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15 articles from PhysOrg

Scaling the cost of government programs using a cost-per-person price tag improves comprehension by the general public

Government policies often are presented with hefty price tags, but people often zone out as more zeros are added to the total cost. A new study from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that rescaling the cost of programs can increase a person's understanding of funding choices, which may improve how people participate in the policy debate. The results are available in the July issue of the journal...

Spain, Portugal dryness 'unprecedented' in 1,200 years

Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to research published Monday, warning of severe implications for wine and olive production.

Study explores coevolution of mammals and their lice

According to a new study, the first louse to take up residence on a mammalian host likely started out as a parasite of birds. That host-jumping event tens of millions of years ago began the long association between mammals and lice, setting the stage for their coevolution and offering more opportunities for the lice to spread to other mammals.

The Higgs boson, ten years after its discovery

Ten years ago, on July 4 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced the discovery of a new particle with features consistent with those of the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. The discovery was a landmark in the history of science and captured the world's attention. One year later it won François Englert and Peter Higgs the...

ATLAS and CMS release results of most comprehensive studies yet of Higgs boson's properties

Today, exactly ten years after announcing the discovery of the Higgs boson, the international ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) report the results of their most comprehensive studies yet of the properties of this unique particle. The independent studies, described in two papers published today in Nature, show that the particle's properties are remarkably consistent...

'One of the botanical wonders of the world': Giant waterlily grown at Kew Gardens named new to science

A new paper, published today in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, outlines a new botanical discovery in the genus Victoria, the famous giant waterlily genus named after Britain's Queen Victoria in 1852. Until now, there have only been two known species of giant waterlily, the new species makes it three. Specimens of the new species, Victoria boliviana, have been sitting in Kew's Herbarium...