Nations agree rulebook for Paris climate treaty

Nations on Sunday struck a deal to implement the landmark 2015 Paris climate treaty after marathon UN talks that failed to match the ambition the world's most vulnerable countries need to avert dangerous global warming. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Oceans of garbage prompt war on plastics

Faced with images of turtles smothered by plastic bags, beaches carpeted with garbage and islands of trash floating in the oceans, environmentalists say the world is waking up to the need to tackle plastic pollution at the source. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Apple to roll out new Snoopy, Peanuts cartoon series

Apple will produce a new animated series starring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, created by the late American cartoonist Charles Schulz, for its video platform, a source close to the deal said Friday, confirming press reports. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Irish data authority probes Facebook photo breach

The Irish data watchdog on Friday launched an investigation into Facebook, after the social media titan admitted a "bug" may have exposed unposted photos from up to 6.8 million users. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Somali-American Amazon workers demand better conditions

A group of Amazon workers in Minnesota who are Somali refugees resettled in the Midwestern US state demanded better working conditions Friday during a protest outside one of the retailer's warehouses. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Fake news vs fact in online battle for truth

Since US President Donald Trump weaponised the term "fake news" during the 2016 presidential election campaign, the phrase has gone viral. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Climate talks extended as island nations demand action

Weary officials from almost 200 countries faced another day of negotiations at the U.N. climate talks to bridge their last remaining differences as small island nations on Friday demanded an ambitious stance against global warming. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

California mandates 100-percent zero-emission bus fleet

California moved Friday to eliminate fossil fuels from its fleet of 12,000 transit buses, enacting a first-in-the-nation mandate that will vastly increase the number of electric buses on the road. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

See a passing comet this Sunday

On Sunday, Dec. 16, the comet known as 46P/Wirtanen will make one of the 10 closest comet flybys of Earth in 70 years, and you may even be able to see it without a telescope. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA moves liquid hydrogen tank to Huntsville for testing

NASA is moving a massive liquid hydrogen tank to Huntsville, Alabama for testing as part of its plans to eventually return to the moon. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A damming trend

Hundreds of dams are being proposed for Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia. The negative social and environmental consequences—affecting everything from food security to the environment—greatly outweigh the positive changes of this grand-scale flood control, according to new re … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA-NOAA's satellite tracks a stronger Tropical Cyclone Owen nearing landfall

Tropical Cyclone Owen continued to strengthen as it moved east through the Gulf of Carpentaria and toward a landfall in western Queensland, Australia. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of the storm. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Mention of 'fossil fuels' cut from videos at UN climate talks

Videos produced by environmental groups to be shown to thousands of participants in a major UN climate summit were banned by organisers for mentioning fossil fuels, in a move campaigners say amounts to censorship. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

'No evidence' of Huawei spying, says German IT watchdog

Germany's IT watchdog has expressed scepticism about calls for a boycott of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, saying it has seen no evidence the firm could use its equipment to spy for Beijing, news weekly Spiegel reported Friday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

International academic 'Santa survey' shows children stop believing in Father Christmas aged eight

It's that time of year when children look forward to a stocking full of presents—but the first international academic "Santa survey" shows many adults also wish they still believed in Father Christmas and some had felt betrayed when they discovered the truth. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

For these critically endangered marine turtles, climate change could be a knockout blow

Hawksbill turtles aren't the only marine turtles threatened by the destabilizing effects of climate change, but a new study from researchers at Florida State University shows that this critically endangered species could be at particular risk. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Colorado River Delta report provides restoration road map

Four growing seasons after the engineered spring flood of the Colorado River Delta in March 2014, the delta's birds, plants and groundwater continue to benefit, according to a report prepared for the International Boundary and Water Commission by a binational University of Arizon … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A painless adhesive: Adhesives for biomedical applications can be detached with light

Pulling off a Band-Aid may soon get a lot less painful. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

We train Colombian woolly monkeys to be wild again – and maybe save them from extinction

Colombia's Andes Mountains used to be loaded with wildlife, including South America's sole bear species, the spectacle bear, and the mountain tapir, which lives only in the world's highest altitudes. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Researchers verify that agricultural biodiversity is an effective tool to fight plagues

Researchers of the Ecophysiology and Biotechnology group of the Universitat Jaume I (UJI) in Castellón, Spain, have taken part in a study that reveals how agricultural biodiversity is an effective tool for combatting plagues and the effects that climate change has on crops. The r … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

How do cellular machines unfold misfolded proteins?

Protein chains typically fold to function. Folding is a complex process and if done correctly leads to a unique functional fold topology for a given protein chain. Other topologies are also possible but are often non-functional or toxic. These misfolded proteins are then unfolded … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

How an app can help fight loneliness in old people at Christmas

Loneliness, as a leading cause of depression and obesity, is believed to cost £6,000 per person in health and social care services. Loneliness is especially prevalent during the winter holidays, perhaps intensified by the short days, bad weather and the impression that everyone e … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Missing ocean monitoring instrument found after five years at sea

After going missing on Christmas Day five years ago, deep ocean measuring equipment belonging to the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC) has just been found on a beach in Tasmania by a local resident after making an incredible 14,000 km journey across the ocean. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A space playground for the fourth state of matter

A recipe to understand atomic structures: | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

There is hope amidst environmental anxiety, says a scholar of ecotheology

Climate change affects everyone. Awareness of the vast scope and rapid pace of the required adjustments may cause feelings of impotence. According to Panu Pihkala, an ecotheologian, the power of constructive actions and political influence is also inherent in the correct processi … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Nations still worlds apart at crunch UN climate summit

Nations at UN climate talks were haggling Friday over the world's plan to avert disaster as host Poland dumped a draft decision text on delegates just hours before the summit was due to end. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Scientists create bee vaccine to fight off 'insect apocalypse'

Scientists in Finland have developed what they believe is the world's first vaccine to protect bees against disease, raising hopes for tackling the drastic decline in insect numbers which could cause a global food crisis. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Image: Mount Triglav, Slovenia

The Copernicus Sentinel-2A satellite takes us over Mount Triglav in Slovenia. At 2800 m above sea level, the mountain is the highest in the country and a significant source of national pride, even featuring on the Slovenian coat of arms. Milan Kucan, the former president, famous … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

First-ever footage of wolves hunting freshwater fish captured near Voyageurs National Park

The Voyageurs Wolf Project, a collaboration between the University of Minnesota and Voyageurs National Park, has followed GPS-collared wolves from over seven different packs since 2015, but the "Bowman Bay" pack was recently caught displaying a unique behavior: hunting freshwater … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Study peels back details on mammalian keratin genes and adaptation to living on land or sea

Whether by land or by sea, mammals live in a diverse variety of protective skins adapted against the elements, from swimming in the deepest azure oceans to climbing precipitous mountain peaks. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

How complexity science can quickly detect climate record anomalies

The history of our climate is written in ice. Reading it is a matter of deciphering the complex signals pulled from tens of thousands of years of accumulated isotopes frozen miles below the surface of Antarctica. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Scientists warn of slow progress towards United Nations biodiversity targets

Scientists from the United States and Brazil warn that the current global progress toward United Nations (UN) sustainability goals is not fast enough to avert the biodiversity crisis. A scientific team led by the California Academy of Sciences evaluated progress toward current bi … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Archaeologist debunks the myth of "the nearly naked Bushmen"

It is said that "clothes maketh the man." | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

How Amazon delivers holiday gifts from the buy button to your door: Go inside a fulfillment center

A couple of weeks before Christmas, the inside of an Amazon Robotics fulfillment center near Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport looks more industrial than anything having to do with holiday shopping. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Predicting the accuracy of a neural network prior to training

Constructing a neural network model for each new dataset is the ultimate nightmare for every data scientist. What if you could forecast the accuracy of the neural network earlier thanks to accumulated experience and approximation? This was the goal of a recent project at IBM Rese … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Africa: An air pollution wildcard

For the past four years, atmospheric scientists have been flying around the world with NASA on a mission to analyze pollution chemistry in the air and oceans. The NASA Atmospheric Tomography Mission or ATom, which flew its last campaign this spring, discovered unexpected levels o … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

On the horizon: Looking ahead for global conservation

Every year for the last decade, an expert team of horizon scanners, science communicators and researchers have identified the top emerging issues in global conservation. This year's team included Fauna & Flora International's (FFI) Head of Marine Conservation, Nicola Frost, with … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Orangutans can communicate about the past just like humans, new research finds

The evolution of language converted a defenceless naked ape into a world-dominating force. It fundamentally transformed how humans transmit information and knowledge. A large and potent component of language is our ability to communicate about things that are not here, that happe … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Weather monitoring from the ground up

Many startups tailor their first product or service to a specific market segment in order to validate their ideas and get some early traction. Far fewer develop a solution to such a fundamental problem that they explore several markets simultaneously, but ClimaCell has done just … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Women don't speak up over workplace harassment because no one hears them if they do

There are good reasons why those experiencing sexual harassment – particularly in the workplace – don't report it at the time it occurs. To do so is likely to result in ostracism, exclusion, career suicide or a direct threat to a complainant's ongoing employment. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Native cherries are a bit mysterious, and possibly inside-out

People don't like parasites. But there's a local Aussie tree that's only a little bit parasitic: the native cherry, or cherry ballart. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Scientists dismiss the idea of travel through wormholes

A RUDN employee and Brazilian colleagues have called into question the concept of using stable wormholes as portals to different points of space-time. The results of the studies were published in Physical Review D. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Are reef corals stressed or just pessimistic?

Climate change threatens coral reefs around the globe. The high temperatures associated with this phenomenon can lead to "bleaching," the breakdown of the symbiosis between corals and the algae that live within their cells. Since corals are nourished by these photosynthetically … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Soybean oil driving technology to improve roadways

Holiday drivers who find that roadwork is driving them crazy may find in future years that a Purdue University-affiliated startup can seal the deal for a merrier journey. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Moun­tain birds de­clin­ing in Europe

Population data for European mountain birds had been combined in a recent study, with worrying results: The abundance of mountain-specialist birds has declined by as much as 10 percent since 2000. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Two stalagmites found in Chinese cave offer a way to improve accuracy of carbon-14 dating

A team of researchers with members affiliated with several institutions in the U.S. and China has found two stalagmites that offer a way to improve the accuracy of the carbon-14 dating technique. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes the stalagmites … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

The contest for the worst air pollutant

In its report published on June 28, 2018, the French Agency for Health Safety (ANSES) presented a list of 13 new priority air pollutants to monitor. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Head Start slashes likelihood of adult poverty

One of the United States' most successful anti-poverty measures starts very early in life: Head Start, a preschool program for disadvantaged kids, increased children's education and significantly reduced the likelihood of adult poverty, according to a University of Michigan study … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago