Jerusalem's dilemma over hordes of stray cats

A dozen cats wake up in cages stacked on top of one another, a pungent odour in the air, while in a room next door two vets work diligently. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New space race to bring satellite internet to the world

Anxiety has set in across the space industry ever since the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, revealed Project Kuiper: a plan to put 3,236 satellites in orbit to provide high-speed internet across the globe. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Lyft loss widens to $1.1 bn, unveils Waymo partnership

Lyft said Tuesday its loss in the past quarter widened to $1.1 billion in the ride-hailing giant's first financial report as a public company, as it announced it was teaming up with former Google car unit Waymo on autonomous taxis. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New Zealand unveils plan to go carbon neutral by 2050

New Zealand introduced legislation Wednesday to make the South Pacific nation carbon neutral by 2050, although greenhouse gas emissions from the economically vital agricultural sector will not have to meet the commitment. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Toyota annual net profit drops by a quarter

Japanese car giant Toyota said Wednesday its annual net profit fell by a quarter, despite record sales, blaming investment losses—but it forecast an upturn in the year ahead. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Paper wasps capable of behavior that resembles logical reasoning

A new University of Michigan study provides the first evidence of transitive inference, the ability to use known relationships to infer unknown relationships, in a nonvertebrate animal: the lowly paper wasp. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

S-money: Ultra-secure form of virtual money proposed

A new type of money that allows users to make decisions based on information arriving at different locations and times, and that could also protect against attacks from quantum computers, has been proposed by a researcher at the University of Cambridge. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Google promises better privacy tools, smarter AI assistant

Google announced updates for its artificially intelligent voice assistant and new privacy tools to give people more control over how they're being tracked on the go or in their own home. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Bringing out the science of wargames

A first-of-its-kind online game, released publicly today, is poised to revolutionize the field of wargaming. Developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories with support from the Carnegie … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Sand from glacial melt could be Greenland's economic salvation

As climate change melts Greenland's glaciers and deposits more river sediment on its shores, an international group of researchers has identified one unforeseen economic opportunity for the Arctic nation: exporting excess sand and gravel abroad, where raw materials for infrastruc … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Neutrons investigate tomatoes for insights into interplant chatter

Plants are chatty creatures. In the last decade, researchers have shown plants communicate using underground fungal networks to exchange chemical information. However, exactly how that process works at the microscopic level is not well understood. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Germany's Siemens says plans to spin off oil and gas unit

German industrial conglomerate Siemens said Tuesday it plans to spin off its struggling gas and power unit to prepare it for a potential stock market listing next year. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Surface protein editing in bacteria

University of Minnesota researchers have discovered this previously unknown signaling pathway that regulates surface proteins on bacteria that can lead to new targets for antibiotics. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New report examines reproducibility and replicability in science

While computational reproducibility in scientific research is generally expected when the original data and code are available, lack of ability to replicate a previous study—or obtain consistent results looking at the same scientific question but with different data—is more nuanc … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

What's on tap? Michigan's economy

Need some economic growth? Grab a cold craft beer (industry). | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Experimental cosmologist group launches its first iterations of space-traveling 'wafercraft'

These are the adventures of the "StarChip Wafersize." | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Seed abortion and the role of RNA Pol IV in seed development

ASPB is pleased to announce the publication in The Plant Cell of important research that explores the cause of seed abortion and the role of the enzyme RNA Pol IV to understand how seed development works. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Could this rare supernova resolve a longstanding origin debate?

Detection of a supernova with an unusual chemical signature by a team of astronomers led by Carnegie's Juna Kollmeier—and including Carnegie's Nidia Morrell, Anthony Piro, Mark Phillips, and Josh Simon—may hold the key to solving the longstanding mystery that is the source of the … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Space Sustainability Rating aims to address growing amount of space debris orbiting earth

The World Economic Forum has announced the introduction of a Space Sustainability Rating (SSR) system to help tackle the problem of space traffic and congestion in the Earth's orbit. The announcement of the SSR and the participating collaborators was made today at the Satellite 2 … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Teaching CRISPR and antibiotic resistance to high school students

How can high school students learn about a technology as complex and abstract as CRISPR? It's simple: just add water. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Electoral regulations must tackle 'inequalities' caused by political advertising on Facebook

Regulators must find a way of monitoring and addressing the way political advertising on Facebook creates new types of inequalities for campaigners, experts have said. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Markets missing fossil fuel exposure to climate risk: analysis

Investors are overlooking the long-term risks climate change poses to oil and gas infrastructure firms, which face tens of billion of dollars worth of stranded assets as the world transitions to greener energy, according to new analysis seen by AFP. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Southern African leaders seek ways to manage elephant populations

Leaders from four southern African countries held talks in Botswana on Tuesday to better manage the world's largest concentration of elephants, amid growing concerns over poaching, loss of habitat, and conflict with humans. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Three lions rescued in Albania sent to the Netherlands

Three lions, rescued in October from a private zoo in Albania where they were kept in "hellish" conditions were transported Tuesday to the Netherlands, an animal welfare organisation said. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Strike set for rideshare drivers, casting shadow on Uber IPO

Rideshare drivers in major US cities were set to strike Wednesday, casting a shadow over the keenly anticipated Wall Street debut of sector leader Uber. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

How birdwatchers can help threatened bird populations

The types of birds coming through your neighborhood are probably changing, and so is the timing of their migrations. Birdwatchers noticing these differences are on the front line in figuring out how climate change and more severe weather events are putting stress on bird populati … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Fat fruit flies: High-sugar diet deadens sweet tooth; promotes overeating, obesity in flies

Some research suggests that one reason people with obesity overeat is because they don't enjoy food—especially sweets—as much as lean people. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Lions vs. porcupines—Historical records show what leads lions to hunt porcupines and what happens when they do

Not much can mess with a lion. They're four-hundred-pound top predators, bringing down large prey like wildebeests, zebras, and even giraffes. But they're not invincible—a new study delves into the interactions between lions and porcupines, and shows how these spiky, cocker spani … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Science Says: Why biodiversity matters to you

You may go your entire life without seeing an endangered species, yet the globe's biodiversity crisis threatens all of humanity in numerous unseen or unrecognized ways, scientists say. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Ethiopian clothes makers worst paid in the world: study

Ethiopia's clothes factory workers, producing items for top fashion brands including Guess, H&M and Calvin Klein, are the worst paid in the world, earning only $26 (23 euros) a month, a report said Tuesday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Academics show how to create a spotlight of sound with LEGO-like bricks

Academics have created devices capable of manipulating sound in the same way as light—creating exciting new opportunities in entertainment and public communication. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Vaccine for African swine fever may save our bacon

Wild boar can be immunized against African Swine Fever by a new vaccine delivered to the animals in their food, says new research. Published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science, it is the first report of a promising inoculation against this deadly disease, which is a worldwide thr … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New species of fish parasite named after Xena, the warrior princess

A study of parasitic crustaceans attaching themselves inside the branchial cavities (the gills) of their fish hosts was recently conducted in order to reveal potentially unrecognised diversity of the genus Elthusa in South Africa. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

ATLAS Experiment adds more pieces to the Higgs boson puzzle

The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS Experiments at CERN, but its coupling to other particles remains a puzzle. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Engineered 'smart cells' improve production of pharmaceutical raw materials

Researchers in Japan have developed an integrated synthetic biology system to construct new metabolic pathways and enzymes within microbes. By incorporating a "Design, Build, Test, Learn" (DBTL) workflow, the production of pharmaceutical raw materials could be systematically opti … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Analysis of remains in ancient gravesite gives insight into Neolithic history in Poland

A large team of researchers from across Europe and the U.K. has learned more about Neolithic history in Poland by studying the remains of people buried in a mass grave in a southern part of the country. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Five tips on how to be a good mentor to someone twice your age

Plato and Aristotle. Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey. Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg. In each of these famous relationships it was the older person with more experience acting as mentor, guiding the much younger "mentee" in their career. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

GM Cruise autonomous vehicle unit gets $1.15B investment

A group of institutional investors is sinking $1.15 billion into GM Cruise LLC, the autonomous vehicle unit of General Motors. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

The deadly, life-giving and transient elements that make up group 15 of the periodic table

When you see the periodic table, what comes to mind? The pieces on a scrabble board? Maybe you think about your high school chemistry class. Maybe you think of the colorful table plastered on the wall of a lecture hall in college. Maybe you remember your favorite teacher setting … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Leonardo da Vinci's early work on friction founded the modern science of tribology

For most people, the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Leonardo da Vinci is the Mona Lisa, or his sketches of the Vitruvian man. Fans of pulp fiction or popular cinema might even find their minds drifting to memories of The Da Vinci Code, the mystery thriller. Not … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Lufthansa eyes Thomas Cook's Condor with buyout offer

European airline giant Lufthansa said Tuesday it had offered to buy carrier Condor from British parent company Thomas Cook, opening a new chapter in its fast-paced growth through buyouts. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Farmers have Britain's most lethal job – here's how to make them safer

Britain's farmers are almost 18 times more likely to be killed on the job than the average industrial worker, and the fatality rate is increasing. Look through the government's summary of the 33 fatal farm, forestry and fishing accidents in 2017/18 and there were a number of type … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Porsche fined 535 mn euros over diesel cheating

German sports car maker and Volkswagen subsidiary Porsche will pay a 535-million-euro ($598 million) fine over diesel vehicles that emitted more harmful pollutants than allowed, Stuttgart prosecutors said Tuesday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Phytoplankton decline coincides with warming temperatures over the last 150 years

Virtually all marine life depends on the productivity of phytoplankton—microscopic organisms that work tirelessly at the ocean's surface to absorb the carbon dioxide that gets dissolved into the upper ocean from the atmosphere. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Study shows long spaceflights lead to increase in brain ventricle size

A large team of researchers with members from Belgium, Russia, and Germany has found that people who spend a long time aboard the International Space Station experience an increase in the size of some of their brain ventricles. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Natio … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Adding satnav to turn power grids into smart systems

An ESA-backed project is harnessing satnav to insert an intelligent sense of place and time to power grids, to provide early warning of potentially dangerous electricity network failures. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Why climate change won't spur a 2008-style global financial crisis

Amid the very legitimate dire warnings from scientists and others about the future worsening impacts of climate change, there is also, unfortunately, a great deal of hyperbole about how much worse things will get. Often it is difficult to separate truth from mere speculation. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A scientist's work to protect the pork industry from virus outbreaks

In 2015, an outbreak of bird flu destroyed more than 50 million chickens and turkeys in the United States. Within a matter of months, affected states reeled from the overwhelming damage: in Iowa alone, economic losses were estimated at $1.2 billion, and thousands of jobs were los … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago