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31 articles from PhysOrg

Pablo Escobar's hippos may help counteract a legacy of extinctions

When cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar was shot dead in 1993, the four hippos he brought to his private zoo in Colombia were left behind in a pond on his ranch. Since then, their numbers have grown to an estimated 80-100, and the giant herbivores have made their way into the country's rivers. Scientists and the public alike have viewed Escobar's hippos as invasive pests that by no rights should run...

Researchers investigate how squid communicate in the dark

In the frigid waters 1,500 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of human-sized Humboldt squid feed on a patch of finger-length lantern fish. Zipping past each other, the predators move with exceptional precision, never colliding or competing for prey.

New 3-D view of methane tracks sources

NASA's new 3-dimensional portrait of methane concentrations shows the world's second largest contributor to greenhouse warming, the diversity of sources on the ground, and the behavior of the gas as it moves through the atmosphere. Combining multiple data sets from emissions inventories, including fossil fuel, agricultural, biomass burning and biofuels, and simulations of wetland sources into a...

New genetic editing powers discovered in squid

Revealing yet another super-power in the skillful squid, scientists have discovered that squid massively edit their own genetic instructions not only within the nucleus of their neurons, but also within the axon—the long, slender neural projections that transmit electrical impulses to other neurons. This is the first time that edits to genetic information have been observed outside of the...

Is Niagara Falls a barrier against fish movement?

New research shows that fishes on either side of Niagara Falls—one of the most powerful waterfalls in the world—are unlikely to breed with one another. Knowing how well the falls serves as a barrier to fish movement is essential to conservation efforts to stop the spread of invasive aquatic species causing ecological destruction in the Great Lakes. The study is published today in the journal...

Novel MOF is potential next-gen semiconductor

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are emerging multi-functional materials that are gradually finding their way out of the research labs and into a myriad of real-world applications. For example, MOFs can store dangerous gasses, catalyze chemical reactions, deliver drugs in controlled fashion, and may even be used in rechargeable batteries and solar cells.

Ultrafast and broadband perovskite photodetectors for large-dynamic-range imaging

A solution-processed broadband photodetector based on organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite and organic bulk heterojunction has been demonstrated, achieving broadband response spectra up to 1000 nm with a high EQE in the NIR region, an ultrafast response speed of 5.6 ns and a wide linear dynamic range of 191 dB. Encouragingly, due to the high-dynamic-range imaging capacity, high-quality visible-NIR...

Time symmetry and the laws of physics

If three or more objects move around each other, history cannot be reversed. That is the conclusion of an international team of researchers based on computer simulations of three black holes orbiting each other. The researchers, led by the Dutch astronomer Tjarda Boekholt, publish their findings in the April issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Evidence for broken time-reversal symmetry in a topological superconductor

Chiral superconductors are unconventional superconducting materials with distinctive topological properties, in which time-reversal symmetry is broken. Two of the first materials to be identified as chiral superconductors are UPt3 and Sr2RuO4. So far, experimental evidence for broken time-reversal symmetry in both these materials was based primarily on surface measurements collected at a magnetic...

The fight to save Europe's olive trees from disease

A plant disease spread by sap-sucking insects has been devastating olive and fruit orchards across southern Europe, but scientists are inching closer to halting its spread with the help of insect repelling clays, vegetative barriers and genetic analysis.

Supermassive black holes shortly after the Big Bang: How to seed them

They are billions of times larger than our Sun: how is it possible that, as recently observed, supermassive black holes were already present when the Universe, now 14 billion years old, was "just" 800 million years old? For astrophysicists, the formation of these cosmic monsters in such a short time is a real scientific headache, which raises important questions on the current knowledge of the...

Researchers demonstrate the missing link for a quantum internet

A quantum internet could be used to send unhackable messages, improve the accuracy of GPS, and enable cloud-based quantum computing. For more than twenty years, dreams of creating such a quantum network have remained out of reach in large part because of the difficulty to send quantum signals across large distances without loss.

Study: Climatic-niche evolution strikingly similar in plants and animals

Given the fundamental biological differences in plants and animals, previous research proposed that plants may have broader environmental tolerances than animals, but are more sensitive to climate. However, a recent study has found that there are actually "general rules" of climatic-niche evolution that span plants and animals.