Phys.org news
Phys.org / Cooling without gases: Molecular design brings solid-state cooling closer to reality
Some solid materials can cool down or heat up when pressure is applied or released. This behavior enables cooling and heating technologies that do not rely on climate-damaging refrigerant gases. In practice, however, a major ...
Phys.org / Stress-testing the Cascadia Subduction Zone reveals variability that could impact how earthquakes spread
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is unusually quiet for a megathrust fault. Spanning more than 600 miles from Canada to California, the fault marks the convergence of the Juan de Fuca and North American plates. While other subduction ...
Phys.org / From trash to climate tech: Rubber gloves find new life as carbon capturers
Every year, over 100 billion nitrile rubber gloves are produced. They are made from synthetic polymers—a material chemically related to plastic and derived from crude oil. The vast majority is used in the health care sector, ...
Phys.org / Are climate models detecting monsoon changes a decade too early? 'Super-simulations' say yes
Changes in rainfall within global monsoon regions affect the livelihoods of billions. For years, climate models have suggested that the fingerprint of human-caused climate change on monsoons would become visible by a certain ...
Phys.org / Promoters and enhancers: Tool catches gene-controlling DNA sequences doing each other's jobs
Researchers at the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology have uncovered new evidence that two major types of gene-controlling DNA sequences, promoters and enhancers, operate with a shared logic and often perform ...
Phys.org / Satellite data enable first global estimate of aerosol cloud cooling
Particles in the atmosphere, known as aerosols, cool the climate by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. The more cloud droplets form around these particles, the less sunlight penetrates a cloud. This cools the climate, although ...
Phys.org / Why tropical cyclones' rainfall surges before landfall
A research team at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has analyzed 40 years of data covering about 1,500 tropical cyclones and discovered that average rain rates surge by more than 20% in the 60 hours ...
Phys.org / Female Daubenton's bats share scarce feeding grounds at the edge of their range, study finds
At newly colonized high-elevation sites in the central Italian Apennines, female Daubenton's bats take turns using the same hunting spots instead of feeding side by side. A study published by a research team from the University ...
Phys.org / Older male humpbacks sire more calves as populations recover from whaling
New research from the University of St Andrews published in Current Biology has shown that the role of age in male humpback whale reproduction has changed as populations recover from centuries of exploitation. Whaling drove ...
Phys.org / Using moon dirt with 3D printing to build future lunar colonies
Simulated lunar dirt can be turned into extremely durable structures, potentially paving the way to more sustainable and cost-effective space missions, a new study suggests. Using a special laser 3D printing method, researchers ...
Phys.org / Assessment of rare 'teenage' planetary system deepens understanding of cosmic evolution
Planetary systems such as our solar system take hundreds of millions of years to evolve. Since humanity has only existed for a sliver of that time, astronomers have only observed planetary systems at birth or, more often, ...
Phys.org / AI toolkit turns microscopy images into multi-feature microstructure datasets
A research team from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has developed GrainBot, an AI-enabled toolkit that automatically extracts and quantifies multiple microstructural features from microscopy images. ...
