Phys.org news
Phys.org / Why laws named after tragedies win public support
When lawmakers name bills after victims of tragedy—such as Megan's Law or the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993—public support surges, but this emotional boost may come at the expense of sound policymaking, ...
Phys.org / Courtship is complicated, even in fruit flies
Love is in the air for the vinegar fly. Drosophila melanogaster has long been a model for understanding how brains translate sensory information into courtship behavior. Male flies perform a multitude of romantic actions—orienting, ...
Phys.org / Extreme heat waves trigger unexpected nanoparticle formation in air
Tiny aerosol particles in the air play a big role in regulating how much sunlight our planet absorbs or reflects, and how clouds form above us. In a recent study, researchers found that extreme heat waves can trigger new ...
Phys.org / 5,000-year-old bureaucracy: Over 7,000 prehistoric seal impressions uncovered in western Iran
In the journal Antiquity, Dr. Shokouh Khosravi published preliminary findings of the largest known corpus of prehistoric seal impressions in the entire ancient world. The corpus, made up of over 7,000 seal impressions, more ...
Phys.org / Quantum reservoir computing peaks at the edge of many-body chaos, study suggests
Reservoir computing is a promising machine learning-based approach for the analysis of data that changes over time, such as weather patterns, recorded speech or stock market trends. Classical reservoir computing techniques ...
Phys.org / Language barriers slow down the international diffusion of knowledge, study finds
Rapid technological and scientific advances have fueled a huge wave of innovation over the past decades. The speed of global innovation is known to be dependent on the exchange of knowledge and skills between different nations ...
Phys.org / Sunray-like ripples emerge on a frozen reaction front
Researchers in Belgium have unveiled a striking chemical reaction in which ripples along a frozen reaction front resemble the rays of a shining star. Publishing their results in Physical Review Letters, Anne De Wit and colleagues ...
Phys.org / How to improve the performance of qubits: Super-fast fluctuation detection achieved
Using commercially available technology and innovative methods, researchers at NBI have pushed the limits of how fast you can detect changes in the sensitive quantum states in the qubit. Their work allows researchers to follow ...
Phys.org / In sea urchin and salmon sperm, pH value regulates whether they remain immotile or swim
A study by the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences and the University of Bonn has shown that pH value is crucial for sperm motility in sea urchins and salmon. An increase in pH activates the enzyme adenylyl ...
Phys.org / Cosmologists collaborate to sharpen measurements of the Hubble constant
Drawing together leading experts from across the field, an international collaboration of cosmologists has created a unified approach for measuring the value of the Hubble constant. Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, ...
Phys.org / Water is bed bugs' kryptonite: The parasites avoid wet surfaces at all costs
Humans tend to fear bed bugs, and rightly so. The bloodsuckers are tough to get rid of once they've entered a home. But new research has, for the first time, identified one thing the bugs seem to fear—water and wet surfaces.
Phys.org / Tomb more than 1,000 years old found in Panama
Archaeologists have discovered a tomb more than a thousand years old in Panama containing human remains alongside gold and ceramic artifacts, the lead researcher told AFP on Friday.
