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271,915 articles from PhysOrg

Researchers serve up an improved model of indoor pollution produced by cooking

Stir-frying yields more than just tasty dishes like Kung Pao chicken and Hunan beef. It also emits an invisible mixture of gases and particles that pollute indoor air and can be detrimental to human health. Correctly estimating such cooking emissions in a variety of settings is critical for simulating exposure and informing health guidelines aimed at keeping people safe.

Elastane recycling: Stretching the lifespan of textiles

Clothing is far too valuable to simply dispose of and burn. Starting in 2025, used textiles are to be collected and recycled throughout the EU. Improved recycling processes are urgently needed to deal with the huge amount of textiles that will then be produced in an efficient and environmentally friendly way.

For its final trick, Chandrayaan-3 brings its propulsion module to Earth orbit

On August 23, ISRO's Vikram lander detached from its propulsion module and made a soft landing near the moon's south pole region. The lander then deployed its Pragyan rover, and for two weeks the endearing little solar-powered rover performed marvelously, detecting water ice and characterizing the makeup of the lunar regolith before succumbing to the darkness and cold of the lunar night.

Famed Halley's comet passes aphelion this weekend

It's lonely out there in the frozen outer solar system. On Saturday, December 9th, that most famous of all comets 1P/Halley reaches a hallmark point on its 75-year journey through the solar system, reaching aphelion or its most distant point from the sun.

Dredging up New York City's glacial memory

On a cold night in November, a small group gathered at the boathouse of the Brooklyn-based Gowanus Dredgers to listen to Elizabeth Case, a glaciologist and Ph.D. student at Columbia Climate School's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, talk about how glaciers formed and defined the landscape of New York City.

Ex-entrepreneurs can thrive in the right employee roles, finds new study

Once an entrepreneur always an entrepreneur? Not necessarily, says a new study by researchers at the University of Central Florida and Purdue University. Former entrepreneurs can transition from being their own boss into successful employees within an organization, especially in roles that harness their entrepreneurial spirit, according to a recent study published in Personnel Psychology.

Understanding climate tipping points

As the planet warms, many parts of the Earth system are undergoing large-scale changes. Ice sheets are shrinking, sea levels are rising and coral reefs are dying off.

DNA analysis of bat droppings shows astonishingly high number of insect species

Adequate food supply is a fundamental need and requirement for survival. To protect a species, it is often very helpful to know what that species prefers and frequently consumes. Through the analysis of DNA traces in the droppings of a Leisler's bat colony, researchers at LIB (Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change) have now identified an astonishingly high number—more than...

Physicists 'entangle' individual molecules for the first time, hastening possibilities for quantum computing

For the first time, a team of Princeton physicists have been able to link together individual molecules into special states that are quantum mechanically "entangled." In these bizarre states, the molecules remain correlated with each other—and can interact simultaneously—even if they are miles apart, or indeed, even if they occupy opposite ends of the universe. This research was recently...

Scientists believe lack of women in physics tied to personal preference, but this ignores gender norms: Study

Fewer women pursue careers in physics than biology, and scientists from around the world believe these differences come down to personal preferences, according to a new Rice University study of international scientists. The study's researchers warn that merely chalking this imbalance up to individual choice may diminish the push for gender equality in the sciences.

A catalyst for electronically controlled C–H functionalization

The Chirik Group at the Princeton Department of Chemistry is chipping away at one of the great challenges of metal-catalyzed C–H functionalization with a new method that uses a cobalt catalyst to differentiate between bonds in fluoroarenes, functionalizing them based on their intrinsic electronic properties.

New dark matter theory explains two puzzles in astrophysics

Thought to make up 85% of matter in the universe, dark matter is nonluminous and its nature is not well understood. While normal matter absorbs, reflects, and emits light, dark matter cannot be seen directly, making it harder to detect. A theory called "self-interacting dark matter," or SIDM, proposes that dark matter particles self-interact through a dark force, strongly colliding with one...

Ancient stars made extraordinarily heavy elements, researchers find

How heavy can an element be? An international team of researchers has found that ancient stars were capable of producing elements with atomic masses greater than 260, heavier than any element on the periodic table found naturally on Earth. The finding deepens our understanding of element formation in stars.

Social robots leave students wanting, education researchers find

Social robots, artificial intelligence (AI) systems designed to interact with humans, are marketed as capable of fulfilling certain human roles. Elementary and middle school students who interacted with one of these robots in the classroom for 10 weeks showed curiosity about aspects of the robot—including gender identity—that make them appear "social," according to Penn State College of...

Astronomers calculate which exoplanets are most likely to have water

Astronomers know of about 60 rocky exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. When they try to determine how habitable these planets might be, detecting water in their atmospheres plays a huge role. But what if there was another way of measuring the water content in these worlds?

Video: Tracking human emissions from space

The Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring (CO2M) mission will be the first satellite mission to measure how much carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere through human activity.

Biases behind transgender athlete bans are deeply rooted

In 2023, 24 states had laws or regulations in place prohibiting transgender students from participating on public school athletic teams consistent with their gender identity. These bans mean that a person whose sex assigned at birth was male but who identifies as a girl or woman cannot play on a girls or women's athletic team at a public school in that state.

Three takeaways on respiratory illness in dogs

Headlines have been circulating about a "mystery" canine respiratory illness. How novel is this, and what should dog owners know? Penn Today spoke with Deborah Silverstein, professor of emergency and critical care at the School of Veterinary Medicine and section chief of emergency and critical care at Ryan Veterinary Hospital, to break down the biggest takeaways.

Ocean warming sets the stage for dangerous but predictable East Africa droughts

Frequent droughts—interspersed with floods—have become the new norm in eastern East Africa over the past few years, driving a massive food security crisis. In 2020, the Horn of Africa entered its longest and most severe dry spell in more than 70 years, and 2022 marked the driest springtime drought on record. More than 20 million people experienced extreme hunger because of failed harvests, and...

How agriculture can make the most of one of the world's biggest carbon stocks, soil

It's right under our feet. We barely notice as we go about our lives, yet it is nothing less than the largest carbon repository among all of Earth's ecosystems. This distinction is awarded neither to forests, nor to the atmosphere, but to our soils. There are around 2,400 billion tons of carbon in the first two meters below ground, which is three times as much as in the atmosphere.