to ...

German transport drone carries up to 200 kg of cargo over a distance of 40 km

2021-10-14 10:03 The German company Volocopter has shown tests of a heavy cargo drone: it is capable of carrying 200 kg of cargo over 40 km.The first video of the VoloDrone cargo drone has been published, it has been developed since 2019. The drone was able to lift the box into the air to a height of 22 m and in three minutes moved it to the nearest parking lot.One full charge of the batteries is enough to transport a load ...

Antioxidants to prevent Alzheimer's disease

2021-10-13 14:50 A study by doctoral student Mohamed Raafet Ben Hedher and doctoral student Mohamed Haddad of the National Institute for Scientific Research (INRS) showed that an imbalance between oxidation and antioxidants in the blood is an early sign of Alzheimer's, not a consequence. This breakthrough, made by researchers led by Professor Charles Ramassa, paves the way for preventive intervention: antioxidant supple...

Deep Learning Helps Create Proteins with New Functions

2021-10-12 18:17 Protein engineering is a branch of biotechnology that deals with the search and creation of proteins with improved or completely new functions. One of the main experimental methods of protein engineering is directed evolution, in which a protein of interest to scientists passes through several cycles of mutagenesis and subsequent selection of successful variants. While this approach is effective, it does no...

Extinct Ground Sloth Mylodon Was Not a Vegetarian

2021-10-11 10:43 Today, all six living sloth species are relatively small plant-eating tree-dwellers. But a new study suggests that Mylodon—a giant ground sloth that lived in South America until about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago—was not a strict vegetarian, at times eating meat or other animal protein in addition to plants. “We now have strong evidence contradicting the long-standing presumption that all sloths were obligat...

The researchers announced the photon-phonon interaction

2021-10-10 10:20 A new study by a team of researchers at City College of New York has discovered a new way of combining two different states of matter. For the first time, topological photons - light - have been combined with lattice vibrations, also known as phonons, to reliably and controllably control their propagation.The study used topological photonics - a new direction in photonics, which uses the fundamental ideas o...

UNDP: inequality in living standards is largely determined by the ethnic factor

2021-10-09 17:30 The inequality in living standards among various racial, ethnic and religious groups in the modern world is much deeper than among residents of different geographic regions of the planet - this is evidenced by the results of the analysis of the level of “multidimensional poverty” published today. The Global Multidimensional Poverty Index, developed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the O...

Chemists have discovered the secret of underwater superglue shellfish

2021-10-08 19:41 Scientists from Canada and Germany have found that edible mussels use a two-component mixture of protein and metal ions to attach to pitfalls. The two components are fed into a microchannel system in the clam's leg, turning into a durable, waterproof glue. Some bivalve molluscs — in particular the edible mussels (Mytilus edulis) —are attached to a hard substrate with their feet. To do this, animals prod...

A volcano-induced rainy period made Earth’s climate dinosaur-friendly

2021-10-07 09:44 The biggest beasts to walk the Earth had humble beginnings. The first dinosaurs were cat-sized, lurking in the shadows, just waiting for their moment. That moment came when four major pulses of volcanic activity changed the climate in a geologic blink of an eye, causing a 2-million-year-long rainy spell that coincided with dinos rising to dominance, a new study suggests. Clues found in sediments buried dee...

Japanese Koma transformer exoskeleton is able to transform into a scooter

2021-10-06 19:14 The Japanese company Atoun, a subsidiary of Panasonic, has developed a futuristic exoskeleton that can transform into an elegant one... motocart. The robot suit called Koma 1.5 is designed to help the owner lift heavy objects, as well as ride on a relatively smooth surface in a factory or warehouse. In the motocart mode, the owner of the robot suit stands on two small platforms and rides on them as on a dua...

UN chief promotes 'enormous' benefits of greener cities

2021-10-05 19:08 For the UN Secretary-General, the benefits of making cities more environmentally friendly are “enormous”, and include reduced climate risk, more jobs, and better health and well-being. “City leadership in using green materials and constructing energy-efficient, resilient buildings powered by renewable energy, is essential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” said António Guterres in his message for World...

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