Phys.org news

Stickleback fish can change their social behavior to help them find food in cloudy water, according to a new University of Bristol study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

For millennia, people have been drawn to cities for opportunities, jobs and the possibility of sharing a sidewalk with diverse and interesting groups of people.

How important is it that kids learn to tell right from wrong? Businessman and former university chancellor David Gonski recently called for ethics classes to be rolled out in all Australian schools to boost social cohesion.

Imagine a brain teaser where the challenge is to spot the difference between two nearly identical sandcastles. The only difference? The removal of three grains of sand. Scientists face a similarly exasperating challenge when ...

Although it's been 25 years since the World Trade Center collapsed after terrorists flew commercial airplanes into each of the center's two towers, the trauma experienced by many first responders and recovery workers is still ...

When scientists study bacteria that are not in a Petri dish or a test tube but in environments that more closely mimic their actual microbial habitats, they often find delightfully unexpected behaviors. For Sujit Datta, a ...

Can we count on forests to continue absorbing the carbon dioxide that's warming our world? A new study from researchers at NAU and the University of New Hampshire says ... maybe not.

Before buying a product, booking a hotel or streaming a movie, many people check online reviews. But not every glowing recommendation or one-star takedown reflects a genuine customer experience.

For nearly 80 years, physicists have relied on a thought experiment created by Richard Feynman to predict how quantum particles behave. For the first time, researchers in China have tested this trick directly in the lab.

Data from many sources, including NASA, have shown a significant decrease in Arctic sea ice since 1979. However, the processes driving the melting and freezing of sea ice are complex, and fluctuations occur throughout the ...

Europe is no stranger to powerful windstorms, but some storms capable of causing serious damage have an unusual origin. Tropical cyclones can occasionally travel north from lower latitudes and reach Europe, where they can ...

Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery behind a nearly two-decade-old cosmic explosion that seemed to break the rules of physics. The energy output of a powerful gamma-ray burst, GRB 061201, discovered in 2006, did ...