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1,679 articles from PhysOrg


SATURDAY 27. FEBRUARY 2021



FRIDAY 26. FEBRUARY 2021


'Explicit instruction' provides dramatic benefits in learning to read

The ability to read is foundational to education, but prolonged school closures and distance learning due to the pandemic have imposed unique challenges on the teaching of many fundamental skills. When in-person classes resume, many students will likely need a period of catch-up learning, especially those who lag behind in basic reading skills.

Republican and Democratic voters agree on one thing—the need for generous COVID-19 relief

Both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly favor politicians who support generous COVID-19 relief spending, yet remain deeply polarized over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results and former President Donald Trump's second impeachment. Meanwhile, political experts find that the former president's actions and those taken by congressional supporters in the aftermath of the...

Engineering the boundary between 2D and 3D materials

In recent years, engineers have found ways to modify the properties of some "two- dimensional" materials, which are just one or a few atoms thick, by stacking two layers together and rotating one slightly in relation to the other. This creates what are known as moiré patterns, where tiny shifts in the alignment of atoms between the two sheets create larger-scale patterns. It also changes the way...

Agents of food-borne zoonoses confirmed to parasitise newly-recorded in Thailand snails

Parasitic flatworms known as agents of food-borne zoonoses were confirmed to use several species of thiarid snails, commonly found in freshwater and brackish environments in southeast Asia, as their first intermediate host. These parasites can cause severe ocular infections in humans who consume raw or improperly cooked fish that have fed on infected snails. The study, conducted in South Thailand...

Considering disorder and cooperative effects in photon escape rates from atomic gases

Whilst a great deal of research has studied the rates of photons escaping from cold atomic gases, these studies have used a scalar description of light leaving some of its properties untested. In a new paper published in EPJ B Louis Bellando, a post-doctoral researcher at LOMA, University of Bordeaux, France, and his coauthors—Aharon Gero and Eric Akkermans, Technion-Israel Institute of...

Using neutron scattering to better understand milk composition

Neutron scattering is a technique commonly used in physics and biology to understand the composition of complex multicomponent mixtures and is increasingly being used to study applied materials such as food. A new paper published in EPJ E by Gregory N Smith, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, shows an example of neutron scattering in the area of food science. Smith uses...

Nanomedicine activation profile determines efficacy depending on tumor c-Myc expression

The Innovation Center of NanoMedicine reported in ACS Nano together with the group of Prof. Yu Matsumoto of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery and the group of Prof. Horacio Cabral of the Department of Bioengineering in the University of Tokyo that the efficacy of polymeric nano-micelles with different drug activation profile depends on the expression level of c-Myc, one of the major...

Under climate stress, human innovation set stage for population surge

Climate alone is not a driver for human behavior. The choices that people make in the face of changing conditions take place in a larger human context. And studies that combine insights from archeologists and environmental scientists can offer more nuanced lessons about how people have responded—sometimes successfully—to long-term environmental changes.

Light-emitting tattoo engineered for the first time

Scientists at UCL and the IIT—Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italian Institute of Technology) have created a temporary tattoo with light-emitting technology used in TV and smartphone screens, paving the way for a new type of 'smart tattoo' with a range of potential uses.

Maternal instincts lead to social life of bees

The maternal care of offspring is one of the behavioral drivers that has led some bee species to have an ever-expanding social life over the history of evolution, new research out of York University has found.

Retroviruses are re-writing the koala genome and causing cancer

The koala retrovirus (KoRV) is a virus which, like other retroviruses such as HIV, inserts itself into the DNA of an infected cell. At some point in the past 50,000 years, KoRV has infected the egg or sperm cells of koalas, leading to offspring that carry the retrovirus in every cell in their body. The entire koala population of Queensland and New South Wales in Australia now carry copies of KoRV...