NASA probes 'drug-free' policies, safety at SpaceX, Boeing

The US space agency has ordered a sweeping safety review of operations and workplace culture, including drug-free policies, at Boeing and SpaceX, two companies working to send astronauts to space, US media said Tuesday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA sees Tropical Depression 33W affecting Philippines

Visible imagery from NASA's Terra satellite revealed the extent of Tropical Depression 33W showed the tropical low pressure system moving into the central part of the Philippines on Nov. 20. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA sees Tropical Depression Man-yi, warnings triggered

Tropical depression Man-yi for med in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean and NASA captured an image of the storm. Yap state is already under watches and warnings. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA tracks Tropical Depression Toraji in the Gulf of Thailand

Visible from NASA's Terra satellite revealed the extent of Tropical Depression Toraji as it continued moving through the Gulf of Thailand and affecting southern Thailand and Malaysia. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

NASA sees Tropical Cyclone Bouchra being blown apart

Tropical Cyclone Bouchra may have been re-born over the weekend of Nov. 17 and 18 but by Nov. 20 it was blown apart by wind shear and NASA's Aqua satellite confirmed that. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Boeing insists will share info with clients after Indonesia crash

Boeing on Tuesday insisted it would share any information to emerge from an investigation into the crash of one of its newest planes in Indonesia last month, amid reports a telephone conference with its customers had been canceled. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Bots actually target and pursue individual influencers

New research co-authored by assistant research professor and associate director of Informatics at the University of Southern California Department of Computer Science, Emilio Ferrara, looks at "social hacking" over social networks that can increase violent commentary and can affe … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Exoplanet stepping stones

Astronomers have gleaned some of the best data yet on the composition of a planet known as HR 8799c—a young giant gas planet about 7 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star every 200 years. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Meta-surface corrects for chromatic aberrations across all kinds of lenses

Today's optical systems—from smartphone cameras to cutting-edge microscopes—use technology that hasn't changed much since the mid-1700s. Compound lenses, invented around 1730, correct the chromatic aberrations that cause lenses to focus different wavelengths of light in different … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Fish can detox too—but not so well, when it comes to mercury

It takes six months to get really good at accurately gauging the age of yelloweye rockfish. Because they can live for up to 120 years, this species is of particular interest to Benjamin Barst and scientists like him who study the effects of toxic chemicals on living organisms. Ov … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Australian mammals at greatest risk from cats and foxes, new study

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@phys.org | 5 years ago

How reliable are search terms for SEO and SEM results?

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@phys.org | 5 years ago

Hungry ticks work harder to find you

Ticks are hardy little brutes that can go as long as a year without a meal. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Researchers reveal secrets of parasite that causes African sleeping sickness

A team of Clemson University researchers wants to protect humans and other mammals from the debilitating and even deadly effects of African sleeping sickness. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Novel machine learning technique for simulating the every day task of dressing

Putting on clothes is a daily, mundane task that most of us perform with little or no thought. We may never take into consideration the multiple steps and physical motions involved when we're getting dressed in the mornings. But that is precisely what needs to be explored when at … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Among birds-of-paradise, good looks are not enough to win a mate

Male birds-of-paradise are notorious for their wildly extravagant feather ornaments, complex calls, and shape-shifting dance moves—all evolved to attract a mate. New research published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology on November 20 suggests for the first time that female … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Transparency and reproducibility of biomedical research is improving

Over the past few years, there have been numerous efforts to promote open science practices across the scientific literature. With increased support for sharing of both data and study protocols, an increased appreciation of the importance of reproducing prior research results, an … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Studying water flow for more efficient aquaponic systems

An aquaponic system is an example of an integrated farming method in which the waste byproduct from one production process, like raising fish and other seafood, serves as a nutrient for another part of the system—like growing plants, for instance. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Researchers create a more effective hydrogel for healing wounds

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have created an easy-to-make, low-cost injectable hydrogel that could help wounds heal faster, especially for patients with compromised health issues. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Glamour embraces digital, drops regular print edition

Glamour, the fashion and beauty magazine popular with young women, is ditching its monthly print editions and embracing the online revolution, its chief editor and publishers Conde Nast announced Tuesday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

$3M reward offered in case where US device was used in IEDs

Federal authorities are offering a $3 million reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of a man wanted for illegally obtaining U.S. technology that was later used in improvised explosive devices in Iraq. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

EU turns eye to 'fake' Google shopping rivals

The EU's top competition enforcer said Brussels was taking a closer look at allegations that Google had helped introduce false price comparison sites to answer a historic ruling against the search engine giant. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New model predicts which animal viruses may spread among humans

Researchers have developed a model that predicts which of the viruses that can jump from animals to people can also be transmitted from person to person—and are therefore possible sources of human diseases. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

The shape of things to come: Flexible, foldable supercapacitors for energy storage

A team of researchers from the Plasma Physics Research Centre, Science and Research Branch of Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran, have discovered a way of making paper supercapacitors for electricity storage, according to a new study published in the journal Heliyon. At one … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Covering the fire terror in California's lost Paradise

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@phys.org | 5 years ago

Facebook access hit by unspecified problems

Facebook said Tuesday users were having trouble accessing the social network and its other applications such as Instagram, but did not explain the cause of the outages. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

As Facebook faces fire, heat turns up on No. 2 Sandberg

For the past decade, Sheryl Sandberg has been the poised, reliable second-in-command to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, helping steer Facebook's rapid growth around the world, while also cultivating her brand in ways that hint at aspirations well beyond the social network. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Mars getting first US visitor in years, a 3-legged geologist

Mars is about to get its first U.S. visitor in years: a three-legged, one-armed geologist to dig deep and listen for quakes. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Smart car technologies save drivers $6.2 billion on fuel costs each year

On one of the busiest traveling holidays of the year, drivers may be focusing on getting to grandma's house for Thanksgiving dinner, not on what smart car technologies are saving them in fuel costs. But in the first study to assess the energy impact of smart technology in cars, r … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Mars moon got its grooves from rolling stones, study suggests

A new study bolsters the idea that strange grooves crisscrossing the surface of the Martian moon Phobos were made by rolling boulders blasted free from an ancient asteroid impact. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

First-of-its-kind study finds loss of local media worsens political polarization

It's no secret that political polarization is creating an ever-widening and divisive gap in American politics. Partisan cable news outlets get the majority of the blame for increasingly isolating people into echo chambers that confirm their own political and ideological ideas, bu … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A smartphone and new software could help save infants born preterm

Worldwide, preterm birth is a leading cause of death for children under five-years-old. A new algorithm combined with a handheld, smartphone-based device could aid health care workers in remote locations to estimate degrees of prematurity for affected infants. Such information ca … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Discovery could neutralize West Nile virus

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and colleagues have isolated a human monoclonal antibody that can "neutralize" the West Nile virus and potentially prevent a leading cause of viral encephalitis (brain inflammation) in the United States. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Economist calls for creation of global tax authority to tackle inequality

An economist has called for the creation of a global tax authority as a way of tackling worldwide wealth inequality. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

The taming of the dog, cow, horse, pig and rabbit

Research at the Earlham Institute into one of the 'genetic orchestra conductors', microRNAs, sheds light on our selectively guided evolution of domestic pets and farmyard animals such as dogs and cows. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Tropical fish adapt to cold temperatures in coordination with their microbiome

Scientists have discovered that tropical fish can control their gut microbes to better survive extremes of temperature, a study in eLife reveals. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

SpaceX's Elon Musk renames his big rocket 'Starship'

SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk has announced he is changing the name of his monster rocket BFR, aimed at carrying people to the Moon and possibly one day to Mars, to "Starship." | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Researchers reveal how a deadly fungal infection shape-shifts into an invasive monster

Monash researchers have shed new light on just how the fungal infection, Candida albicans, shape-shifts into a deadly version with hyphae or filaments that help it break through human tissues and into the bloodstream. Understanding this process is key to the development of drugs … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A Mexican cavefish with a scarred heart

Scientists are studying a guppy-sized, blind, translucent fish that lives in the cave systems of northern Mexico to figure out why some animals can regenerate their hearts, while others just scar. Their research appears November 20 in the journal Cell Reports. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Twitter bots had 'disproportionate' role spreading misinformation in 2016 election: study

An analysis of information shared on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election has found that automated accounts—or "bots"—played a disproportionate role in spreading misinformation online. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Eel trafficking in the EU, the world's 'biggest wildlife crime'

Billions of euros worth of critically endangered eels are being trafficked each year from Europe, ending up on tables in China and Japan in what campaigners say is "the largest wildlife crime on Earth." | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Study analyzes the impact of targeted Facebook advertising on U.S. elections

Republican Donald Trump's team spent $44 million on Facebook, running 175,000 different adverts during the 2016 election campaign, compared to a spend of $28 million by Democrat Hillary Clinton. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New technology paves the way for fewer orange barrels and safer, quicker road repairs

Imagine a drive to grandma's house or to work with fewer "left lane closed ahead" signs, fewer detour signs, fewer orange barrels and also safer travel near road crews. That may soon be possible with new technology from Purdue University researchers. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Sticky and heavily armed, a tomato-relative is the new 'star' of the Brazilian inselbergs

Armed with long thorns and sticky stems, newly described plant Solanum kollastrum might look like a villain by plant standards, but a closer look on this curious new species will reveal its star-like nature in the context of its ecosystem. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Retailers can manipulate consumer regret to beat competitors

Markdown retailers can survive the entry of an everyday low price retailer into a highly competitive market by manipulating price, product availability, and the regret consumers feel when they pay too much or wait till a product is unavailable to buy it, according to a new study. … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Toward net energy wastewater treatment using current technology

Municipal wastewater treatment in Europe consumes the energy equivalent of around two power stations per year – but could actually be generating the energy of 12. The EU-funded POWERSTEP project demonstrates how to make this more than a pipe dream. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Image: Updated NASA damage map of Camp Fire from space

As firefighters continue to battle the destructive Camp Fire in Northern California, the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has produced a new map showing damage as of Nov. 16. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Electrical cable triggers lightweight, fire-resistant cladding discovery

A University of Melbourne researcher has led the successful development of an organic, non-combustible and lightweight cladding core—a product that was previously thought to be impossible to create. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago