Phys.org news
Phys.org / 400-year-old painting reveals a bat's secret diet
Natural historians have many observational techniques in their toolkit for learning about the natural world: tagging animals with tracking devices, recording sounds, analyzing droppings or simply watching and counting. As ...
Phys.org / How a giant planet survived its star's death, then migrated inward
When astronomers discovered a giant planet orbiting a dead star in 2020, they wondered how it survived its star's violent demise. Now, observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may finally explain the planet's ...
Phys.org / Algae may have launched coral reefs by hijacking coral cells, genetic experiments suggest
The reefs scattered throughout the tropics arose only after algae took up full-time residence in coral cells, supplying corals with abundant food and enabling them to build extensive shallow-water communities. But with warming ...
Phys.org / Mismatched work–life boundaries while working from home can push couples toward breaking up
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the way people work, making remote and work-from-home (WFH) jobs far more common than ever before. Even after social distancing ended, many companies and employees chose to stick with this ...
Phys.org / Hidden for decades, hospital superbug built resistance in waves, peaking in the mid‑2000s
Decades-old hospital samples have helped University of East Anglia (UEA) researchers uncover how a deadly antibiotic-resistant "superbug" quietly tightened its grip across the globe. It lurked in hospital corridors for decades, ...
Phys.org / Urokodia! 518-million-year-old fossil shows beginning of spider's bite
The earliest evidence of spiders' fangs has been identified in a 518-million-year-old fossil by scientists at the University of Leicester and Yunnan University.
Phys.org / Single-atom catalyst turns lignin into valuable chemicals with near-complete conversion
Researchers at The University of Manchester and Hebei University of Technology have identified how a new class of catalyst can break down lignin into useful chemical building blocks, offering a more sustainable route to replace ...
Phys.org / Earliest Americans specialized in megafauna hunting from Alaska to South America, analysis of 50 sites reveals
New research led by a University of Alaska Fairbanks archaeologist reveals that the earliest Native Americans had highly specialized diets, primarily hunting the largest animals on the landscape, and they targeted these megafauna ...
Phys.org / XMM-Newton and Chandra help revise distance to Milky Way's outer spiral arms
The European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray space telescopes have spotted the aftermath of three bright explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy, the Milky Way. By measuring the distance ...
Phys.org / Walkable, greener neighborhoods linked to better physical and mental health across the U.S.
A new big-data analysis of the U.S. pinpoints how urban design aids the health of city residents—especially when cities provide walking opportunities, greenery and mixed-use streets with a blend of commercial and residential ...
Phys.org / Fish in a polluted Mexican river may mate with the wrong species, leading to hybrid offspring
The byproducts of modern society appear to be messing with the love life of two tiny fish species that have long coexisted in Mexican rivers.
Phys.org / Himalayan pangolin emerges as distinct species, confirmed with DNA from 19th-century specimen
The pangolin is a midsize mammal found only in Africa and Asia. The pangolins' scales make them unique, but these scales have become their undoing. Pangolins are poached for their scales, making them the most highly trafficked ...
