Phys.org news
Phys.org / Social media feeds: Algorithm redesign could break echo chambers and reduce online polarization
Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more of the same viewpoints, ...
Phys.org / China's emissions policies are helping climate change but also creating a new problem
China's sweeping efforts to clean up its air have delivered one of the biggest public health success stories of recent decades. Since the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan was launched in 2013, coal-fired power ...
Phys.org / Current flows without heat loss in newly engineered fractional quantum material
A team of US researchers has unveiled a device that can conduct electricity along its fractionally charged edges without losing energy to heat. Described in Nature Physics, the work, led by Xiaodong Xu at the University of ...
Phys.org / Oldest known sewn hide and other artifacts from Oregon caves shed light on early clothing in harsh climates
In 1958, an amateur archaeologist named John Cowles excavated the Cougar Mountain Cave in Oregon and retained many of the artifacts found there. Upon his death in the 1980s, these items were transferred to the Favell Museum ...
Phys.org / Fossil discovery suggests giant pythons once roamed Taiwan
Pythons are a common sight across much of Asia, especially in the tropical jungles and wetlands of countries like Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. But one curious exception has been the main island of Taiwan, where there ...
Phys.org / Machine learning reveals hidden landscape of robust information storage
In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers used machine learning to discover multiple new classes of two-dimensional memories, systems that can reliably store information despite constant environmental ...
Phys.org / Female scientists wait longer to have papers published in life and biomedical sciences
If you are a woman working in biomedical and life sciences, you may have longer to wait for your academic paper to appear in print than a comparable paper authored by a man. According to research published in the journal ...
Phys.org / Fermi data help refine orbital parameters of a gamma-ray binary
Using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, Chinese astronomers have observed a gamma-ray binary system known as PSR J2032+4127. Results of the new observations, published February 3 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more ...
Phys.org / Underestimated wake: Shipping traffic causes more turmoil in the Baltic Sea than expected
Commercial shipping not only affects the Baltic Sea on the surface, but also has a significant impact on the water column and the seabed. A study by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW) and Kiel ...
Phys.org / Bacterial hitchhikers can give their hosts super strength
A Dartmouth study finds that molecular hitchhikers living within bacteria can make their hosts extra resistant to medical treatment by corralling them into tightly packed groups. The findings introduce a previously unknown ...
Phys.org / A possible first-ever Einstein probe observation of a black hole tearing apart a white dwarf
On July 2, 2025, the China-led Einstein Probe (EP) space telescope detected an exceptionally bright X-ray source whose brightness varied rapidly during a routine sky survey. Its unusual signal immediately set it apart from ...
Phys.org / Rules of unknown board game from the Roman period revealed
Researchers have used AI to reconstruct the rules of a board game carved into a stone found in the Dutch city of Heerlen. The team concludes that this type of game was played several centuries earlier than previously assumed.
