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84 articles from PhysOrg

Improving soil health starts with farmer-researcher collaboration

Ask a farmer, a scientist, and a conservation professional to define soil health, and you might come up with three rather different answers. That mismatch may be at the root of lower-than-ideal adoption of soil conservation practices, according to a new study from the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University.

Want to reduce cockroach sex? Block an enzyme

It's not the look in her compound eyes or the shape of her carapace that really attracts the male cockroach to his mate. Instead, it's all those 29-carbon hydrocarbons in her cuticle that drive him wild. How the female cockroach regulates production of these contact sex pheromones, and what happens when she produces too few, is the subject of a new study publishing on July 27th in the open-access...

New strategy for drug design: Keeping copper atoms closer to keep bacteria away

The discovery of antibiotics was a huge breakthrough in medicine, which helped save countless lives. Unfortunately, their widespread use has led to the rapid evolution of highly resistant bacterial strains, which threaten to take humanity back to square one in the fight against infectious diseases. Even though researchers are seeking new design concepts for antibacterial drugs, the overall...

Selenium may support deep microbial life in Earth's continental crust

International drilling efforts over the last decades into the seafloor have provided increasing evidence for the existence of an extensive deep biosphere below the seafloor. There, circulating fluids in the sub-seafloor deliver chemical compounds from which energy is produced to fuel microbial life in such deep ecosystems. Our understanding of the role of such chemolithotrophic microbes in the...

Wildfire smoke in New England is 'pretty severe from public health perspective'

On Monday, the air quality in Boston and the greater New England area was so bad that it was only rivaled by the areas in Northern California and Oregon currently on fire. An interactive map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed how smoke from the wildfires out west were being carried across the continental US by winds and the jet stream. In response to the blanket of...

Let's face the liquid-liquid interface

The demand for energy consumption, limited availability of fossil fuels, and pollution caused by the energy production industry challenge scientists to find new, more cost-effective, and greener solutions to produce power. Most of the current energy sources are far from being environmentally friendly. In this context, electrochemically assisted generation of chemicals, at first glance, would not...

Tracking the movement of a single nanoparticle

Based on the principle of interaction between matter and light, a new method has been developed to track and observe the Brownian motion of fast-moving nanometer-sized molecules, and measure the different fluorescence signals of each biological nanoparticle.

Online science and math resources for teachers of young children

As COVID-19 restrictions begin to ease and people return to the workplace this fall, many young children will return to child care centers, preschools and family child care homes. The University of Illinois Chicago's College of Education is reminding caregivers that they have available free online resources for both early math and early science education.

How political nostalgia predicts political outcomes

Nostalgia, defined as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, has become a growing focus of research in personality and social psychology. Though it may seem counterintuitive, nostalgia has been proven to be a great motivator of future behavior. Take for example, fans of former President Barack Obama. When the 2016 election of President Donald Trump left over half of the United...

The growing carbon footprint of streaming media

When was the last time you watched a DVD? If you're like most people, your DVD collection has been gathering dust as you stream movies and TV from a variety of on-demand services. But have you ever considered the impact of streaming video on the environment?

Three dwarf spheroidal galaxies found to rotate

An international team of astrophysicists from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), the University of La Laguna (ULL) and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI, U.S.) has discovered the presence of transverse rotation (in the plane of the sky) in three dwarf spheroidal galaxies. These are a very faint type of galaxy and are quite difficult to observe. These new findings help to...

How cells remember inflammation

When a tissue experiences inflammation, its cells remember. Pinning proteins to its genetic material at the height of inflammation, the cells bookmark where they left off in their last tussle. Next exposure, inflammatory memory kicks in. The cells draw from prior experience to respond more efficiently, even to threats that they have not encountered before. Skin heals a wound faster if it was...