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100 articles from PhysOrg

Scientists take control of magnetism at the microscopic level

Atoms in magnetic materials are organized into regions called magnetic domains. Within each domain, the electrons have the same magnetic orientation. This means their spins point in the same direction. "Walls" separate the magnetic domains. One type of wall has spin rotations that are left- or right-handed, known as having chirality. When subjected to a magnetic field, chiral domain walls approach...

Novel coronaviruses are riskiest for spillover

In the past decade, scientists have described hundreds of novel viruses with the potential to pass between wildlife and humans. But how can they know which are riskiest for spillover and therefore which to prioritize for further surveillance in people?

Organic matter accumulation in oxygenated lakes

When we burn fossil fuels, it not only produces carbon dioxide, a driver of climate change, but it also consumes the oxygen we breathe. However, the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere produced by plants is nearly balanced by the amount consumed by animals, keeping it at around 21% of the atmosphere. This raises a big question relevant to our survival and the future of biodiversity: what keeps the...

New research sheds light on when Mars may have had water

Scientists on NASA's Perseverance mission made a surprising discovery about the composition of rock in Jezero Crater, one that will help them get a better idea of when water existed on Mars, and ultimately, help them understand if the red planet was ever habitable to microbial life.

Black hole-inspired thermal trapping with graded heat-conduction metadevices

Jiping Huang's group (Department of physics, Fudan University) and Cheng-Wei Qiu's group (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore) collaborated to complete this study published in National Science Review. They found a new mechanism to generate asymmetric temperature profiles without dynamic modulation. Specifically, graded thermal conductivities could...

Citizen science empowers people to address global challenges

Citizen science is increasingly recognized as an important vehicle for democratizing science and promoting the goal of universal and equitable access to scientific data and information. IIASA researchers actively contribute to the development of this scientific approach and have recently published a primer aimed at both established and aspiring practitioners of citizen science to highlight key...

Plants can measure the intensity of salt stress

Unfavorable environmental conditions represent considerable stress for plants. A high level of salt content (sodium chloride, NaCl) in the soil is just such a stressor that has a negative impact on plants. Salinization is a serious problem in agriculture especially in dry regions of the world. Biologists at the University of Münster have now discovered, for the first time, that salt stress...

3D printing of starch for personalized medicine development

Traditional methods produce medicines with specific parameters, but in many cases without meeting the individual needs of patients. In fact, conventional medicines tend to be based on adult doses, so pediatric and elderly patients require doses tailored to their age. What is more, certain groups of patients also need specific dosage form alternatives to facilitate the oral administration of drugs....

Astronauts going to Mars will receive many lifetimes worth of radiation

In a recent study to be published in Space Physics, an international team of researchers discuss an in-depth study examining the long-term physiological effects of solar radiation on astronauts with emphasis on future astronauts traveling to Mars to include steps we can take to help mitigate the risk of such solar radiation exposure. The researchers hailed from the United Arab Emirates, New...

Why don't rivers straighten out over time?

Seen from above, the world's greatest rivers can be recognized by their serpentine curves. But how do these shapes form, do they alter over time and does this matter? We turned to our river system expert, Carmelo Juez.

Fire-adapted insects make the most of breeding grounds sterilized by wildfires

With a rise in the number of wildfires in Saskatchewan and beyond each year, burnt landscapes stripped of plant life are becoming more common. Most creatures find a burnt environment uninhabitable, but a University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team has discovered how certain species of insects use these scorched lands as a safe location to lay eggs.

Researchers engineer first sustainable chromosome changes in mice

Evolutionary chromosomal changes may take a million years in nature, but researchers are now reporting a novel technique enabling programmable chromosome fusion that has successfully produced mice with genetic changes that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale in the laboratory. The result may provide critical insights into how rearrangements of chromosomes—the tidy packages of organized...