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Phys.org / Quiet outings linked to more frequent dangerous wildlife encounters

The more people expand into previously natural areas, the more wildlife and humans step on each other's toes, leading to more interactions that may result in conflict. This includes national parks, where people flock to recuperate ...

2 hours ago
Phys.org / TESS just found a planet in a new way—and more may be hiding in its eight years of data

For the first time, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to its warping of space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly ...

11 hours ago
Phys.org / Sun-powered sponges may generate 11% of tropical coral reef productivity

In marine environments, sponges tend to eat other organisms to get their nutrients. But a study published in Functional Ecology by researchers at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics ...

6 hours ago
Phys.org / DNA-based nanoswitch can flip in milliseconds and stay in one state for days without continuous forcing

Scientists have engineered a nanoscale switch using DNA "origami." Inspired by macroscale mechanical switches, the device achieves long-term functionality without the continuous forcing mechanism that past versions required ...

12 hours ago
Phys.org / Earliest Americans specialized in megafauna hunting from Alaska to South America, analysis of 50 sites reveals

New research led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist reveals that the earliest Native Americans had highly specialized diets, primarily hunting the largest animals on the landscape, and they targeted these megafauna ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / New tool maps public land with potential for hundreds of thousands of affordable homes in British Columbia

A new research tool is highlighting publicly owned land that may have potential for affordable housing development in B.C., with early analysis revealing more than 50,000 parcels of publicly owned land in B.C. and up to 273,000 ...

4 hours ago
Phys.org / Hidden for decades, hospital superbug built resistance in waves, peaking in the mid‑2000s

Decades-old hospital samples have helped University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers uncover how a deadly antibiotic-resistant "superbug" quietly tightened its grip across the globe. It lurked in hospital corridors for decades, ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / Cosmic dust could play key role in cracking long-standing mystery of solar corona heating

A researcher at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, has published a new study in The Astrophysical Journal suggesting that tiny charged dust grains near the sun may significantly ...

8 hours ago
Phys.org / How a giant planet survived its star's death, then migrated inward

When astronomers discovered a giant planet orbiting a dead star in 2020, they wondered how it survived its star's violent demise. Now, observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may finally explain the planet's ...

15 hours ago
Phys.org / Algae may have launched coral reefs by hijacking coral cells, genetic experiments suggest

The reefs scattered throughout the tropics arose only after algae took up full-time residence in coral cells, supplying corals with abundant food and enabling them to build extensive shallow-water communities. But with warming ...

15 hours ago
Phys.org / 400-year-old painting reveals a bat's secret diet

Natural historians have many observational techniques in their toolkit for learning about the natural world: tagging animals with tracking devices, recording sounds, analyzing droppings or simply watching and counting. As ...

16 hours ago
Phys.org / Cutting emissions more, removing carbon less could save 33,000 U.S. lives yearly

Published in Nature Climate Change, new research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds that reaching net-zero emissions by midcentury would substantially improve public health in the United States. However, climate ...

8 hours ago