Phys.org news

Phys.org / The color of penguin poo: Satellites reveal global warming's impact on an iconic polar species

Scientists from a handful of universities across the country have made innovative use of satellite images from NASA to determine the diet of Antarctic Adélie penguins across the continent by studying their icy feces with ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / Using mechanical vibrations instead of magnetic memory for quantum computing

Quantum computers still face limits when it comes to storing information. Researchers at ETH Zurich are now turning to mechanical vibrations rather than electromagnetic memory. Their new vibrating memory can store significantly ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / Wearables to track plant health: Farmers could use real-time information to manage crop conditions

A smartwatch can tell us the level of oxygen in our blood, when our sleep is restless or the number of steps we take in a day. Now imagine that kind of tracking ability for plants. By the time farmers see curling leaves or ...

7 hours ago
Phys.org / 'Check your ingredients': A new blueprint for using Fermi's 'Golden Rule'

Underpinning much of modern technology, from smartphones to scanning tunneling microscopes to particle colliders, is Fermi's Golden Rule. Named for 20th-century Italian American physicist Enrico Fermi (but actually discovered ...

9 hours ago
Phys.org / Study identifies key mechanism regulating how cells use fat to generate energy

An international study by scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has identified a fundamental mechanism that regulates ...

9 hours ago
Phys.org / Genetic crossovers defy chromosome-length model in male and female mice

A Cornell-led study is challenging a decades-old explanation for how chromosomes exchange genetic material within the biological process that forms eggs and sperm in mammals.

8 hours ago
Phys.org / Falling water levels trigger a surge in methane emissions from Mediterranean reservoirs

Continental aquatic ecosystems, such as lakes and reservoirs, occupy a small proportion of Earth's surface but play a significant role in the global carbon cycle. It is estimated that more than 40% of global methane emissions ...

8 hours ago
Phys.org / Transparent nanosheets could shrink phone cameras while preserving high-resolution color images

Researchers at Nagoya University in Japan have developed gallium-doped zinc oxide (GZO) nanosheets that may enhance camera resolution in compact devices, including smartphones and medical endoscopes.

9 hours ago
Phys.org / AI can predict how you'll respond to a survey—but that's not the same as understanding you

What makes people change their minds or their behavior? Social scientists spend a lot of time thinking about this question, and experiments are one of the most powerful ways to answer it.

8 hours ago
Phys.org / New genomic method to track disease outbreaks globally

Phylo-Plex, a new computational method, has been developed by Wellcome Sanger Institute scientists and their collaborators to allow cost-effective and scalable DNA sequencing of pathogens in laboratories with limited resources. ...

10 hours ago
Phys.org / A new route to electrically controlled helimagnetic structures

Advanced magnetic memory and spintronic devices rely on the ability to control magnetic states using electricity. Today, such technologies work by manipulating relatively simple magnetic structures found in ferromagnets, ...

10 hours ago
Phys.org / Ancient fossil may reveal animal kingdom's earliest right-handedness at 550 million years old

Scientists have uncovered what may be the earliest evidence of "right-handedness" in the animal kingdom, dating back more than half a billion years. The discovery comes from the fossil record of Spriggina floundersi, an organism ...

13 hours ago