- PhysOrg
- 20/5/1 22:49
Virgin Galactic's spaceship VSS Unity landed in the New Mexico desert on Friday, marking its first glide flight from Spaceport America as the company moves toward commercial operations.
Virgin Galactic's spaceship VSS Unity landed in the New Mexico desert on Friday, marking its first glide flight from Spaceport America as the company moves toward commercial operations.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a stark reminder that we move through a world shaped by unseen life. Bacteria, viruses, and other microscopic organisms regulate the Earth's vital functions and resources, from the air we breathe to all our food and most of our energy sources. An estimated one-third of the Earth's microbes are literally hidden, buried in sediments deep below the ocean floor. Now,...
More than a thousand years ago, people from across the Southeast regularly traveled to a small island on Florida's Gulf Coast to bond over oysters, likely as a means of coping with climate change and social upheaval.
Army researchers predict quantum computer circuits that will no longer need extremely cold temperatures to function could become a reality after about a decade.
NASA and SpaceX on Friday urged spectators to stay home for the first home launch of astronauts in nearly a decade because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Plastic gives us a lightweight, strong and inexpensive material to use, but it has also caused the plastic apocalypse. Much of the unrecycled plastic waste ends up in the ocean, Earth's last sink. Broken down by waves, sunlight and marine animals, a single plastic bag can become 1.75 million microplastic fragments. Those microplastics might finally end up in our bodies through the fish we eat or...
Mars had a global magnetic field much earlier—and much later—in the planet's history than scientists have previously known.
The first step in many light-driven chemical reactions, like the ones that power photosynthesis and human vision, is a shift in the arrangement of a molecule's electrons as they absorb the light's energy. This subtle rearrangement paves the way for everything that follows and determines how the reaction proceeds.
Native bees that boost food crops are in decline but changing fire management policies could help them.
A team of researchers has developed a portable, more environmentally friendly method to produce hydrogen peroxide. It could enable hospitals to make their own supply of the disinfectant on demand and at lower cost.
The rapid spread of COVID-19 has changed the way most of the world moves through daily life, with many businesses having to temporarily close and students of all levels forced to transition to online courses.
When Jamie Bolker started teaching composition at MacMurray College in January, she felt she'd won the lottery. After sending out more than 140 resumes, she had a tenure-track position in English.
Crystals can be made artificially but a lot of energy is used to melt the ingredients together, and this can make them expensive. This problem can be overcome by using appropriate solvents. Called the flux method, crystals are grown in a crucible that contains solvents that allow the crystal to form with less energy because dissolution will happen more easily. Imagine having table salt and wanting...
An 4.5-magnitude earthquake shook central Bulgaria on Friday but there were no reports of any injuries or damage.
Researchers at EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), the University of Dundee and the Wellcome Sanger Institute analysed over 2700 genomes from C. elegans worms in order to better understand the causes of mutations. Their findings, published today in Nature Communications, characterise how DNA mutations result from the combined action of DNA damage and inaccurate DNA repair...
Scientists have been able to observe the universe and determine that about 80% of the its mass appears to be "dark matter," which exerts a gravitational pull but does not interact with light, and thus can't be seen with telescopes. Our current understanding of cosmology and nuclear physics suggests that dark matter could be made of axions, hypothetical particles with unusual symmetry properties.
A study of deforestation in Colombia by researchers from The University of Queensland has revealed some valuable insights which could be used to help slow deforestation in areas around the globe.
Salk and Scripps Research Institute scientists, along with collaborators at the pharmaceutical company Lundbeck, identified two genes that can regulate levels of healthy fats, called FAHFAs, in mice. The team found that the loss of the two genes led to higher-than-normal levels of the beneficial FAHFAs, while blocking the genes' activity with an experimental drug also increased FAHFA levels.
In regenerative medicine, an ideal treatment for patients whose muscles are damaged from lack of oxygen would be to invigorate them with an injection of their own stem cells.
The coronavirus pandemic has set off a global gardening boom.
Governors around the country are attempting to restart the economy by easing restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The prospect of returning to "normal" amid a pandemic has businesses lobbying Congress to grant them sweeping immunity from civil liability for failure to adequately protect workers and customers from infection.
Researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, part of The University of Tokyo, and Yokohama City University have introduced novel color-changing organic crystals that spontaneously return to their original shape and hue after being stressed, a property they call superelastochromism. These materials can be used to make sensors for shear forces to monitor locations susceptible to damage.
Reproduction can be risky. In the case of katydids, some hunting bats eavesdrop on male mating calls to locate the insects, but little is known about the risk to mates as they move toward each other. A recent study by scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and collaborating institutions explores the hunting behavior of a Neotropical bat, asking whether prey movement adds...
The aggregation of proteins in amyloid structure, a process described in mammals and fungus and bacteria, is implied in about 36 human diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and type 2 diabetes. Most of the amyloid fibres are known for their ability to bind Congo-red, regarded a specific marker of amyloid structures. This adds a great value to the compound Congo-Red, since it...
A study published this week in Scientific Reports by researchers from Macquarie University Applied BioSciences reveals that Queensland Fruit Fly (Q-fly) can detect the presence of potential predators by smell. Incredibly, the study also found that Q-fly modify their behavior based upon this detection, adopting predator-specific responses.