- 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
University of Kentucky entomologists want people to be aware of a new stinging pest in the state, the Asian needle ant.
The first direct measurements of the magnetic field in the chromosphere of the sun by a team including University of Warwick physicists has provided the first observational evidence that huge tornadoes in our sun's atmosphere are produced by swirling magnetic fields.
In recent interviews, the American soccer player Crystal Dunn expressed the joy and fear she felt when her teammate Megan Rapinoe decided to take a knee against police brutality and racism in 2016. While Dunn wanted to join her teammate she worried "they could rip up [her] contract" and as a result chose not to.
Steering and monitoring the light-driven motion of electrons inside matter on the time-scale of a single optical cycle is a key challenge in ultrafast light wave electronics and laser-based material processing. Physicists from the Max Born Institute in Berlin and the University of Rostock have now revealed a so-far overlooked nonlinear optical mechanism that emerges from the light-induced...
Imagine trying to build a Colosseum-type edifice—including arches, vaults and various protrusions—while abiding by two strict rules: Only one type of brick may be used, and these bricks are required to be placed precisely, one against another, in a symmetrical arrangement. Not even a bit of mismatching is allowed. At best, you would be able to erect a chambered high-rise tower. Nature has...
A team of European researchers and engineers initiated the ULTIMATE project to turn wastewater into a resource. This initiative is co-financed by the European Commission and started in June 2020. The aim is to create economic value and increase sustainability by valorising resources within the water cycle.
Over the past 20 years, many areas within New York City have transitioned from industrial and manufacturing zones to residential neighborhoods. This brings families with young children to areas with a legacy of historic lead contamination in the soil.