Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine.
After some four years probing Mars' interior, NASA's InSight lander will likely retire this summer as accumulated dust on its solar panels saps its power.
While the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine will be focuses of the World Economic Forum's gathering of business and government leaders, so too will climate change. It's captured the world's attention in unignorable and devastating ways.
Three rescued loggerhead turtles were released into the Mediterranean off Tunisia on Sunday, one with a tracking beacon glued to its shell to help researchers better protect the threatened species.
A partial skull that was discovered last summer by two kayakers in Minnesota will be returned to Native American officials after investigations determined it was about 8,000 years old.
The personal information of more than half a million Chicago Public Schools students and staff was compromised in a ransomware attack last December, but the vendor didn't report it to the district until last month, officials said.
When the pandemic forced schools into remote learning, Washington-area science teacher Rebecca Bushway set her students an ambitious task: design and build a low-cost lead filter that fixes to faucets and removes the toxic metal.
With only a test dummy aboard, Boeing's astronaut capsule pulled up and parked at the International Space Station for the first time Friday, a huge achievement for the company after years of false starts.
Gun-toting youths watch over a street in a Rio de Janeiro slum hit hard by drug trafficking, but walk a bit further and this rough area also boasts the largest urban vegetable garden in Latin America.
For over a decade, scientists have attempted to synthesize a new form of carbon called graphyne with limited success. That endeavor is now at an end, though, thanks to new research from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Optical imaging and characterization of weakly scattering phase objects, such as isolated cells, bacteria and thin tissue sections frequently used in biological research and medical applications, have been of significant interest for decades. Due to their optical properties, when these 'phase objects' are illuminated with a light source, the amount of scattered light is usually much less than the light directly passing through the specimen, resulting in a poor image contrast using traditional imaging methods. This low image contrast can be overcome using, for example, chemical stains or fluorescent tags. However, these external labeling or staining methods are often tedious, costly and involve toxic chemicals.
Information in computers is transmitted through semiconductors by the movement of electrons and stored in the direction of the electron spin in magnetic materials. To shrink devices while improving their performance—a goal of an emerging field called spin-electronics ("spintronics")—researchers are searching for unique materials that combine both quantum properties. Writing in Nature Materials, a team of chemists and physicists at Columbia finds a strong link between electron transport and magnetism in a material called chromium sulfide bromide (CrSBr).
An insightful cross-disciplinary team of University of Hawai'i (UH) at Manoa researchers, working for over a decade, published a study recently revealing that a key number of hours of darkness during the lunar cycle triggers mature "Hawaiian box jellyfish" (Alatina alata) to swim to leeward O'ahu shores to spawn.
Mysterious fast radio bursts release as much energy in one second as the Sun pours out in a year and are among the most puzzling phenomena in the universe. Now researchers at Princeton University, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have simulated and proposed a cost-effective experiment to produce and observe the early stages of this process in a way once thought to be impossible with existing technology.
Texas A&M University researchers Dr. Sam Noynaert and Fred Dupriest recently presented results from a geothermal project that drastically reduced well-completion times and drill bit changeouts to an audience of mostly petroleum drillers. The Department of Energy (DOE) funded the project, which improves geothermal drilling practices with physics-based instruction and oil and gas techniques to lower the high cost of drilling geothermal wells. The time and equipment saved suggests the oil industry should take note.
New research by a team of researchers at the NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Smart Materials Lab published today in the journal Nature Communications demonstrates that organic crystals, a new class of smart engineering materials, can serve as efficient and sustainable energy conversion materials for advanced technologies such as robotics and electronics.
Iraq's Lake Hamrin, a once-vast reservoir northeast of Baghdad that is the sole source of water for irrigation across Diyala province, has nearly dried out, a senior official said Friday.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a phenomenon responsible for transporting ocean heat northward through the Atlantic Ocean. This process significantly influences the Arctic and North Atlantic oceanic climate and the Eurasian continental climate. The corresponding cross-equatorial northward heat transport also determines the location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), affecting global energy and rainfall distribution. Changes in ocean net surface heat flux play an important role in modulating the variability of the AMOC and hence the regional and global climate. However, the spread of simulated surface heat fluxes is still large and AMOC underestimation is common, due to poorly represented dynamical processes involving multi-scale interactions within the model simulations.
Researchers from the B.S.R.C. "Alexander Fleming" in Greece have optimized a method to characterize DNA traces in honey, revealing the species that honeybees interact with. This collaborative work led by researcher Dr. Solenn Patalano allowed the monitoring of the variability of bee diets across the year, revealing bee microbiota in a non-invasive way, as well as identifying pathogenic species they are confronted by. The research study is published in the journal Molecular Ecology Resources and, while at an early exploratory stage, it may revolutionize the way we understand honeybee ecological niches
Unlike fictional laser swords, real laser beams do not interact with each other when they cross—unless the beams meet within a suitable material allowing for nonlinear light-matter interaction. In such a case, wave mixing can give rise to beams with changed colors and directions.
Soil fauna, especially termites, are essential for sustainable forest ecosystems and significantly influence soil quality. The community composition and activity density of termites can influence nutrient cycling and other ecological functions.
Billionaire Elon Musk arrived in Brazil Friday, announcing a project to bring internet access to schools in the Amazon and improve satellite monitoring of the rainforest.
Boeing's Starliner capsule was preparing to dock with the International Space Station Friday, in a high-stakes uncrewed test flight key to reviving the US aerospace giant's reputation after a series of failures.
In a stopgap measure to help struggling spring- and winter-run Chinook salmon spawn in the face of rising water temperatures and lower water levels due to climate change, state and federal wildlife officials in Northern California have begun trucking adult fish to cooler waters.
Hundreds of sick and dying California brown pelicans have recently been found across the Southern California region and are now being treated at various rescue centers along the coast, officials said.
In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, ESA, NASA and JAXA worked closely together to create an open-source platform, based on the Euro Data Cube, that used a wealth of data from Earth-observing satellites to document the worldwide changes happening to our society and the environment. Now, the COVID-19 Earth Observing Dashboard has been expanded to contain six new focus areas which offers a precise, objective and comprehensive view of our planet.
