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...

East Antarctic summer cooling trends caused by tropical rainfall clusters

Our planet is warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, but the warming differs from region to region, and it can also vary seasonally. Over the last four decades, scientists have observed a persistent austral summer cooling on the eastern side of Antarctica. This puzzling feature has received world-wide attention, because it is not far away from one of the well-known global warming...

Pandemic air quality due to weather, not just lockdowns

Headlines proclaiming COVID lockdowns drastically reduced pollution were mostly referring to nitrogen dioxide, NO2, a reactive gas emitted from burning fuel. There had been less understanding of how lockdowns affected PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that can penetrate a person's lungs, leading to a host of health problems, including increased risk for heart attack and cancer.

NASA Helps Map Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Harmful Air Pollution

Portal origin URL: NASA Helps Map Impact of COVID-19 Lockdowns on Harmful Air PollutionPortal origin nid: 472006Published: Wednesday, June 23, 2021 - 14:00Featured (stick to top of list): noPortal text teaser: For tiny airborne-particle pollution, known as PM 2.5, researchers using NASA data found that variability from meteorology obscured the lockdown signals when...

Greater Yellowstone area expected to become warmer, drier

Temperature has significantly increased and snowfall decreased in the iconic Greater Yellowstone Area since 1950 because of climate change, and these trends will likely continue through the rest of the century, according to a climate report published today.

Cat-born parasite Toxoplasma induces fatally bold behavior in hyena cubs

Best known for its presence in house cats and a tendency to infect and alter the behaviors of rodents and humans, the parasite Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) is also associated with bold behavior among wild hyena cubs and risk of death during interactions with lions, finds new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.

'Lady Luck': Does anthropomorphized luck drive risky financial behavior?

A new study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research posits that increased accessibility to anthropomorphized luck (i.e., "Lady Luck") can lead consumers to be more likely to pursue higher-risk financial behavior. In "Lady Luck: Anthropomorphized Luck Creates Perceptions of Risk-Sharing and Drives Pursuit of Risky Alternatives," authors Katina Kulow, Thomas Kramer, and...

These sea anemones eat ants

The giant plumose anemone is an animal, but it looks a bit like an underwater cauliflower. Its body consists of a stalk-like column that attaches to rocks and other surfaces on one end, and to a crown of tentacles on the other.

Tiny ancient bird from China shares skull features with Tyrannosaurus rex

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered a 120-million-year-old partial fossil skeleton of a tiny extinct bird that fits in the palm of the hand and preserves a unique skull with a mix of dinosaurian and bird features.

Addressing inequity in air quality

Air quality varies greatly within regions and cities around the world, and exposure to air pollution can have severe health impacts. In the U.S., people of color are disproportionately exposed to poor air quality. A cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, highlights how scientists and community activists are using new technologies to...

Machine learning aids earthquake risk prediction

Our homes and offices are only as solid as the ground beneath them. When that solid ground turns to liquid—as sometimes happens during earthquakes—it can topple buildings and bridges. This phenomenon is known as liquefaction, and it was a major feature of the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, a magnitude 6.3 quake that killed 185 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Use of additional data improves regional weather forecasts

Modern weather forecasts rely heavily on data retrieved from numerical weather prediction models. These models continue to improve and have advanced considerably throughout more than half a century. However, forecast reliability depends on the quality and accuracy of initialization data, or a sample of the current global atmosphere when the model run is started. This process of bringing surface...

10 keys to integrating health into urban and transport planning

As much as 20% of premature mortality can be attributed to poor urban and transport planning. Nevertheless, quantitative indicators to guide the integration of health components into urban design have been lacking. To address this gap, a team from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center supported by the 'la Caixa' Foundation, has identified 10 principles—and corresponding...

The origins of farming insects

A beetle bores a tree trunk to build a gallery in the wood in order to protect its lay. As it digs the tunnel, it spreads ambrosia fungal spores that will feed the larvae. When these bore another tree, the adult beetles will be the transmission vectors of the fungal spores in another habitat. This mutualism among insects and ambrosia fungi could be more than 100 million years old—more than what...