Directivity to improve optical devices

A team of researchers from the Dutch institute AMOLF, Western University (Canada), and the University of Texas (United States of America) recently demonstrated the use of algorithmic design to create a new type of nanophotonic structure. This is good news for researchers in optic … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

US court halts construction of Keystone XL oil pipeline

A federal judge on Thursday halted construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, arguing that President Donald Trump's administration had failed to adequately explain why it had lifted a ban on the project. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Fast-moving fire scorches northern California

A rapidly spreading, late-season wildfire in northern California has burned 20,000 acres of land and prompted authorities to issue evacuation orders for thousands of people. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Yelp's shares take a beating after revenue miss

Shares of Yelp Inc. took a beating Thursday after the online-reviews site reported soft third-quarter sales and indicated the current period would also be weak. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Trouble brewing?: Brexit challenge for Guinness supply chain

With its brown-black hue and cascading creamy head, Guinness is Ireland's most iconic export. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New Tesla chairwoman's biggest challenge is controlling Musk

Australian telecommunications executive Robyn Denholm brings much-needed financial and auto industry expertise to her new role as Tesla's board chairwoman, but her biggest challenge is whether she can rein in a CEO with a proclivity for misbehavior. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

China steps up drone race with stealth aircraft

China is unleashing stealth drones and pilotless aircraft fitted with AK-47 rifles onto world markets, racing to catch up to US technology and adding to a fleet that has already seen combat action in the Middle East. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Letter shows a fearful Einstein long before Nazis' rise

More than a decade before the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert Einstein was on the run and already fearful for his country's future, according to a newly revealed handwritten letter. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

UK wine-making areas to rival Champagne revealed

Research from the University of East Anglia has identified areas of the UK which could rival the Champagne region of France. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Material scientists create fabric alternative to batteries for wearable devices

A major factor holding back development of wearable biosensors for health monitoring is the lack of a lightweight, long-lasting power supply. Now scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst led by materials chemist Trisha L. Andrew report that they have developed a meth … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Tech leaders call for greater social media regulation

Social networks need better regulation to stop them spreading "fake news" and undermining democracy, disillusioned tech pioneers said at an industry conference that closed in Lisbon Thursday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Waking sleeping plants with plasmas

Commercial crops like grapes, peaches, berries and flower bulbs all go dormant in the winter, essentially sleeping through the seasonal cold before they resume growing, flowering and fruiting again in the warmer months. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Severe Caribbean droughts may magnify food insecurity

Climate change is impacting the Caribbean, with millions facing increasing food insecurity and decreasing freshwater availability as droughts become more likely across the region, according to new Cornell University research in Geophysical Research Letters. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Purdue's giant leap toward personalized medicine helps eyes drain themselves

Purdue University researchers have invented a new smart drainage device to help patients with glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness in the world, as they try to save their eyesight. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Creating better devices: The etch stops here

A team of multi-disciplinary scientists and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have discovered a new, more precise, method to create nanoscale-size electromechanical devices. Their research findings are published in Nature Communications. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Study tracks severe bleaching events on a Pacific coral reef over past century

As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, coral reefs worldwide are experiencing mass bleaching events and die-offs. For many, this is their first encounter with extreme heat. However for some reefs in the central Pacific, heatwaves caused by El Nino are a way of life. … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Mozilla chief regrets internet's addictive quality

Web users are being drawn into a relationship with the internet that resembles gambling addicts using slot machines, the head of non-profit tech company Mozilla said Thursday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Ford enters scooter wars with acquisiton of startup Spin

Ford Motor Co. agreed Thursday to acquire the electric scooter-sharing startup Spin, entering the fast-growing segment of last-mile urban mobility. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi debuts in London

China's Xiaomi unveiled the Mi 8 Pro smartphone in London Thursday, making a UK debut as the tech giant ramps up its European presence before an expected American launch next month. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Do kitchen items shed antimicrobial nanoparticles after use?

Because of their antimicrobial and antifungal properties, silver nanoparticles measuring between one and 100 nanometers (billionth of a meter) in size, are being incorporated outside the United States into a variety of kitchen products known as food contact materials (FCMs). Amon … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Tiny footprints, big discovery: Reptile tracks oldest ever found in grand canyon

A geology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has discovered that a set of 28 footprints left behind by a reptile-like creature 310 million years ago, are the oldest ever to be found in Grand Canyon National Park. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Culture may explain why brains have become bigger

A theory called the cultural brain hypothesis could explain extraordinary increases in brain size in humans and other animals over the last few million years, according to a study published in PLOS Computational Biology by Michael Muthukrishna of the London School of Economics an … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Common allergen, ragweed, will shift northward under climate change

New research from the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts—Amherst looks at how the most common cause of sneezing and sniffling in North America is likely to shift under climate change. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Study shows pesticide exposure can dramatically impact bees' social behaviors

For bees, being social is everything. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New tool to predict which plants will become invasive

Around the world, over 13,000 plant species have embedded themselves in new environments—some of them integrate with the native plants, but others spread aggressively. Understanding why some plants become invasive, while others do not is critical to preserving the world's biodive … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Yellowstone streams recovering thanks to wolf reintroduction

In the first study of its kind, research by Oregon State University scientists shows that the return of large terrestrial carnivores can lead to improved stream structure and function. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Researchers work with sushi restaurants to reduce seafood fraud

A new monitoring project involving UCLA researchers and partners aims to take "fake sushi" off Los Angeles diners' plates. The Los Angeles Seafood Monitoring Project team—which includes university researchers, students, sushi restaurants and government regulators—is working to re … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

What could cause the Mississippi Bight to become hypoxic?

Coastal regions with low dissolved oxygen (known as hypoxia) can lead to poor water quality and harm regional fisheries. These areas of low dissolved oxygen are expanding and expected to continue growing in coming years due to human impacts on the environment. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Stephen Hawking's wheelchair sells for $393,000 at auction

A wheelchair used by physicist Stephen Hawking has sold at auction for almost 300,000 pounds ($393,000), while a copy of his doctoral thesis fetched almost 585,000 pounds ($767,000), auctioneer Christie's said Thursday. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Replaying the tape of life: Is it possible?

How predictable is evolution? The answer has long been debated by biologists grappling with the extent to which history affects the repeatability of evolution. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

History of early settlement and survival in Andean highlands revealed by ancient genomes

A multi-center study of the genetic remains of people who settled thousands of years ago in the Andes Mountains of South America reveals a complex picture of human adaptation from early settlement, to a split about 9,000 years ago between high and lowland populations, to the deva … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Ancient DNA analysis yields unexpected insights about peoples of Central, South America

An international team of researchers has revealed unexpected details about the peopling of Central and South America by studying the first high-quality ancient DNA data from those regions. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Decline in shorebirds linked to climate change, experts warn

Climate change could be responsible for a substantial decline in populations of shorebirds, say researchers from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, following a study published in Science analysing population data over a period of 70 years. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

DNA of world's oldest natural mummy unlocks secrets of Ice Age tribes in the Americas

A legal battle over a 10,600 year old ancient skeleton—called the 'Spirit Cave Mummy' - has ended after advanced DNA sequencing found it was related to a Native American tribe. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Self-assembling protein filaments designed and built from scratch

For the first time, scientists have created, from scratch, self-assembling protein filaments. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Subaru recalls nearly 400K vehicles to fix stalling problems

Subaru is recalling nearly 400,000 vehicles in the U.S. to fix two problems that can cause them to stall. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Cranking up the power setting may help some who use prosthetics

Amputees who use powered prosthetic ankles may be able to avoid the energetic costs typically associated with prosthetics by cranking up the power provided by their devices. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New system opens the door to transforming CO2 into industrial fuels

Imagine a day when—rather than being spewed into the atmosphere—the gases coming from power plants and heavy industry are instead captured and fed into catalytic reactors that chemically transform greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide into industrial fuels or chemicals and that em … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Tropical Cyclone Alcide's rainfall observed by GPM Satellite

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean and analyzed the rainfall occurring in pre-season Tropical Cyclone Alcide. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Video: Is throwing rice at weddings bad for birds?

Many people believe that throwing rice at weddings is harmful to wild birds. Supposedly, the rice expands in the birds' digestive systems and injures them. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Factors affecting turbulence scaling

Fluids exhibiting scaling behaviour can be found in diverse physical phenomena occurring both in the laboratory and in real-world conditions. For instance, they occur at the critical point when a liquid becomes a vapour, at the phase transition of superfluids, and at the phase se … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Pore size alone does not matter when biological nanopores act as sugar chain biosensors

Protein nanopores are present in cell membranes and act as biological gateways. This means that they can also be used for the detection of specific bioactive molecular chains, like sugar chains, such as molecules from the glycosaminoglycan family. The latter are responsible for k … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

A newly discovered, naturally low-caffeine tea plant

Tea drinkers who seek the popular beverage's soothing flavor without its explosive caffeine jolt could soon have a new, naturally low-caffeine option. In a study appearing in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists report that a recently discovered wild tea pl … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Some of retina's light-sensing cells may have ancient roots

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have identified what may be an ancient light-sensing mechanism in modern mouse retinal cells. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

New ranking method could help hotels to maximize their revenue

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have devised a new method to rank hotels more accurately. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

We now know how RNA molecules are organized in cells

Working with colleagues in the U.S., a team of Université de Montreal researchers has for the first time visualized how RNA molecules are organized in cells. | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Warming waters caused rapid—and opposite—shifts in connected marine communities

Two connected marine ecosystems—the Eastern English Channel and Southern North Sea—experienced big and opposite changes in their fish communities over a 30-year period, according to researchers who report their findings in Current Biology on November 8. Rapid warming drove smalle … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago

Loss is more: Today's budding yeasts shed traits from their 400-million-year-old ancestor

On their way to decoding the genome of every organism in a major branch of the tree of life—that of the humble budding yeasts—a team of evolutionary biologists successfully reconstructed the genomic and metabolic characteristics of the last common ancestor of today's more than 1, … | Continue reading


@phys.org | 5 years ago