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Archaeologists have discovered an 1800-year-old Teotihuacan-style citadel in Tikal

2021-10-04 11:24 Using LiDAR data, archaeologists from Brown University and the University of Texas at Austin have discovered that what has long been considered an area of natural hills in the classic Mayan city of Tikal, in Guatemala. In fact, the area turned out to be the site of destroyed buildings that were designed to look like the Ciudadela and the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in the imperial capital of Teotihuacan...

Scientists have discovered the connection of bowel cancer with oral bacteria

2021-10-03 10:24 The results of a study by Irish scientists suggest that there is a direct link between the presence of Fusobacterium nucleatum bacteria in the intestine, which usually live in the oral cavity, and the spread of colorectal cancer. Researchers from the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland (RCSI) together with colleagues from Queen's University in Belfast analyzed more than 600 samples of cancer tumors of ...

Startups, awards and new research: youth-led World Food Forum kicks off

2021-10-02 11:57 The first World Food Forum, a youth-led event aimed at harnessing the energy and creativity of young people, and featuring speeches from Heads of State and senior UN officials, opened on Friday. Streaming virtually, from Rome, the goal of the five-day event is to transform food and agriculture and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 2 "No hunger". Pope Francis joined ...

Two new species of large predatory dinosaur discovered on Isle of Wight

2021-10-01 18:03 A new study led by palaeontologists at the University of Southampton suggests that bones found on the Isle of Wight belong to two new species of spinosaurid, a group of predatory theropod dinosaurs closely related to the giant Spinosaurus. Their unusual, crocodile-like skulls helped the group expand their diets, allowing them hunt prey on both land and in the water. The haul of bones was discovered on the ...

Food waste: a global problem that undermines healthy diets

2021-09-30 09:17 A lack of food, hunger and malnutrition affect every country in the world, the UN said on Tuesday, in an urgent appeal for action to reduce the amount of food that’s wasted. The call comes as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that 17 per cent of all food available to consumers in 2019, ended up being thrown away. An additional 132 million people face food and nutrition insecurity today bec...

Physicists for the first time managed to create a vortex atomic beam - a swirling "tornado" of helium atoms

2021-09-29 16:58 For the first time in the history of science, physicists have managed to create a vortex atomic beam, a kind of swirling "tornado" of atoms and molecules, with some amazing quantum properties that have yet to be studied in the near future. In the experiment, a direct beam of helium atoms directed into space through a tiny hole of a certain shape, due to the influence of strange laws of quantum mechanics, wa...

Paleontologists have identified well-preserved dinosaur cells

2021-09-28 19:02 Chinese scientists have isolated perfectly preserved cartilage cells from a 125 million-year-old dinosaur. They contain nuclei with remnants of organic molecules and chromatin. Such studies, according to scientists, bring science closer to sequencing the DNA of ancient "lizards". The preservation of cell nuclei in long-extinct organisms is considered a rare and exceptional phenomenon. Due to the fragility ...

Vanadium for metallurgy can become more accessible and cheaper

2021-09-27 10:37 Russian and Belarusian scientists have developed a waste-free method for extracting vanadium, a metal widely used in metallurgy to increase the strength of alloys, from sulfuric acid production waste. The new technology will allow to extract up to 98% of the vanadium contained in such waste. Its implementation at enterprises, according to developers, will cost 120-125 thousand US dollars, and will pay off i...

Immune cells in the brain share the work

2021-09-26 10:44 To break down toxic proteins more quickly, immune cells in the brain can join together to form networks when needed. This is shown by a joint study of the University of Bonn, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and the Institut François Jacob in France. However, in certain mutations that can cause Parkinson's disease, this cooperation is impaired. The findings are published in the re...

The age of human footprints found in the United States exceeds 20 thousand years

2021-09-25 17:57 In the White Sands National Park in New Mexico, archaeologists have discovered ancient human footprints, the age of which ranges from 21,000 to 23,000 years. Thus, the footprints became the earliest evidence of human presence in America. 61 human footprints were found in ancient lake sediments. There were also traces of dogs and proboscis mammals. The researchers determined that the human footprints belong...

New optical ‘transistor’ to speed up computation up to 1,000 times, at lowest switching energy possible

2021-09-24 10:59 An international research team led by Skoltech and IBM has created an extremely energy-efficient optical switch that could replace electronic transistors in a new generation of computers manipulating photons rather than electrons. In addition to direct power saving, the switch requires no cooling and is really fast: At 1 trillion operations per second, it is between 100 and 1,000 times faster than today’s t...

An international competition of scientific research works

2021-09-23 13:49 We invite you to take part in the international competition of research works dedicated to 310th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov, "Science creating the future". The competition is organized and conducted by the scientific and educational center "Science Idea". The competition is open to pupils of schools and organizations of additional education, students of organizations of secon...

Scientists have learned about the abnormal conformational states of DNA molecules

2021-09-22 16:17 An unexpected conclusion about the abnormal conformational states of DNA molecules on the surface of charged monomolecular films and their fundamental differences from the strictly periodic conformation of the double helix in the volume of the solution was made in a work carried out jointly by scientists from the Russian Federation and the United States, five of whom are graduates of MIPT. The obtained resu...

European leaders intend to transfer their citizens to bicycles

2021-09-21 11:59 The number of cyclists and bike rides in Europe is set to double by 2030. This is the opinion of representatives of 56 countries that have signed the Pan-European Plan to Promote Cycling. A two-day high-level meeting on transport, health and the environment ends in Vienna on Tuesday. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how important mobility is in our lives. However, the dependence on cars, the limited open pu...

The microbial molecule that turns plants into zombies

2021-09-20 11:21 A newly discovered manipulation mechanism used by parasitic bacteria to slow down plant aging, may offer new ways to protect disease-threatened food crops. Parasites manipulate the organisms they live off to suit their needs, sometimes in drastic ways. When under the spell of a parasite, some plants undergo such extensive changes that they are described as “zombies”. They stop reproducing and serve only as...

Ground-breaking bacteria-killing viruses unite with antibiotics to fight devastating antibiotic-resistant bacteria

2021-09-19 11:35 Mycobacterium abscessus, a relative of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis and leprosy, is responsible for particularly severe damage to human lungs and can be resistant to many standard antibiotics, making infections extremely challenging to treat. However, there is hope. Bacteria are vulnerable to naturally occurring viruses, called bacteriophages; for every species of bacteria, there is a unique bacteri...

77 million children have spent 18 months out of class: #ReopenSchools, urges UNICEF

2021-09-18 21:19 The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says the world is facing an education crisis due to the COVID pandemic, that has left nearly 77 million children shut out of the classroom for the past 18 months. This Thursday, the UN agency is closing down its social media channels for the next 18 hours to send one message to the world: #ReopenSchools for in-person learning as soon as possible. The UN Educational, Scie...

Copernicus: Southern Hemisphere ozone hole surpasses size of Antarctica

2021-09-17 20:02 The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service is having a close eye on the Antarctic region to monitor the development of this year´s ozone hole over the South Pole, which has now reached an extent larger than Antarctica. After a pretty standard start, the 2021 ozone hole has considerably grown in the last week and is now larger than 75 % of ozone holes at that stage in the season since 1979. Scientists fro...

The extinction of the dinosaurs helped the snakes to flourish

2021-09-16 12:23 The transition from the Cretaceous Period to the Paleogene was marked by the loss of approximately 76 percent of all species that inhabited the Earth, as well as 80 percent of plants. Studies have shown that the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which occurred about 66 million years ago, coincided with the impact of an asteroid that formed the Chicxulub crater in Mexico. It caused a tsunami and the rel...

New fluorescent nanoparticles to contribute to medical diagnostic testing with contrast

2021-09-15 20:34 Phosphors are substances that can radiate light when exposed to UV rays, electromagnetic field or a different disturbing action. Today, these materials are used in lamps and LEDs (for example, in electric appliances of everyday use), evacuation and fire alarm systems. They are also used to produce paints and pigments, secure value documents, and conduct medical research. Thus, the synthesised substance will...

Synaptic transmission: Not a one-way street

2021-09-14 22:42 Key synapse acts as a “smart teacher”, sending messages against the usual flow of information in the brain. – Paper published in Nature Communications When neuroscientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria analyzed the exact properties of nerve connections in the brain, they made a startling observation: At a key connection, or synapse, messages are sent against the usual stream of i...

"Laser twist": chemists have discovered a potential drug-a compound that changes its activity under the influence of light

2021-09-13 22:16 Scientists from St. Petersburg State University together with colleagues from the St. Petersburg Research Center for Environmental Safety of the Russian Academy of Sciences have discovered a new organic compound from the group of thiazolotriazoles that changes its activity under the influence of light. It is an inhibitor of a key enzyme of the nervous system-cholinesterase, which is involved in the work of ...

GWEC: China surpasses the whole world in the construction of wind farms for the 3rd year in a row

2021-09-12 11:09 In today’s Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB): 6.1 GW of global offshore wind was installed in 2020, down slightly from a record 6.24 GW in 2019. More than half of the world’s fossil fuels have to stay buried to slow global warming. UnderstandSolar is a free service that links you to top-rated solar installers in your region for personalized solar estimates. Tesla now offers price matching, so it’s impor...

It turned out what were the environmental conditions of the first people in Europe

2021-09-11 17:52 Understanding the conditions under which the first humans settled from Africa to Europe during the early and Middle Pleistocene is important for studying human evolution. Scientists from the universities of Helsinki (Finland), Granada and Barcelona, Seville, Salamanca (Spain) decided to learn more about this issue. The researchers studied the distribution of dental ecometric features in fossil communities ...

Canadian paleontologists have described an ancient arthropod half a meter long

2021-09-10 12:36 Paleontologists have described the largest Cambrian hurdiid radiodont known so far, named Titanokorys gainesi, from the Burgess Shale, British Columbia, Canada. Radiodonts, a group of primitive arthropods that evolved during the Cambrian explosion, were among the largest and most diversified Paleozoic predators. These animals were widespread geographically, occupying a variety of ecological niches, from b...

A new predatory dinosaur – Kurupi itaata-has been discovered in Brazil

2021-09-09 19:21 Paleontologists in Brazil have found fragments of fossils of a new species of theropod dinosaurs that lived on Earth during the Cretaceous period. The newly discovered dinosaur lived in what is now southeastern Brazil about 70 million years ago (the Late Cretaceous era). Named Kurupi itaata, this species was a species of abelisaurid, a group of bipedal predators that thrived on the ancient southern superc...

Targeting the gut to relieve rheumatoid arthritis

2021-09-08 20:47 UCL researchers have shown that damage to the lining of the gut plays an important role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis, paving the way for a new approach to treating the disease.In the pre-clinical study, which used mouse models and patient samples, the research team propose that restoration of the gut-barrier could offer a new therapeutic approach to reducing the severity of Rheumatoid arthriti...

Improving air quality ‘key’ to confronting global environmental crises

2021-09-07 10:43 With environmental events becoming increasingly interconnected, a new global report on air pollution published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday underscores that improved air quality is “key to tackling the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste”. “Yet, air quality continues to deteriorate despite the increase in laws and regulations seeking t...

A mini-system of genetic editing CRISPR has been developed

2021-09-06 17:23 Bioengineers have repurposed the CRISPR system to make a smaller version of the genomic engineering tool. Its small size should facilitate delivery to cells, tissues and the human body for gene therapy. The general definition of CRISPR gene editing systems is that they work like molecular scissors, cutting out selected sections of DNA. However, many different CRISPR systems that are used or are undergoing...

Russian scientists have synthesized a material with the properties of a quantum liquid

2021-09-05 21:12 Russian scientists have managed to obtain a new material that, when cooled to low temperatures, demonstrates the properties of a spin liquid – a special magnetic state of matter in which the spins of individual atoms do not freeze even at temperatures close to absolute zero. Materials with the properties of a spin liquid can be used in quantum technologies based on the entanglement of wave functions of ind...

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