- PhysOrg
- 20/6/30 23:12
The United States' new Space Force military wing revealed Tuesday that one of its units would be named "Space Operations Command"—or "SpOC" for short, in an echo of pointy-eared "Star Trek" character Spock.
5,993 articles from JUNE 2020
The United States' new Space Force military wing revealed Tuesday that one of its units would be named "Space Operations Command"—or "SpOC" for short, in an echo of pointy-eared "Star Trek" character Spock.
If the world is to maintain a sustainable economy and fend off the worst effects of climate change, at least one industry will soon have to ramp up dramatically: the mining of metals needed to create a vast infrastructure for renewable power generation, storage, transmission and usage. The problem is, demand for such metals is likely to far outstrip currently both known deposits and the existing...
New insight on how four species of seabirds have developed the ability to cruise through both air and water has been published today in the open-access journal eLife.
A challenge to creating fusion energy on Earth is trapping the charged gas known as plasma that fuels fusion reactions within a strong magnetic field and keeping the plasma as hot and dense as possible for as long as possible. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have gained new insight into a common type of hiccup known as the...
While Florida is referred to as the Sunshine State, it could also go by the name of electric reaper given its status as the deadliest state for lightning strikes.
Corals are "part animal, part plant, and part rock—and difficult to figure out, despite being studied for centuries," says Philippe Laissue of University of Essex, a Whitman Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Many corals are sensitive to bright light, so capturing their dynamics with traditional microscopes is a challenge.
Southwest Research Institute has developed computer-based techniques to accurately detect crude oil on water using inexpensive thermal and visible cameras. This machine learning-based solution can detect and monitor oil leaks before they become major threats to lakes, rivers and coastal areas.
Winter squash is an important crop grown in the Willamette Valley, and the most important processing cultivar, Golden Delicious, has been grown in Oregon since the 1970s. Over the last two decades, however, growers have noticed yield declines throughout the valley. Agriculture specialists have identified an association between yield decline and disease symptoms such as stunting, vascular...
In molecular biology, chaperones are a class of proteins that help regulate how other proteins fold. Folding is an important step in the manufacturing process for proteins. When they don't fold the way they're supposed to, it can lead to the development of diseases such as cancer.
All life depends on a genome, which acts as an instruction manual for building all the products essential for development and survival. But knowing which of these individual instructions—or genes—need to be read, and when, is key for a properly functioning organism: so how does life get this right?
The Environmental Protection Agency will end a temporary policy that relaxed reporting requirements on pollutants due to the coronavirus at the end of August, amid criticism that the pandemic policy has jeopardized public health.
The history of those wild horses roaming North Carolina's Outer Banks has long been shrouded in mystery, with most historians believing they descend from mustangs brought by Spanish settlers 500 years ago.
Chinese glaciologists have found the freeze-thaw process has concentrated discharge from the disasterThe Fukushima nuclear accident has added a distinctive signature to snow and ice across the northern hemisphere, new research published in Environmental Research Letters shows. Triggered by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami off the coast of Japan on 11 March 2011, the disaster resulted in a...
Researchers have made an important advance that could lead to more energy efficient magnetic memory storage components for computers and other devices.
Many corals are sensitive to bright light, so capturing their dynamics with traditional microscopes is a challenge. To work around their photosensitivity, researchers developed a custom light-sheet microscope (the L-SPI) that allows gentle, non-invasive observation of corals and their polyps in detail over eight continuous hours, at high resolution.
The second quarter of 2020 launched many digital transformation projects that didn’t necessarily happen at the behest of chief innovation officers, but because of the wrecking ball of disruption known as covid-19. Even if companies did succeed at rapidly orienting operations and services to digital, the transformation journey is far from over—and that means procurement and vendor management...
Researchers have developed a new environmentally friendly method for removing toxic chemicals from water. A newly invented machine, called the Matrix Assembly Cluster Source (MACS), has been used to design a breakthrough water treatment method using a solvent-free approach.
When two cars collide at an intersection -- from opposite directions -- the impact is much different than when two cars -- traveling in the same direction -- 'bump' into each other. In the laboratory, similar types of collisions can be made to occur between molecules to study chemistry at very low temperatures, or 'cold collisions.' A team of scientists has developed a new experimental approach to...
New Zealand's monster penguins that lived 62 million years ago had doppelgangers in Japan, the USA and Canada, a new study has found.
A new study shows that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus), can infect heart cells in a lab dish, indicating it may be possible for heart cells in COVID-19 patients to be directly infected by the virus.
Johnson’s vision for the UK to build long-haul Jet Zero aircraft may never leave the groundWill Boris’s Jet Zero ever fly?The prime minister’s call for Jet Zero on Tuesday may owe more to his fondness for a punchy slogan than any realistic view of how UK aviation might develop in the next three decades. Continue...
A new study found what happened to the Earth's dinosaurs. An asteroid strike blocking out the sun for years and causing permanent winters was...
It’s troubling, though not surprising, to see covid-19 cases spiking across the American South and Southwest, where public officials delayed lockdowns, rushed to reopen businesses, or refused to require people to wear masks. But what’s the matter with California? The nation’s most populous state was the first to enact statewide shelter-in-place rules, took decisive steps to build up the...
No other country will be able to buy remdesivir, which can help recovery from Covid-19, for next three months at leastCoronavirus – latest US updatesCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageThe US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the...
Leicester is unlikely to be the only place to return to tight restrictions, say scientistsCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageParts of Kent, London, north Wales and Scotland are still battling significant Covid-19 outbreaks, sparking fears from scientists and public health directors that Leicester’s return to lockdown is set to be repeated.Bars and restaurants are...
Mal Martin, 58, from Cardiff, spent 11 weeks in intensive care and could still lose fingers due to diseaseCoronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverageA woman allowed to see her husband to say goodbye when told he had “almost zero chance” of surviving coronavirus, said he could shortly be home after more than 11 weeks in intensive care, much of it on a ventilator.Sue Martin,...
Today's 112th anniversary of a close brush with a cosmic catastrophe serves as a teachable moment about the perils and prospects posed by near-Earth asteroids. Asteroid Day is timed to commemorate a blast from space that occurred over a Siberian forest back on June 30, 1908. The explosion, thought to have been caused by the breakup of an asteroid or comet, wiped out millions of acres of trees...
The U.N. nuclear agency says slightly elevated levels of radioactivity that have been detected in northern Europe pose no risk to human health or to the environment but it's still unclear what the cause was.
Advances in next-generation-sequencing technology that allow researchers to look at billions of pieces of genetic information are changing the way a disease is diagnosed. Correct identification of changes in the human genetic code responsible for rare metabolic disorders provides scientists and physicians with fact-based guidelines for the treatment.
With faces covered to help reduce the spread of COVID-19, some of the facial cues that people rely on to connect with others—such as a smile that shows support—are also obscured.
Temperatures in Britain could exceed 40 degrees Celsius every three or four years by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, research published Tuesday has found, as climate change increases the likelihood of scorching heat waves.
A trio of researchers at the University of Haifa's Zinman Institute of Archaeology has found evidence of Natufian people eating snakes and lizards approximately 15,000 years ago. In their paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, Ma'ayan Lev, Mina Weinstein-Evron and Reuven Yeshurun describe their study of squamate bones found in caves at the el-Wad Terrace dig site in Israel and what...
Since the release of information about Asian giant hornets, Texas A&M AgriLife entomologists are being inundated with cicada killers and other lookalike insects submitted for identification as a possible "murder hornet," which thus far has only been found in Washington state in the U.S.
The covid-19 pandemic has unleashed changes that seemed unthinkable just a few months ago. In February, it seemed unthinkable the entire white-collar workforce of many countries would soon be working solely from home. It seemed unthinkable air travel would plummet by 96%, or millions of migrant workers in India would be forced to undertake a herculean exodus, walking thousands of miles to their...
The Russian Arctic set record temperatures in June that sparked abnormal tundra fires, the head of Russia's weather service said Tuesday, blaming climate change for the "fantastical" anomalies.