Phys.org news

Changes in wind patterns play the leading role in influencing often devastating tropical rainfall changes, rather than simply the warming atmosphere holding more moisture, according to new research.

Bee species that nest in plant stems appear to be at the greatest short-term risk from increasing temperatures due to climate change, while those that nest in the ground are better able to evade extreme heat, according to ...

Listening to someone who disagrees with you on a controversial topic, but shares basic values, might not change your mind—but it could moderate an extreme position, reducing polarization, new Cornell economics research finds.

Digital matching platforms—from professional networking to ride-sharing and accommodation services—add value by bringing supply and demand into balance. But deep-seated asymmetries can prove difficult to expunge, causing ...

Archaeologists digging at an Inca site on the arid coast of southern Peru have unearthed two rare, roughly 500-year-old freeze-dried potatoes. The potatoes are among the only ones found in more than a century and would have ...

Most people have seen nylon listed as a material on their clothing tags, but nylon is used in an array of other products, too, including automotive parts, wire insulation and medical supplies. Unfortunately, one of the building ...

Many insects will eat almost anything in their sight, such as certain beetles, grasshoppers and locusts, while others are remarkably picky eaters. For example, numerous insect herbivores will feed only on a single plant family ...

Citizen science data from the popular platform iNaturalist has helped uncover the evolution of parental guarding behavior in harvestmen spiders, as shown in research published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

One of the most fascinating aspects of physics is that nature often behaves in ways that seem completely counterintuitive. A good example comes from ultrathin materials. If I take a sheet of material and make it thinner ...

Steel and metal production are among the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for approximately 10% of global CO2 emissions. At the same time, modern technology relies on tailored steels and ...

In a first, a large, international team led by multiple labs at Harvard Medical School and Princeton University has published a complete wiring diagram of all the connections between neurons in the central nervous system ...

Few animals put on a show quite like manakins. In the rainforests of Central and South America, males of these small tropical birds, with strikingly bright plumage, often gather at communal display sites (leks), where they ...