Google updates misconduct reporting amid employee discontent

Google says it has updated the way it investigates misconduct claims, changes it pledged to make after thousands of employees walked out in protest last November. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Ford shares surge as US pickup sales stay strong

Ford reported a drop in first-quarter profits Thursday due in part to restructuring costs, but the company's share price rallied following a strong performance in North America and improved results in Europe. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Video game effort could help regulate future drone traffic

Drones ferrying medical supplies, packages and even pizza could one day be crisscrossing the skies above U.S. cities, and a team at the University of Utah is working with regulators to keep that future traffic in check using a video game. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA finds a more circular Tropical Cyclone Lorna

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean and captured a visible image of what appeared to be a more organized Tropical Cyclone Lorna. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Snowmelt causes seismic swarm near California's Long Valley Caldera

A spring surge of meltwater, seeping through vertically tilted layers of rock, caused a seismic swarm near California's Long Valley Caldera in 2017, according to research presented at the 2019 SSA Annual Meeting. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Filling in the gaps of connected car data helps transportation planners

If you have a new or late model car, most likely it's connected: GPS navigation, that infotainment panel, the wireless network your car creates—they're all ways for your car to provide information, whether it's to give you directions, ping other vehicles, or to check in with infr … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

The spin doctors: Researchers discover surprising quantum effect in hard disk drive material

Scientists find surprising way to affect information storage properties in metal alloy. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA-NOAA satellite catches intense Tropical Cyclone Kenneth make landfall in northern Mozambique

Mozambique is still recovering from deadly Tropical Cyclone Idai, and a second powerful tropical cyclone has now made landfall in the country. As NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean, it captured an infrared image of Tropical Cyclone Kenneth makin … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Amazon profit lifted by cloud, online sales

Amazon on Thursday reported that profit in the first quarter of this year more than doubled to $3.6 billion on booming e-commerce and cloud computing revenue. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Maximizing conservation benefits

Overexploitation and population collapse pose significant threats to marine fish stocks across the globe. While certain fish populations have already collapsed, research indicates that nearly one third of fisheries worldwide are currently impacted by overharvesting. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Preventing collapse after catastrophe

As the impacts of climate change escalate, ecosystems will likely undergo events that will disrupt entire populations. In marine ecosystems, anthropogenic warming has subjected organisms to elevated temperatures, oxygen loss, and acidification. The increased frequency and severit … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New view of how ocean 'pumps' impact climate change

Earth's oceans have a remarkable natural ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it deep within the ocean waters, exerting an important control on the global climate. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

High school students publish paper with RIT scientists analyzing rare bacterium

Three high school students working in a science lab for the first time made a surprising discovery with a Rochester Institute of Technology professor. Now, the young women are co-authors on a scientific paper announcing a rare bacterium that kills e-coli. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Hundreds of dead dolphins wash up on French coast

A record number of dead dolphins have washed up on France's Atlantic coast in recent months after being caught in fishing nets, the Pelagis observatory said Thursday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New method proposed for studying hydrodynamic behavior of electrons in graphene

By studying how electrons in two-dimensional graphene can literally act like a liquid, researchers have paved the way for further research into a material that has the potential to enable future electronic computing devices that outpace silicon transistors. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

It's 2019 – where's my supersuit?

I loved the "Thundercats" cartoon as a child, watching cat-like humanoids fighting the forces of evil. Whenever their leader was in trouble, he'd unleash the Sword of Omens to gain "sight beyond sight," the ability to see events happening at faraway places, or bellow "Thunder, Th … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

US agency to host meeting of global regulators on 737 MAX

The Federal Aviation Administration has invited international regulators to Washington for a meeting on the issues facing the Boeing 737 MAX, which suffered two deadly crashes in recent months, an agency spokesman said Thursday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Canada privacy watchdog rebukes Facebook

Canada's privacy commissioner said Thursday Facebook broke the law when it harvested data from 600,000 citizens—and vowed to go to court to force reforms at the social networking giant. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

In degrading Nature humanity harms itself, UN report warns

Diplomats and scientists from 130 nations gather in Paris next week to vet and validate the first UN global assessment of the state of Nature in more than a decade, and the news is not good. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

SpaceX, NASA tight-lipped on cause of crew capsule incident

NASA and SpaceX remained tight-lipped Thursday about what caused a mysterious but apparently serious incident last weekend during engine tests on the Crew Dragon capsule designed to carry US astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Bridge over coupled waters: Scientists 3-D-print all-liquid 'lab on a chip'

Researchers at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have 3-D-printed an all-liquid device that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications—from making battery materials to screening drug candida … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Bacteria uses viral weapon against other bacteria

Bacterial cells use both a virus—traditionally thought to be an enemy—and a prehistoric viral protein to kill other bacteria that competes with it for food according to an international team of researchers who believe this has potential implications for future infectious disease … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Scientists unlock new role for nervous system in regeneration

Biologists at Tufts University have developed a computational model of planarian (flatworm) regeneration that explains how fragments of planaria determine which end should form a tail and which should form a head. The development begins to answer an important question in regenera … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Human encroachment alters air quality over Amazon rainforest

Plumes of air pollution generated from a rapidly expanding city within the Amazon rainforest are wafting hundreds of miles and degrading air quality in the pristine rainforest, according to a team of scientists. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA winner demos red berries on the red planet

A team from Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering that designed a greenhouse for Mars was announced the winner of the 2019 NASA BIG Idea Challenge Wednesday at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Study: Americans' beliefs about wildlife management are changing

Abundant and healthy wildlife populations are a cultural and ecological treasure in the United States. Over time, however, the decisions about how agencies manage wildlife have become highly contested: How should managers handle human-wildlife conflict, endangered species restora … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Diamonds reveal how continents are stabilized, key to Earth's habitability

The longevity of Earth's continents in the face of destructive tectonic activity is an essential geologic backdrop for the emergence of life on our planet. This stability depends on the underlying mantle attached to the landmasses. New research by a group of geoscientists from Ca … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

UMBC program to support diverse students in STEM successfully replicated at PSU, UNC

UMBC's Meyerhoff Scholars Program has been lauded as a national model for supporting diverse students in STEM fields. Other institutions across the United States have begun to ask if UMBC's approach could work for them. A new paper published in Science on April 26 answers that qu … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Ice-proof coating for big structures relies on a 'beautiful demonstration of mechanics'

A new class of coatings that sheds ice effortlessly from even large surfaces has moved researchers closer to their decades-long goal of ice-proofing cargo ships, airplanes, power lines and other large structures. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

33-year study shows increasing ocean winds and wave heights

Extreme ocean winds and wave heights are increasing around the globe, with the largest rise occurring in the Southern Ocean, University of Melbourne research shows. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Natural landscapes? Scientists call for a paradigm shift in restoration projects

Regardless of whether we are dealing with a floodplain landscape or an entire national park, the success of a restoration project depends on more than just the reintroduction of individual plant or animal species into an area. An international team of researchers led by Martin Lu … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

How to take the 'petro' out of the petrochemicals industry

Fossil fuels are the backbone of the global petrochemicals industry, which provides the world's growing population with fuels, plastics, clothing, fertilizers and more. A new research paper, published today in Science, charts a course for how an alternative technology—renewable e … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Bringing information into the cell

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) have elucidated an important part of a signal pathway that transmits information through the cell membrane into the interior of a cell. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Discovery could be game-changer for pharmaceuticals

Manufacturing drugs may one day become more efficient, courtesy of a recent discovery by researchers at Florida International University. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Here we go again: Earth's major 'mass extinctions'

Most scientists agree that a "mass extinction" event is underway on Earth, with species disappearing hundreds of time quicker under the influence of human activity. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Human-caused climate change played limited role in Beijing's 2013 'airpocalypse'

In January 2013, a suffocating, poisonous haze hung over Beijing for four days. The record high levels of fine particulate matter in the air caused airports to close and thousands of coughing, choking citizens to seek hospital care. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Next-generation NASA instrument advanced to study the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune

Much has changed technologically since NASA's Galileo mission dropped a probe into Jupiter's atmosphere to investigate, among other things, the heat engine driving the gas giant's atmospheric circulation. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Urging party supporters to sign up for postal votes is ineffective

Research carried out by the University of Kent and Kings College London (KCL) into a common postal vote recruitment tactic found it to be ineffective in persuading people to change from visiting polling stations to vote. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Mysterious eruption came from Campi Flegrei caldera

The caldera-forming eruption of Campi Flegrei (Italy) 40,000 years ago is the largest known eruption in Europe during the last 200,000 years, but little is known about other large eruptions at the volcano prior to a more recent caldera-forming event 15,000 years ago. A new Geolog … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Researchers detect evidence of six new binary black hole mergers within LVC data

Scholars at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) recently submitted a paper announcing the discovery of six new binary black hole mergers that exceed the detection thresholds defined by the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration (LVC), the group responsible for the first direct observation o … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Inequality gap grew before the Great Recession and after, study finds

The Great Recession hit Americans across the socioeconomic spectrum, with some still working to recover economically. Yet, the drivers behind these socioeconomic divides were mounting before the decline even hit, according to a paper published in PLOS ONE. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Tech fixes can't protect us from disinformation campaigns

More than technological fixes are needed to stop countries from spreading disinformation on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, according to two experts. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Human activity can influence the gut microbiota of Darwin's finches in the Galapagos

In the Galapagos Islands, Darwin's finches drawn to junk food are experiencing changes in their gut microbiota and their body mass as compared to finches that don't encounter human food, according to a new University of Connecticut study. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Research calls for analysis of corporate ethics in the global sports industry

A new book co-written by a University of Kent sports scientist recommends corporations and organisations engage more effectively with communities—rather than taking a 'top down' approach—to improve relationships and outcomes in the sport sector. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

What's on the far side of the Moon?

Looking up at the silvery orb of the Moon, you might recognize familiar shadows and shapes on its face from one night to the next. You see the same view of the Moon our early ancestors did as it lighted their way after sundown. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Scientists discover what powers celestial phenomenon STEVE

The celestial phenomenon known as STEVE is likely caused by a combination of heating of charged particles in the atmosphere and energetic electrons like those that power the aurora, according to new research. In a new study, scientists found STEVE's source region in space and ide … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Nuclear weapons might save the world from an asteroid strike – but we need to change the law first

The schlocky 1998 Bruce Willis movie Armageddon was the highest grossing film of that year. The blockbuster saw a master oil driller (Willis) and an unlikely crew of misfits place a nuclear bomb inside a giant asteroid heading for Earth, blow it up – and save humanity. Armageddon … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Assistive robot learns to feed

About a million Americans with injury or age-related disabilities need someone to help them eat. Now NIBIB funded engineers have taught a robot the strategies needed to pick up food with a fork and gingerly deliver it to a person's mouth. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago