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1,619 articles from PhysOrg
New evidence our neighborhood in space is stuffed with hydrogen
Only the two Voyager spacecraft have ever been there, and it took than more than 30 years of supersonic travel. It lies well past the orbit of Pluto, through the rocky Kuiper belt, and on for four times that distance. This realm, marked only by an invisible magnetic boundary, is where Sun-dominated space ends: the closest reaches of interstellar space.
Philippines evacuates nearly 1 million as Typhoon Goni nears
Nearly a million people in the Philippines were evacuated from their homes Saturday as the most powerful typhoon of the year so far barrelled towards the country, with authorities warning of "destructive" winds and flooding.
Sri Lanka returns illegal waste to Britain after court order
Sri Lanka has started shipping 242 containers of hazardous waste, including body parts from mortuaries, back to Britain after a two year court battle by an environment watchdog, officials said Saturday.
Experts see substantial danger to democratic stability around 2020 election
On the eve of the November 3 election, Bright Line Watch—the political science research project of faculty at the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, and Dartmouth College—finds that experts are concerned about substantial risks to the legitimacy of the election, including potential problems in the casting and counting of votes, the Electoral College, and in the resolution of...
FRIDAY 30. OCTOBER 2020
Quake strikes Turkish coast and Greek island, killing 14
A strong earthquake struck Friday in the Aegean Sea between the Turkish coast and the Greek island of Samos, killing at least 14 people and injuring over 500 amid collapsed buildings and flooding, officials said.
Asteroid's scars tell stories of its past
By studying impact marks on the surface of asteroid Bennu—the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission—a team of researchers led by the University of Arizona has uncovered the asteroid's past and revealed that despite forming hundreds of millions of years ago, Bennu wandered into Earth's neighborhood only very recently.
China's most important trees are hiding in plain sight
In ecosystems around the globe, the danger of being a common or widespread species is the tendency to be overlooked by conservation efforts that prioritize rarity.
First Australian night bees recorded foraging in darkness
Australian bees are known for pollinating plants on beautiful sunny days, but a new study has identified two species that have adapted their vision for night-time conditions for the first time.
New study reveals United States a top source of plastic pollution in coastal environments
A study published today in the journal Science Advances has revealed that the United States ranks as high as third among countries contributing to coastal plastic pollution when taking into account its scrap plastic exports as well as the latest figures on illegal dumping and littering in the country. The new research challenges the once-held assumption that the United States is adequately...
To survive asteroid impact, algae learned to hunt
Tiny, seemingly harmless ocean plants survived the darkness of the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs by learning a ghoulish behavior—eating other living creatures.
New drone technology improves ability to forecast volcanic eruptions
Specially-adapted drones developed by a UCL-led international team have been gathering data from never-before-explored volcanoes that will enable local communities to better forecast future eruptions.
A new spin on atoms gives scientists a closer look at quantum weirdness
When atoms get extremely close, they develop intriguing interactions that could be harnessed to create new generations of computing and other technologies. These interactions in the realm of quantum physics have proven difficult to study experimentally due the basic limitations of optical microscopes.
Pebble Mine developer promised riches, but expects $1.5 billion subsidy from Alaskans
The company seeking to develop Pebble Mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay has long promised that the controversial project would bring Alaska jobs, economic growth and tax revenue.
COVID-19 a 'golden opportunity' for terror organisations to intensify their propaganda
The uncertainty and confusion caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is being "widely exploited by terror groups for spinning a plethora of sinister schemes", which could lead to a new tide of violence against people and governments.
Future lake food webs in subarctic have more biomass and contain more omega-3 fatty acids
Subarctic regions are facing rapid changes in climate and land-use intensity. An international research team recently completed an investigation to see how these changes are affecting the food webs and fish communities of lakes in northern Finland. Biomasses and omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, were determined from the algal producers at the base of food web to large carnivorous fish from 20...
Dynamic photonic barcodes record energy transfer at the biointerface
Optical barcodes enable detection and tracking via unique spectral fingerprints. They've been widely applied in areas ranging from multiplexed bioassays and cell tagging to anticounterfeiting and security. Yu-Cheng Chen of the Bio+Intelligent Photonics Laboratory at Nanyang Technological University notes that the concept of optical barcodes typically refers to a fixed spectral pattern...
In a hurry to develop drugs? Here's your cHAT
Let's call it the Texas two-step, but for molecules.
How the waters off Catalina became a DDT dumping ground
Not far from Santa Catalina Island, in an ocean shared by divers and fishermen, kelp forests and whales, David Valentine decoded unusual signals underwater that gave him chills.
Assessing the habitability of planets around old red dwarfs
A new study using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope gives new insight into an important question: how habitable are planets that orbit the most common type of stars in the Galaxy? The target of the new study, as reported in our press release, is Barnard's Star, which is one of the closest stars to Earth at a distance of just 6 light years. Barnard's Star is a...
A Subterranean ecosystem in the Chicxulub crater
A new study reveals that the Chicxulub impact crater and its hydrothermal system hosted a subterranean ecosystem that could provide a glimpse of Earth's primordial life.
Scary insects for Halloween: the bloodthirsty calyptra
Sometimes insects show signs of monster behavior.
The scariest things in the universe are black holes—and here are three reasons
Halloween is a time to be haunted by ghosts, goblins and ghouls, but nothing in the universe is scarier than a black hole.
Copernicus captures image of the Republic of Maldives
All 1200 islands that make up the Republic of Maldives are featured in this spectacular image captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission.
Copernicus Sentinel-6 measuring sea-levels using radar altimetry
This November the newest member of the EU's Copernicus program, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, will take to the heavens from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite is named after NASA's former Director of Earth Observation and is a radar altimetry mission to monitor sea-level rise, wave-height and windspeed.
The traits of Florisbad skull reinforce the mosaic hypothesis of human evolution
Emiliano Bruner, a paleoneurologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), in collaboration with Marlize Lombard, of the University of Johannesburg, has just published a study in the Journal of Anthropological Sciences which describes the braincase traits of Florisbad, a fossil found in South Africa in 1932, and its similarities with other species like Homo...
Report shows climate change imperils the U.S. financial system
Burnt orange daytime skies signal that the consequences of climate change are already here. But while we tend to focus on the death and destruction resulting from the growing frequency and severity of wildfires and other disasters, we often pay less heed to the ways their costs ricochet through the financial system, with the potential for widespread collateral damage.
Catalysts for isotactic polar polypropylenes
Polypropylene (PP) is one of the most widely used plastics in the world. By controlling the spatial orientation of the propylene building blocks and additional polar components, it should be possible to create a new generation of attractive, engineered, specialty plastics, with improved wettability or enhanced degradability, based on PP. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Japanese scientists have...
New model that describes the organization of organisms could lead to a better understanding of biological processes
At first glance, a pack of wolves has little to do with a vinaigrette. However, a team led by Ramin Golestanian, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, has developed a model that establishes a link between the movement of predators and prey and the segregation of vinegar and oil. They expanded a theoretical framework that until now was only valid for inanimate...
Saudi Arabia faces increased heat, humidity, precipitation extremes by mid-century
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is at a crossroads. Recent long-term studies of the area indicate that rising temperatures and evaporation rates will likely further deplete scarce water resources critical to meeting the nation's agricultural, industrial, and domestic needs; more extreme flooding events could endanger lives, economic vitality, and infrastructure; and a combination of increasing...
Poverty and inequality surge across Europe in the wake of COVID-19
Poverty and inequality will potentially increase across Europe, with poor workers losing as much as 16% of income and social cohesion between countries also being damaged by pandemic lockdown measures, according to economic research from the University of Oxford.
Most isolated massive stars are kicked out of their clusters
A pair of University of Michigan studies reveals how some massive stars—stars eight or more times the mass of our sun—become isolated in the universe: most often, their star clusters kick them out.
Dead people don't vote: Study points to an 'extremely rare' fraud
With concerns rising over a potentially contested presidential election next week, a new study by Stanford researchers suggests that worries over one type of election-day fraud are overblown: ballots cast in the name of dead people.
Interactive map will crowdsource hate crime reports
Los Angeles County recorded 524 hate crimes reported in 2019, the most since 2009. And although the annual number of hate crimes is far less than its recent peak of 1,031 in 2001, the figures have trended upward over the past six years, according to data published Oct. 23 by the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.
Stars and skulls: New ESO image reveals eerie nebula
This ethereal remnant of a long dead star, nestled in the belly of The Whale, bears an uneasy resemblance to a skull floating through space. Captured in astounding detail by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), the eerie Skull Nebula is showcased in this new image in beautiful bloodshot colors. This planetary nebula is the first known to be associated with a pair of closely bound stars orbited by a...
Using off-the-shelf drones to spot deadly jellyfish
The research, published today in the journal PLOS One, focused on Chironex fleckeri—a large jellyfish capable of killing a human in under three minutes and considered the most venomous animal in the world.
Researchers develop a new way to create a spectrum of natural-looking hair colors
We've long been warned of the risks of dyeing hair at home and in salons. Products used can cause allergies and skin irritation—an estimated 1% of people have an allergy to dye. Furthermore, repeated use of some dyes has been linked to cancer.
Highlighting the accomplishments of Charles H. Turner—a black pioneer in animal intelligence studies
A pair of Queen Mary University of London psychologists are reminding modern scholars of the work conducted by an accomplished pioneer of comparative animal intelligence study: Charles Henry Turner, a Black biologist who conducted animal cognition studies in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Hiruni Samadi Galpayage Dona and Lars Chittka have published a Perspective piece in the journal Science...
Ultrapure copper for an ultrasensitive dark matter detector
In February and March, three batches of copper plates arrived at Fermilab and were rushed into storage 100 meters underground. The copper had been mined in Finland, rolled into plates in Germany and shipped across land and sea to the lab—all within 120 days. In the quest to detect dark matter, the mysterious substance making up 85% of the matter in the universe, every day that the copper spent...
Solar cycle 25: The sun wakes up
The sun has entered its 25th solar cycle and is about to wake up. For the last few years our star has been pretty sleepy, with few sunspots, bright flares or massive ejections of magnetized plasma emanating from its surface. This quiet period is known as the solar minimum, but things are starting to heat up again.
Using game-theory to look for extraterrestrial intelligence
Astronomer Eamonn Kerins with the University of Manchester has developed an approach to looking for intelligent extraterrestrial beings on other planets that involves using game theory. He has written a paper describing his ideas and has uploaded it to the arXiv preprint server.
Mechanistic basis of oxygen sensitivity in titanium
Titanium is extremely sensitive to small amounts of oxygen, which can lead to markedly decreased ductility of the material. Materials scientists therefore aim to lower the costs of purifying titanium, while avoiding the poisoning effects of oxygen. In a new report now on Science Advances, Yan Chong, and a team of scientists in materials science and engineering at the University of California...
Deep-learning algorithms helping to clear space junk from our skies
How do you measure the pose—that is the 3-D rotation and 3-D translation—of a piece of space junk so that a grasping satellite can capture it in real time in order to successfully remove it from Earth's orbit? What role will deep learning algorithms play? And, what is real time in space? These are some of the questions being tackled in a ground-breaking project, led by EPFL spin-off,...
Trends in hurricane behavior show stronger, slower and farther-reaching storms
A new normal is taking shape as a warming planet is changing hurricane behaviors and patterns. Research over the last decade has shown alarming trends resulting in more destructive hurricanes. Global trends suggest hurricanes are getting stronger, moving more slowly over land, and deviating farther north and south of the equator.
Flash graphene rocks strategy for plastic waste
Plastic waste comes back in black as pristine graphene, thanks to ACDC.
Smart tablecloth can find fruit and help with watering the plants
Researchers have designed a smart fabric that can detect non-metallic objects ranging from avocadoes to credit cards, according to a study from Dartmouth College and Microsoft Research.
Research shows whipping horses doesn't make them run faster, straighter or safer—let's cut it out
The Melbourne Cup is upon us. This year will be different due to COVID-19—but one thing we don't expect to change is concern about horses' welfare, which seems to resurface each year.
Researchers devise new method to get lead out of filters, better measure amount in tap water
Commercially sold water filters do a good job of making sure any lead from residential water pipes does not make its way into water used for drinking or cooking.
A bacterial virus helped the spread of a new Salmonella strain
Salmonella is associated with a large number of cases of foodborne infection resulting in diarrhea and in some cases severe complications. Half of all Salmonella infections in the European Union are linked to pigs, and a new strain called ST34 is dominant in this livestock animal. ST34 has now spread in pig populations worldwide and is pandemic.
New fault zone measurements could help us to understand subduction earthquake
A research team from the University of Tsukuba has conducted detailed structural analyses of a fault zone located in central Japan, with the aim to help identify the specific conditions that lead to earthquake faulting, a hazard that can cause enormous social damage. Subduction is a geological process that takes place in areas where two tectonic plates meet, such as the Japan Trench, in which one...
A world record in detecting extremely low levels of gas impurities
Photoacoustic spectroscopy applied to background-free analyses was used to measure unprecedentedly small trace gas concentrations. Teemu Tomberg from the University of Helsinki developed detection methods that make it possible to measure extremely small traces of various gasses.