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62 articles from PhysOrg

Persistent inequitable exposure to air pollution in Salt Lake County schools

Salt Lake County, Utah's air pollution varies over the year, and at times it is the worst in the United States. The geography traps winter inversions and summertime smog throughout the Salt Lake Valley, but underserved neighborhoods—and their schools—experience the highest concentrations. Previous research has shown pollution disparities using annual averages of PM 2.5 levels, the tiny...

Online romance scams: A modern form of fraud

Over the last 20 years, the rapid development of digital communication technology has given rise to new forms of social interaction on social media. Digital communication technologies can overcome physical, social and psychological barriers in building romantic relationships. Around 1400, dating sites/chats have been created over the last decade in North America alone. Solely in the UK, 23% of...

Food webs determine the fate of mercury pollution in the Colorado River, Grand Canyon

In the Grand Canyon reach of the Colorado River, two species play an outsized role in the fate of mercury in the aquatic ecosystem, and their numbers are altered by flood events. So reports new research, published in Science Advances, that is among the first to meld ecotoxicology and ecosystem ecology to trace how mercury flows through aquatic food webs and then spreads to land.

NASA analyzes developing System 90L in Straits of Florida

A low-pressure area designated as System 90L appears to be developing in the Straits of Florida, located between Southern Florida and Cuba. NASA's Aqua satellite measured cloud top temperatures within the developing system and found some stronger storms.

Controlling cells with light

Photopharmacology investigates the use of light to switch the effect of drugs on and off. Now, for the first time, scientific teams from Jena, Munich, and New York have succeeded in using this method to control a component of cells that was previously considered inaccessible.

Researchers find the key to preserving 'The Scream'

"The Scream" is among the most famous paintings of the modern era. The familiar image is interpreted as the ultimate representation of anxiety and mental anguish. There are a number of versions of "The Scream," namely two paintings, two pastels, several lithographic prints and a few drawings and sketches. The two most well-known versions are the paintings that Edvard Munch created in 1893 and...

Black holes and neutron stars merge unseen in dense star clusters

Mergers between black holes and neutron stars in dense star clusters are quite unlike those that form in isolated regions where stars are few. Their associated features could be crucial to the study of gravitational waves and their source. Dr. Manuel Arca Sedda of the Institute for Astronomical Computing at Heidelberg University came to this conclusion in a study that used computer simulations....

Bizarre new species discovered... on Twitter

While many of us use social media to be tickled silly by cat videos or wowed by delectable cakes, others use them to discover new species. Included in the latter group are researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Natural History Museum of Denmark. Indeed, they just found a new type of parasitic fungus via Twitter.

New technology will show how RNA regulates gene activity

The discovery of a huge number of long non-protein coding RNAs, aka lncRNAs, in the mammalian genome was a major surprise of the recent large-scale genomics projects. An international team including a bioinformatician from the Research Center of Biotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology has developed a reliable method for assessing the...

ExoMars rover upgrades and parachute tests

The second ExoMars mission, scheduled for launch to the Red Planet in 2022, is taking advantage of the extra time to upgrade some of the rover's instruments and get ready for the next parachute high-altitude drop tests.

Watching the in situ hydrogen diffusion dynamics in magnesium on the nanoscale

Switchable materials that have extreme material contrast and short switching times with negligible degradation can contribute to active plasmonic and nanophotonic systems. In order to understand their supreme properties, researchers must gather in-depth knowledge about nanoscopic processes. In a new study now published on Science Advances, Julian Karst and a team of scientists at the University of...

Exploring climate change impacts through popular proverbs

The proverbs related to environmental issues traditionally used by the local population in rural areas of Spain are currently considered imprecise and unreliable due to climate change impacts. This is the result of a study carried out by the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) that presents a novel way of using the local knowledge...

Metagenomics reveals distinct microbiotypes in the giant clams Tridacna maxima

New research conducted at CRIOBE and ENTROPIE research units, with the collaboration of the Swire institute of Marine Science of The University of Hong Kong, The Cawthron Institute and James Cook University, highlights the impacts of benthic species assemblages on the giant clams Tridacna maxima. The findings were recently published in the journal Microbiome.