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68 articles from PhysOrg

Finding the tipping point for coastal wetlands

The Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula covers more than 2,000 square miles on the North Carolina coastal plain, a vast expanse of forested swamps and tea-colored creeks. Many people would probably avoid this place, whose dense thickets of cane and shrubs and waterlogged soils can slow a hike to a crawl.

Hungry yeast are tiny, living thermometers

Membranes are crucial to our cells. Every cell in your body is enclosed by one. And each of those cells contains specialized compartments, or organelles, which are also enclosed by membranes.

'Atomic Armor' for accelerators enables discoveries

Protective coatings are common for many things in daily life that see a lot of use. We coat wood floors with finish; apply Teflon to the paint on cars; even use diamond coatings on medical devices. Protective coatings are also essential in many demanding research and industrial applications.

Study probes the planet's turbulent past to explain where oceans came from

The origin of water on our planet is a hot question: Water has immense implications for plate tectonics, climate, the origin of life on Earth, and potential habitability of other Earth-like planets. In a recent study in Physical Review Letters, a Skoltech professor and his Chinese colleagues suggest a chemical compound that—although now extinct—could have preserved water deep underground in...

Confirming liquid water beneath Martian south polar cap

A Southwest Research Institute scientist measured the properties of ice-brine mixtures as cold as -145 degrees Fahrenheit to help confirm that salty water likely exists between grains of ice or sediment under the ice cap at Mars' south pole. Laboratory measurements conducted by SwRI geophysicist Dr. David Stillman support oddly bright reflections detected by the MARSIS subsurface sounding radar...

Where legal, voting by those in prison is rare, study shows

The voting rights of people with felony convictions is a controversial issue across many U.S. states—not least because many people assume expanding those rights could significantly affect election outcomes. A study by MIT scholars of voting patterns among the imprisoned now suggests that is unlikely to be the case.

A molecular framework to bridge experimental and computer sciences for peptide-based materials engineering

Researchers in the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering, Gallogly College of Engineering, at the University of Oklahoma have developed a framework published in Science Advances that solves the challenge of bridging experimental and computer sciences to better predict peptide structures. Peptide-based materials have been used in energy, security and health fields for the past two decades.

Southern Ocean storms cause outgassing of carbon dioxide

Storms over the waters around Antarctica drive an outgassing of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to a new international study with researchers from the University of Gothenburg. The research group used advanced ocean robots for the study, which provides a better understanding of climate change and can lead to better global climate models.

Forward-thinking gym lifts weights, shifts attitudes

A gym in Boston, Massachusetts, with an inventive vocational path that prepares students to work as personal trainers serves as a telling example for how community-based programs can develop anti-racism practices within organizations that contribute to the cultivation of racial unity, according to a paper published by a University at Buffalo Social Work researcher.

New research discovers surprising activity among organisms thriving in extremely deep, hot subseafloor

Since the discovery of the deep subseafloor biosphere in the mid-1990s, scientists have studied the conditions under which organisms thrive in this isolated and generally food-deprived environment and wondered which conditions set a limit to the existence of life. In 2016, a group of international scientists set out to sea on board the Japanese scientific drillship, Chikyu, to study the...

How big does your quantum computer need to be?

Quantum computers are expected to be disruptive and potentially impact many industry sectors. So researchers in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands decided to explore two very different quantum problems: breaking the encryption of Bitcoin (a digital currency) and simulating the molecule responsible for biological nitrogen fixation.

Unusual emission from pulsar PSR B1859+07 examined with FAST

Using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST), Chinese astronomers have investigated a peculiar emission phenomena exhibited by a pulsar known as PSR B1859+07. Results of the study, published January 18 on the arXiv pre-print repository, could shed light on abnormal emission modes observed in some pulsars.