348 articles from WEDNESDAY 23.6.2021

NASA's Webb Telescope will use quasars to unlock the secrets of the early universe

Quasars are very bright, distant and active supermassive black holes that are millions to billions of times the mass of the Sun. Typically located at the centers of galaxies, they feed on infalling matter and unleash fantastic torrents of radiation. Among the brightest objects in the universe, a quasar's light outshines that of all the stars in its host galaxy combined, and its jets and winds...

Looking to the Clouds to Improve Climate Models for Earth and Other Planets

Portal origin URL: Looking to the Clouds to Improve Climate Models for Earth and Other PlanetsPortal origin nid: 471998Published: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 - 16:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: How do clouds contribute to climate patterns on Earth, as well as other planets like Saturn, Venus, and Mars?Portal image: Raven Aerostar’s Lightning...

Report: Climate change means less snow for Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park visitors hoping to see its world-renowned geysers, wolves and bears can expect warmer temperatures and less snow as climate change alters the park's environment, according to a report by U.S. and university researchers released Wednesday.

US beekeepers continue to report high colony loss rates, no clear improvement

Beekeepers across the United States lost 45.5% of their managed honey bee colonies from April 2020 to April 2021, according to preliminary results of the 15th annual nationwide survey conducted by the nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership (BIP). These losses mark the second highest loss rate the survey has recorded since it began in 2006 (6.1 percentage points higher than the average annual loss rate...

Researchers find 3,000-year-old shark attack victim

Newspapers regularly carry stories of terrifying shark attacks, but in a paper published today, Oxford-led researchers reveal their discovery of a 3,000-year-old victim—attacked by a shark in the Seto Inland Sea of the Japanese archipelago.

ATLAS experiment measures top quark polarization

Unique among its peers is the top quark—a fascinating particle that the scientific community has been studying in detail since the 90s. Its large mass makes it the only quark to decay before forming bound states (a process known as hadronisation) and gives it the strongest coupling to the Higgs boson. Theorists predict it may also interact strongly with new particles—if it does, the Large...

Being Anglo-Saxon was a matter of language and culture, not genetics

Archaeologists have provided important new evidence to answer the question 'who exactly were the Anglo-Saxons?' New findings based on studying skeletal remains clearly indicates the Anglo-Saxons were a melting pot of people from both migrant and local cultural groups and not one homogenous group from Western Europe.

Dieting and its effect on the gut microbiome

Researchers were able to show for the first time that a very low calorie diet significantly alters the composition of the microbiota present in the human gut. The researchers report that dieting results in an increase of specific bacteria - notably Clostridioides difficile, which is associated with antibiotic-induced diarrhea and colitis.

Odd smell: Flies sniff ammonia in a way new to science

The stink of ammonia in urine, sweat, and rotting meat repels humans, but many insects find ammonia alluring. Now, UConn researchers have figured out how the annoying insects smell it, a discovery that could lead to better ways to make them buzz off.

Wild bees need deadwood in the forest

How many tree species are there in the forest? How are the trees scattered throughout? How high are the individual tree crowns? Are there fallen trees or hollowed-out tree trunks? Forest scientists characterize forests according to structural factors. "Structural richness is very important for biodiversity in forests. But forests used for forestry are generally poor in terms of structure," says...