All News
Phys.org / Math shows why your vote may not count the way you think it does
Mathematicians have shown that completely fair elections are—in a sense—impossible. No electoral system can guarantee both that local votes translate directly into local seats and that total seat distribution matches overall ...
Phys.org / A backup fluoride defense in soil bacteria could aid greener chemical production
Researchers at the University of Tartu have discovered a mechanism in bacteria that helps them adapt to fluoride, which is toxic to most organisms above relatively low threshold concentrations. Their discovery may represent ...
Phys.org / Four ways wildfires generate tornadoes, lightning and other extreme weather, sometimes miles from the flames
Thick smoke from massive wildfires has been spreading in North America and Europe once again in 2026. The health impacts of breathing this particle-filled air are becoming well known, but wildfires' influence on the weather ...
Phys.org / Rare-earth ions could enable telecom-ready control of interacting qubits
Quantum technologies are devices and systems that exploit the laws of quantum mechanics and could perform tasks that are difficult or impossible to tackle using their classical counterparts. These technologies process and ...
Phys.org / Inverting the seminar to recover what scientific papers leave out
A scientific paper reads as a clean progression from question to result. And yet, research almost never happens that way. Experiments fail, conversations redirect projects, and none of it survives into print. When the founders ...
Phys.org / Randomly mixed atoms arranged in rows and columns for sustainable catalysis
The energy system of the future will require sustainable catalysts that, for example, enable the efficient production of green hydrogen. Materials consisting of mixtures of five chemical elements show great promise for enabling ...
Tech Xplore / Google rolls back new satellite image AI tool after backlash
Google rolled back a new feature Friday allowing Google Earth users to generate AI visualizations on top of the service's satellite imagery, following a furious backlash from researchers and open-source intelligence experts ...
Phys.org / A quantum heat engine that simultaneously provides work and refrigeration
The laws of thermodynamics state that heat naturally flows from hotter systems or regions to colder systems or regions until a state of thermal equilibrium is reached. This simple principle underpins the operation of numerous ...
Phys.org / Modified cell vesicles trigger 'lipid counterstorm' against lung inflammation in mice
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted severe consequences of unchecked respiratory disease, including cytokine storms. This phenomenon affected many COVID-19 patients and is a potential side effect of many other diseases involving ...
Phys.org / Learning may rely on stronger neural connections, not expanding networks
How does the brain learn? Does it acquire new knowledge by creating new neural pathways or by strengthening existing connections? A new study from Bar-Ilan University offers evidence in favor of the latter, suggesting that ...
Phys.org / Tabby's star may be orbited by a planetary-mass companion
By analyzing data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and conducting new radial velocity measurements, U.K. and French astronomers have found evidence that the mysterious Tabby's star may be orbited by ...
Phys.org / Only 1 in 3 people arrested by ICE have a criminal conviction, research reveals
Just 34% of people arrested by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during President Donald Trump's second term have a criminal conviction, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National ...
