Dinosaurs could have used the feathers on their forelimbs and tails to rouse and chase their prey, suggest Professor Piotr Jabłoński and a team from Korea. To confirm this hypothesis, the researchers built a robot - Robopteryx that scares insects - and examined the neurons of grasshoppers.
There are indications that infections caused by SARS-CoV-2 appeared in Europe before the official start date of the pandemic, i.e. before the turn of 2020. This is evidenced by Polish research on the occurrence of excess mortality in over 900 regions of the continent in 2019.
In Southeast Asia, population growth and the demand for agricultural land are causing significant changes in biodiversity, resulting in an increasing epidemiological risk. This risk concerns viruses such as coronaviruses, bird flu virus, MERS, USUTU, Zika, dengue and malaria, says Dr. Aneta Afelt from the University of Warsaw.
The vast majority of wetlands in Poland and Europe have already been drained for various purposes. Meanwhile, draining peatlands and, for example, introducing forest in their place brings much lower economic benefits than rewetting them. A team of scientists with the participation of Polish researchers have shown that in Lithuania, rewetting drained forest peat bogs would bring profits of up to EUR 170 million per year.
The Joint European Torus (JET) in Oxford managed to achieve a thermonuclear reaction lasting five seconds with a record amount of energy produced. This is an important milestone on the path to fusion energy. More than 300 scientists associated with the EUROfusion consortium, including researchers from the Polish Institute of Plasma Physics and Laser Microfusion in Warsaw (IFPiLM), took part in the experiment, the results of which were presented last week.
Subjectively perceived social position is strongly related to health. The lower you assess your social status, the higher the risk of developing various diseases and the risk of death from various causes, a researcher from the University of Warsaw says.
A team of scientists, including Dr. Mariusz Gromadzki from the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw, has identified a previously unknown source of cosmic dust, the university reports. The dust was produced by the interaction of the matter ejected during a la supernova explosion with the surrounding circumstellar gas.
Polish scientists have discovered an over two-meter-long predatory armoured fish with an extremely elongated lower jaw in rock sediments from 365 million years ago in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains. The remains do not resemble any other animals from the Devonian.
Well-preserved DNA of several hundred species of bacteriophages from over a thousand years ago - viruses that infect bacteria - have been found in samples of human faeces and in the guts of an ancient mummy. It turns out that the genome of one of the species is almost the same as that of modern viruses. Why has the evolution of this species halted for so long?
Wrocław University of Science and Technology and two Polish companies have developed an ice battery that stores surplus energy in the form of cold energy - and releases it in the form of heat at a later time, for example when electricity is more expensive. The system can be used mainly by companies that need large amounts of heat energy.
Scientists have re-examined the remains of a prehistoric marine reptile found in the 20th century in the village of Załęcze Wielkie (Łódź province). This distant relative of modern crocodiles was about four metres long and had a visible jaw injury, which it probably suffered in the first years of its life.
