- PhysOrg
- 21/12/2 23:20
A tabletop covered in miniature Lego minifigures. There is a whooshing sound, a pause, and then a single minifigure in the center of the table topples over, leaving the remaining minifigures standing.
A tabletop covered in miniature Lego minifigures. There is a whooshing sound, a pause, and then a single minifigure in the center of the table topples over, leaving the remaining minifigures standing.
The Styrofoam container that holds your takeout cheeseburger may contribute to the population's growing resistance to antibiotics.
Researchers have identified 187 individual North Atlantic right whales—about 40 percent of the catalogued population—in Canada's Gulf of St. Lawrence during the summer. They used photographs of North Atlantic right whales collected during surveys conducted between 2015 and 2019. Many of the right whales remain in the area through the summer and autumn, feeding and socializing primarily in...
Dog breeds are often recognized for distinctive traits—the short legs of a dachshund, wrinkled face of a pug, spotted coat of a Dalmatian. Unfortunately, the genetics that give various breeds their particular attributes are often the result of inbreeding.
While trying out a new device that injects powder to clean up the walls of the world's largest stellarator, a twisty fusion device known as Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) in Greifswald, Germany, scientists were pleased to find that the bits of atoms confined by magnetic fields within the device got temporarily hotter after each injection. Researchers led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's...
Biomedical Engineering Professor Corey Neu and Ph. D. student Benjamin Seelbinder of the University of Colorado at Boulder wanted to answer two fundamental questions. How do cells adapt to their environment and how does a mechanical environment influence a cell?
The climate crisis is limiting the availability of krill—small crustaceans that are vital in the marine food chain—during summer in some areas of the Antarctica. This involves a decrease in the food abundance for female Antarctic fur seals in summer and a decrease in their reproductive success. Moreover, the predation of pups by the leopard seal has also increased due to a lower abundance of...
When two superconducting regions are separated by a strip of non-superconducting material, a special quantum effect can occur, coupling both regions: The Josephson effect. If the spacer material is a half-metal ferromagnet, novel implications for spintronic applications arise. An international team has now, for the first time, designed a material system that exhibits an unusually long-range...
Since 1978 when the first test tube baby was born, in vitro fertilization (IVF) has become a reasonable option for couples that have trouble getting pregnant. Originally developed to help women with obstructed tubes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as of 2018, assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) such as IVF account for as many as four million births each year,...
A new research report from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations' AIinPR Panel, which has been co-authored by the University's Emeritus Professor of Corporate Communication Anne Gregory, has found that practitioners see the huge potential that artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data offers the profession but possess limited knowledge on technical aspects of both.
What would it be like if we lived in a flat two-dimensional world? Physicists predict that quantum mechanics would be even stranger in that case, resulting in exotic particles—so-called "anyons"— that cannot exist in the three-dimensional world we live in. This unfamiliar world is not just a curiosity but may be key to unlocking quantum materials and technologies of the future.
Anne S. Meyer, an associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester, and her collaborators at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands recently developed a 3D printing technique to engineer and study biofilms—three-dimensional communities of microorganisms, such as bacteria, that adhere to surfaces. The research provides important information for creating synthetic materials...
Light is an electromagnetic wave: It consists of oscillating electric and magnetic fields propagating through space. Every wave is characterized by its frequency, which refers to the number of oscillations per second, measured in Hertz (Hz). Our eyes can detect frequencies between 400 and 750 trillion Hz (or terahertz, THz), which define the visible spectrum. Light sensors in cell phone cameras...
Thermoelectric materials have the ability to generate electricity when a temperature difference is applied to them. Conversely, they can also generate a temperature gradient when current is applied to them. Therefore, these materials are expected to find use as power generators of electronic devices and coolers or heaters of temperature control devices. To develop these applications, a...
A new study uses novel single-cell profiling techniques to reveal how plants add new cell layers that help them resist climate stressors like drought or flooding. The research focuses on corn—a critically important crop around the world—in an effort to create a cell-by-cell map of the plant's root system, which mediates drought stress and absorbs nutrients and fertilizer from the soil.
Ultra-short-period planets are small, compact worlds that whip around their stars at close range, completing an orbit—and a single, scorching year—in less than 24 hours. How these planets came to be in such extreme configurations is one of the continuing mysteries of exoplanetary science.
A collaboration of researchers from Japan, Spain and the U.S. offers a phylogenetic and ontogenetic overview of the primitive streak and its role in mediating amniote (vertebrate animals that develop on land) gastrulation, and discuss the implications of embryonic stem cell-based models of early mammalian embryogenesis on the function of this structure.
The Southern Ocean is a significant carbon sink, absorbing a large amount of the excess carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Detecting light beyond the visible red range of our eyes is hard to do, because infrared light carries so little energy compared to ambient heat at room temperature. This obscures infrared light unless specialized detectors are chilled to very low temperatures, which is both expensive and energy-intensive.
In 1973, physicist Philip W. Anderson theorized the existence of a new state of matter that has been a major focus of the field, especially in the race for quantum computers.
New parents often keep a constant ear on their children, listening for any signs of distress as their baby sleeps. Baby monitors make that possible, but they can also inundate parents with annoying background audio.
The Seattle Space Needle, a city landmark for nearly 60 years, recently underwent a renovation to enhance the visitor experience. Acoustic designers were tasked with ensuring that the new design is a quiet one.
Magnets are used in so many of our everyday objects including cell phones and in the strip of a credit card or a hotel key. They even power the engine in your vacuum.
Scientists are using human stem cells to create a structure that mimics a pre-embryo and can serve as a research alternative to a real one.
In the grasslands of Nepal's Chitwan Valley, local farmers rely on the production of rice and other grains to generate household income. But their livelihoods are under threat, as Nepal is experiencing the effects of climate change at a much faster rate than the global average.