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55 articles from PhysOrg

Amazon Rainforest birds' bodies transform due to climate change

The most pristine parts of the Amazon rainforest devoid of direct human contact are being impacted by human-induced climate change, according to new research by LSU scientists. New analyses of data collected over the past four decades show that not only has the number of sensitive resident birds throughout the Amazon rainforest declined, but the body size and wing length have changed for most...

Tiny chip provides a big boost in precision optics

By merging two or more sources of light, interferometers create interference patterns that can provide remarkably detailed information about everything they illuminate, from a tiny flaw on a mirror, to the dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, to gravitational patterns in far reaches of the Universe.

Key concepts, mathematical models, and statistical techniques for testing animal behavior rationality

Testing rationality of decision-making and choice by evaluating the mathematical property of transitivity has a long tradition in biology, economics, psychology, and zoology. However, this paradigm is fraught with conceptual, mathematical, and statistical pitfalls. A new article published in The Quarterly Review of Biology provides a tutorial review for animal scientists in testing whether animal...

The challenge of forest restoration: Where to obtain tens of billions of quality seeds

With commitments to restore more than 47.5 million hectares of degraded land and forests by 2030, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and India hope to become exemplar land custodians. While commitments ending deforestation are critical to obtaining that image—Indonesia is one of the world's poster children for forest loss—even a full halt to natural landscape destruction is only part of the...

Xist marks the spot: How an RNA molecule silences the X chromosome

In one of the mysteries of mammalian development, every cell in the early female embryo shuts down one of its two copies of the X chromosome, leaving just one functional. For years, the mechanics behind this X chromosome inactivation have been murky, but scientists from the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have now taken a major step forward in...

More than half of surveyed crop varieties are under threat of extinction, according to study in India

Crop and varietal diversity are critically important for global food and nutrition security, as well as the livelihoods of millions of people, especially those living in marginal areas. This diversity includes many different crop species and farmer varieties, many of which have been cultivated and safeguarded by farmers and indigenous peoples for millennia on their farms. Each one contains unique...

Fight over US wolf protections heads to federal courtroom

U.S. government attorneys will appear before a federal judge Friday to defend a decision from the waning days of the Trump administration that lifted protections for gray wolves across most of the country, as Republican-led states have sought to drive down wolf numbers through aggressive hunting and trapping.

Police enforcement of New York City COVID-19 mandates reveals racial inequities by zip code

New York City ZIP codes with a higher percentage of Black residents had significantly higher rates of COVID-19-specific criminal court summonses and public health and nuisance arrests in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study by Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Pandemic policing also mirrored the discretionary nature of the New York stop-and-frisk...

Western boom cities see spike in harmful ozone

The reduction of harmful ground-level ozone across most of the U.S. over the past several decades has been an air pollution success story. But in some parts of the country, especially in the heavily populated mountain valleys of the West, the odorless, colorless gas has remained stubbornly difficult to reduce to safe levels.

As nations promise to restore ecosystems at COP26, can they guarantee success?

Grand global commitments to plant trees to fight climate change are welcome. Healthy landscapes that suck planet-heating carbon out of the atmosphere—locking it into forests and soils—are among the best technologies there are yet to bend the Keeling Curve in a new direction. Tree planting is no alternative to ending the burning of fossil fuels, but along with zero deforestation, restoration...

Flattening the curve: Nano-film enhanced supercontinuum edition

Providing light with tailored properties through ultrafast supercontinuum generation represents an active field of nonlinear science research. A German-Australian research collaboration has presented a new concept that includes a longitudinally varying thickness nano-films in microstructured exposed core fibers. This offers low input energy, broadband and spectrally flattened spectra in the near...

Researchers harness higher order protein catenation for the development of artificial antibodies

Chemical topology is a unique dimension for protein engineering. Over the past few years, the discovery of topological non-trivial proteins in nature has already revealed their many potential functional benefits, such as enhanced thermal/mechanical/chemical stability. Engineering the chemical topology of proteins thus holds the promise of engineering therapeutically relevant proteins and...

Simulations provide clue to missing planets mystery

Forming planets are one possible explanation for the rings and gaps observed in disks of gas and dust around young stars. But this theory has trouble explaining why it is rare to find planets associated with rings. New supercomputer simulations show that after creating a ring, a planet can move away and leave the ring behind. Not only does this bolster the planet theory for ring formation, the...

Psychologists suggest more humility is needed in the social, behavioral and life sciences

Rink Hoekstra and Simine Vazire, psychologists with the University of Groningen and the University of California, Davis, respectively, have published a Perspective piece in the journal Nature Human Behavior calling for more humility in the social, behavioral and life sciences. In their paper they outline a methodology for imbuing intellectual humility into the paper writing and publishing process.

New gene-edited barley that could improve beer

After a spell of unexpected rain, before the harvest season, a farmer may be faced with the unpredictable problem of untimely sprouting of barley. Sprouted barley fetches considerably lower market prices and poses an economic burden on farmers and corporations that are at the mercy of nature. The aggravation of climate change has not made this situation any better.