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1,472 articles from PhysOrg

NASA confirms heavy rainfall, strengthening of tropical storm Marie

Tropical Storm Marie has formed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and NASA satellite data helped confirm the strengthening of the storm. In addition, using a NASA satellite rainfall product that incorporates data from satellites and observations, NASA estimated Marie's rainfall rates the provided more clues about intensification.

Disease-spreading ticks keep marching north as weather stays warmer

Ticks are among nature's most hardy survivors. They've been around for at least 100 million years and used to feast on dinosaur blood. Their bodies contain anti-freeze to help them survive cold weather and their two front legs have carbon dioxide and infrared sensors to help detect when a warm-blooded mammal is approaching. Tiny hairs on their legs increases friction and allows ticks to latch onto...

Developing the fastest and most sensitive graphene microwave bolometer

Bolometers are devices that measure the power of incident electromagnetic radiation thru the heating of materials, which exhibit a temperature-electric resistance dependence. These instruments are among the most sensitive detectors so far used for infrared radiation detection and are key tools for applications that range from advanced thermal imaging, night vision, infrared spectroscopy to...

Millions of Latinos at risk of job displacement by automation

The potential acceleration of job automation spurred by COVID-19 will disproportionately affect Latinos in U.S. service sector jobs, according to a new UCLA report, which also urges state and local officials to start planning now to implement programs to support and retrain these workers.

Stellar explosion in Earth's proximity

When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova—a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned to normal, physicists from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have found evidence of a supernova that exploded near the Earth around 2.5 million years ago.

Pandemic provides unique opportunity for atmospheric chemists

As the COVID-19 pandemic slowed travel and business around the world, pollution emission rates dropped in response. With fewer cars on the road and clearer skies, atmospheric chemists jumped at the opportunity to study the impact of reduced emissions outside the lab. A news story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, details early findings, which...

Problems with reproduction in birds

In birds and other species alike, pairs can face considerable difficulties with reproduction. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have now shown in an extensive analysis of 23,000 zebra finch eggs that infertility is mainly due to males, while high embryo mortality is more a problem of the females. Inbreeding, age of the parents and conditions experienced when...

Scientists synthesise a material capable of degrading nerve agents in water

A team from the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol) of the University of Valencia has succeeded in synthesizing a new porous material that enables and guides the degradation of compounds analogous to nerve agents used in chemical warfare. This material will make it possible to capture and degrade this type of compounds that until now could not be eliminated. The work has been published in...

Ceramics uncovered in 3000-year-old trading network

The tiny island of Tavolara off the coast of Sardinia may have been a trading place in the Early Iron Age (9th to 8th centuries BCE) where the original inhabitants of Sardinia, the Nuragic people, exchanged goods with people from the central Italian mainland—members of the Villanova culture. Archaeometric analyses of 3000-year-old pottery from the archaeological site of Spalmatore di Terra on...

Biodiversity: where the world is making progress–and where it's not

The future of biodiversity hangs in the balance. World leaders are gathering to review international targets and make new pledges for action to stem wildlife declines. Depending on whether you are a glass half-full or half-empty person, you're likely to have different views on their progress so far.

Researchers gain new insights on river dynamics

A river's only consistent attribute is change. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus remarked, "No man ever steps in the same river twice." Although this dynamic nature is often out of sight and mind, forgetting about it has led to many a historical catastrophe.

Colloidal quantum dot light emitters go broadband in the infrared

Broadband light emission in the infrared has proven to be of paramount importance for a large range of applications that include food quality and product/process monitoring, recycling, environmental sensing and monitoring, multispectral imaging in automotive as well as safety and security. With the advent of IoT and the increasing demand in adding more functionalities to portable devices (such as...

Zebrafish embryos help prove what happens to nanoparticles in the blood

A variety of nanoparticles are designed for targeted drug delivery, but unfortunately only a very small proportion of the injected nanoparticles reach the target site such as solid tumors. The reason behind the low targeting efficiency is often considered a "black box" and had thus been little explored for many years.

Shedding light on how urban grime affects chemical reactions in cities

Many city surfaces are coated with a layer of soot, pollutants, metals, organic compounds and other molecules known as "urban grime." Chemical reactions that occur in this complex milieu can affect air and water quality. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Earth and Space Chemistry have taken a closer look at urban grime collected from two U.S. cities, revealing for the first time that the material...

NASA imagery reveals Kujira transitioning into an extratropical cyclone

Tropical cyclones can become post-tropical before they dissipate, meaning they can become sub-tropical, extra-tropical or a remnant low-pressure area. NASA's Aqua satellite provided a visible image that showed Typhoon Kujira transitioning into an extra-tropical storm, and the effects of strong wind shear on the system.

Coral's resilience to warming may depend on iron

How well corals respond to climate change could depend in part on the already scarce amount of iron available in their environment, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. The study reveals that the combination of hot water temperatures and low iron levels compromises the algae that live within coral cells, suggesting that limited iron levels—which could decline with warming...

New research on how fungal cells respond to stress

Researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) have published new findings in Molecular and Cellular Proteomics on critical cellular processes triggered when cells respond to environmental stress. Mark Marten, professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, led the research team, which identified three coordinated pathways involved in the response to cell...

Simulation model may reduce the climate footprint of oil production

Future offshore oil and gas fields are most likely to be "satellite developments" that are less expensive and emit less greenhouse gasses than other fields because they do not require new production platforms. An innovative Norwegian computational tool called "Slug Capturing 2" is now enabling the design of longer pipelines that will allow many more fields to be developed as satellites.

Q&A: Landscape ecologist says California wildfires aren't a random situation

For the past several weeks, dozens of wildfires have scorched a destructive path across western forests and plains, threatening homes and habitat—as of this week, more than 5 million acres in California, Oregon and Washington have been destroyed by some of the largest wildfires in the region's history. Monica Turner, a landscape ecologist in the Department of Integrative Biology, spent several...

New gas giant exoplanet discovered by NGTS survey

An international team of astronomers has discovered a new gas giant alien world as part of the Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS). The newly found exoplanet, designated NGTS-12b, is about the size of Jupiter, but more than four times less massive than the solar system's biggest planet. The finding is reported in a paper published September 22 on arXiv.org.

Breaking COVID-19's 'clutch' to stop its spread

Scripps Research chemist Matthew Disney, Ph.D., and colleagues have created drug-like compounds that, in human cell studies, bind and destroy the pandemic coronavirus' so-called "frameshifting element" to stop the virus from replicating. The frameshifter is a clutch-like device the virus needs to generate new copies of itself after infecting cells.

How a toxic chromium species could form in drinking water

The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, brought much-needed attention to the problem of potentially toxic metals being released from drinking water distribution pipes when water chemistry changes. Now, researchers reporting in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology have investigated how hexavalent chromium, known as Cr(VI), can form in drinking water when corroded cast iron pipes interact with...

Breaking new ground in the search for dark matter

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is renowned for the hunt for and discovery of the Higgs boson, but in the 10 years since the machine collided protons at an energy higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator, researchers have been using it to try to hunt down an equally exciting particle: the hypothetical particle that may make up an invisible form of matter called dark matter, which...

The odd special mutation can be very helpful—the trick is knowing how to find them

Geneticist Jolanda van Leeuwen remembers the day she made a striking observation that would take her down a new research path. A strain of yeast cells carrying a complete deletion of an essential gene in their genomes, which should be lethal, somehow thrived in the Petri dish as if perfectly healthy. Van Leeuwen later determined that the cells had developed another mutation that allowed them to...

Adaptive genetic markers identify the origins and dispersal of invasive species

The western area of the Iberian Peninsula could be determinant in the origin of the ancestral population of Drosophila subobscura, an invasive species widely spread across multiple latitudes. This is the conclusion of a study of adaptive genetic markers now published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, which was led by Marta Pascual from the Faculty of Biology and the Biodiversity...

From pandemic shock to recession as pandemic set in

Pandemic-related restrictions on economic activity resulted in a massive reduction in working hours in March and April 2020. Only the key professions and those jobs that could be done from home were largely spared. Once the strict lockdown rules were relaxed, the sectors that were particularly affected recovered relatively quickly, while other sectors recorded a significant drop in hours. This is...