https://phys.org/science-news/sci-other en-us The latest news on chemistry, math, archaeology, biology, chemistry, mathematics and science technologies. A trio of physiologists at NTT Communication Science Laboratories, in Japan, has found that Formula 1 racecar drivers unintentionally time their blinking with straighter parts of the track. In their study, reported in iScience, Ryota Nishizono, Naoki Saijo and Makio Kashino fitted sensors to the helmets of three professional Formula 1 racecar drivers to monitor blinking. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-racecar-drivers-safest-track.html Other Tue, 23 May 2023 13:38:58 EDT news604067931 Women researchers received substantially less funding in grant awards than men—an average of about $342,000 compared to men's $659,000, according to a large meta-analysis of studies on the topic. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-gender-gap-grant-award-amounts.html Other Economics & Business Wed, 03 May 2023 06:00:02 EDT news602307862 The entire scientific publishing world is currently undergoing a massive stress test of quantity vs. quality, open access (free) vs. institutional subscriptions (paywall), and how to best judge the integrity of a publication. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-death-access-mega-journals.html Other Education Wed, 29 Mar 2023 17:04:49 EDT news599328275 It was a good year for research of all kinds as three men shared the Nobel Prize in physics for their work that showed that tiny particles separated from one another at great distances can be entangled. Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger won the award for their work showing that the counterintuitive field of quantum entanglement is real and also demonstrable. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-year-articles.html Other Fri, 09 Dec 2022 09:30:01 EST news589716013 The pandemic prompted workplace changes that proved beneficial to people with disabilities in science, technology, engineering, math and medicine (STEMM), but there's fear that these accommodations will be rolled back. With International Day of Persons with Disabilities taking place on Dec. 3, a research team including faculty at Binghamton University, State University of New York is calling for ways to make work in STEMM more accessible. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-science-accessible-people-disabilities.html Other Education Sun, 04 Dec 2022 06:40:35 EST news589358427 Before the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly shut down labs and sent scientists home to work, female astronomers on average published about nine papers for every 10 published by men—a rate that has remained stagnant for decades. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-female-astronomers-covid-pandemic-widened.html Other Social Sciences Mon, 28 Nov 2022 11:00:05 EST news588843435 Say hello to ronnagrams and quettameters: International scientists gathered in France voted on Friday for new metric prefixes to express the world's largest and smallest measurements, prompted by an ever-growing amount of data. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-earth-ronnagrams-metric-prefixes-voted.html Other Education Fri, 18 Nov 2022 09:03:33 EST news587984602 The beginning of October means Nobel Prize season. Six days, six prizes, new faces from around the globe added to the world's most elite roster of scientists, writers, economists and human rights leaders. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-nobel-season-prizes.html Other Sun, 02 Oct 2022 06:03:10 EDT news583909380 A research team led by Professor Shigeki Nakauchi of Toyohashi University of Technology conducted an experimental study of the color composition preferences of 31,353 participants, for a total of 1,200 paintings with artificially manipulated color compositions. The group also identified the statistical color composition properties of the paintings to examine trends therein. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-composition-art-statistics.html Other Social Sciences Tue, 27 Sep 2022 10:04:55 EDT news583491891 A small team of researchers at Beijing Normal University working with a colleague from Bar-Ilan University has found that researchers who collaborate with other researchers in multiple research areas tend to publish more highly cited papers than do those who generally only work with others in their field. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes analyzing the authorship of papers published in the journal American Physical Society and what they learned about collaboration and the degree of impact of authorship of papers under different scenarios. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-collaborate-multiple-areas-publish-highly.html Other Education Fri, 16 Sep 2022 10:25:39 EDT news582542733 The sex lives of constipated scorpions, cute ducklings with an innate sense of physics, and a life-size rubber moose may not appear to have much in common, but they all inspired the winners of this year's Ig Nobels, the prize for comical scientific achievement. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-constipated-scorpions-sight-ig-nobels.html Other Fri, 16 Sep 2022 02:07:01 EDT news582512766 Miners in Angola have unearthed a rare pure pink diamond that is believed to be the largest found in 300 years, the Australian site operator announced Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-miners-unearth-pink-diamond-believed.html Other Wed, 27 Jul 2022 04:00:44 EDT news578113240 Historically, the scientific community has relied on educating the public in order to increase agreement with scientific consensus. New research from Portland State University suggests why this approach has seen only mixed results. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-overconfidence-bolsters-anti-scientific-views.html Other Education Thu, 21 Jul 2022 02:21:57 EDT news577588866 The same four factors that explain how people change their beliefs on a variety of issues can account for the recent rise in anti-science attitudes, a new review suggests. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-bases-anti-science-beliefsand.html Other Education Mon, 11 Jul 2022 15:00:04 EDT news576740797 Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, famous inventors both, were also, famously, rivals. Their heated relationship came to a head in what became known as the "war of the currents." Tesla favored alternating currents (AC) for the United States electrical system, Edison wanted direct currents, and, though AC ultimately won out, the rivalry never faded. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-pursuit-scientific-truth-adversaries.html Other Social Sciences Fri, 08 Jul 2022 11:18:03 EDT news576497879 What is the common thread among mRNA vaccines, genomic drugs, NASA's mission to the moon and the harnessing of nuclear power? They all have been products of science convergence, where knowledge from multiple scientific disciplines is integrated into new overarching knowledge that propels modern civilization. In the last 70 years, convergence has achieved more than what science achieved in all its previous multi-millennial history combined. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-destiny-science.html Other Mon, 27 Jun 2022 16:00:04 EDT news575564400 A trio of researchers from Queens College, City University of New York, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stanford University has found that a citation bias exists in research papers and the problem is growing worse. In their paper published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, Charles Gomez, Andrew Herman and Paolo Parigi describe their analysis of millions of research papers and what it showed them about citation bias. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-citation-bias-published-papers-evidence.html Other Social Sciences Wed, 01 Jun 2022 09:20:03 EDT news573292972 Federal funding for biomedical research has a "ripple effect" of stimulating new studies even beyond the original purposes of a grant and may provide unexpected benefits, a new study suggests. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-federal-funding-positive-ripple-effects.html Other Education Fri, 22 Apr 2022 14:00:03 EDT news569819424 It was a good week for physics research as work by two teams of theorists working independently may have solved Stephen Hawking's black hole paradox. The first demonstrated that black holes are more complex than thought, while the second followed up on work by the first suggesting that their proposed "quantum hair" resolves the paradox. Also, a team at Pennsylvania State University developed a novel theory of entropy that may solve materials design issues. Called Zentropy, it involves predicting the change of volume as a function of temperature at a multiscale level. And a team at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas discovered a new form of ice, adding to the 20 known solid forms. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-week-hawking-black-hole-paradox.html Other Mon, 21 Mar 2022 09:44:37 EDT news567074670 After decades of dominance by the United States, a new measure suggests that China edged the U.S. in 2019 on one important measurement of national research success. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-analysis-china.html Other Tue, 08 Mar 2022 08:30:11 EST news565950600 Legal documents, such as contracts or deeds, are notoriously difficult for nonlawyers to understand. A new study from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) cognitive scientists has determined just why these documents are often so impenetrable. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ways-lawyers-written-documents-easier.html Other Mon, 07 Mar 2022 15:18:11 EST news565888686 Since the onset of the worldwide pandemic, face masks have been widely adopted to control the spread of COVID-19. While masks are critical for mitigating disease contagion, they hide parts of our faces which are used for nonverbal communication to express our emotions and intentions. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-masks-impair-nonverbal-individuals.html Other Social Sciences Mon, 21 Feb 2022 12:26:02 EST news564668754 Preprinting, the sharing of freely available manuscripts prior to peer-review, has been on the rise in the biosciences since 2013 and experienced a surge during the COVID-19 pandemic, expediting the dissemination of timely research. But how do preprints relate to the final peer-reviewed papers? Two new studies publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology February 1st took different approaches to explore how preprints posted on bioRxiv and medRxiv compare with their published versions. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-preprints-pandemic.html Other Education Tue, 01 Feb 2022 14:00:01 EST news562922398 In languages spoken around the world, words describing rough surfaces are highly likely to feature a "trilled /r/" sound—a linguistic pattern that stretches back over 6,000 years, a new study reveals. The international team of researchers from the University of Birmingham, Radboud University, and the University of British Columbia has published its findings in Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-rough-words-feature-trill-languages.html Other Social Sciences Thu, 20 Jan 2022 17:00:41 EST news561920437 A team of 50 experts from across 29 governmental agencies has released a report created to respond to President Joe Biden's call for more integrity in government science agencies. The report, called "Protecting the Integrity of Government Science," was released on January 11. Biden administration officials Alondra Nelson and Jane Lubchenco, who spearheaded the effort, have published an Editorial piece in the journal Science outlining the main ideas in the report. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-scientific-task-science.html Other Political science Wed, 12 Jan 2022 09:19:07 EST news561201535 The world's very first invention of writing took place over 5000 years ago in the Middle East, before it was reinvented in China and Central America. Today, almost all human activities—from education to political systems and computer code—rely on this technology. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-rare-african-script-clues-evolution.html Archaeology Other Mon, 10 Jan 2022 10:22:02 EST news561032516 A team of researchers from the University of Malta and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in France has developed a new segmentation method for viewing the inside of mummified remains. In their paper posted on the open access site PLOS ONE, the group describes their new technique and how well it worked when tested on mummified animals. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-classical-machine-technique-easier-segmentation.html Archaeology Other Thu, 16 Dec 2021 09:40:01 EST news558868922 A pair of researchers at the University of Oxford has found that over the past few decades, the outcome of European League professional football (soccer in the U.S.) matches has become more predictable. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, Victor Martins Maimone and Taha Yasseri, describe how they analyzed the outcome of 88,000 matches over the years 1993 to 2019 for multiple teams playing in professional football matches and what they found. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-analysis-soccer-outcomes-increasingly.html Mathematics Other Wed, 15 Dec 2021 10:10:06 EST news558784984 2021 was a good year for research of all kinds. The strongest coronal mass ejection in years made headlines this past May, prompting experts around the world to urge world leaders to take it as a warning. Future storms, many noted, could wreak havoc on electrical grids, satellites and the internet. The time to act is now, they strongly suggested. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-year-articles.html Other Tue, 14 Dec 2021 11:50:03 EST news558106480 Scientific journals are expected to consider research manuscripts dispassionately and without favor. But in a study publishing on November 23rd in the open access journal PLOS Biology, Alexandre Scanff, Florian Naudet and Clara Locher from the University of Rennes, and colleagues, reveal that a subset of journals may be exercising considerable bias and favoritism. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-massive-reveals-editorial-bias-nepotism.html Other Social Sciences Tue, 23 Nov 2021 14:00:02 EST news556873279