https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Far away from the extreme summer temperatures of the northern hemisphere, Southern Cone countries such as Chile and Argentina are also experiencing record heat, but in the middle of what is supposed to be their winter. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-south-america-high-tempsin-middle.html Environment Thu, 03 Aug 2023 04:11:13 EDT news610254668 The European Commission's proposal to ease current restrictions on genetically modified crops has riled up EU organic farming leader Austria and its farmers. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-austria-farmers-arms-brussels-gmo.html Agriculture Thu, 03 Aug 2023 04:10:38 EDT news610254633 A town on northern Mexico's Pacific coast saw its beaches carpeted with dead fish after what experts describe as a toxic algae bloom. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-dead-fish-carpet-beaches-pacific.html Ecology Thu, 03 Aug 2023 04:00:00 EDT news610253996 If there's one thing most office workers can agree on, it's that they tend to feel less productive toward the end of the day and the end of each work week. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found objective evidence of this phenomenon in action. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-workers-productive-typos-afternoonespecially-fridays.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Thu, 03 Aug 2023 03:56:43 EDT news610253796 Northern muriquis, which live in the Atlantic forest of Brazil, are one of the most endangered species of monkey in the world. Choosing good mates and rearing thriving offspring are key to the species' long-term survival. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-monkey-poop-endangered-species.html Plants & Animals Thu, 03 Aug 2023 03:54:13 EDT news610253635 Canadian vertebrate paleontologist Aaron Kilmury and a team of researchers from the University of Manitoba have published new research in PeerJ Life and Environment, unveiling the first-ever formal description of microvertebrate fossil assemblages from the late Cenomanian to middle Turonian periods in Manitoba, Canada. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-canadian-paleontologists-microvertebrate-faunal-assemblages.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 03 Aug 2023 00:10:01 EDT news610211530 Colorado's lakes serve as a needed respite during sweltering summer days, but as climate warms, the state's lakes are becoming more susceptible to toxic blooms of algae. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-colorado-lakes-toxic-algae-blooms.html Environment Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:46:51 EDT news610213608 New interference radar functions employed by a team of researchers from Chapman University and other institutions improve the distance resolution between objects using radar waves. The results may have important ramifications in military, construction, archaeology, mineralogy and many other domains of radar applications. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-radar-century-old-trade-off-wavelength-distance.html General Physics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:18:04 EDT news610211879 The education of care-experienced children should be redefined to include a much broader range of activities to better support their development and success, a new study says. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-broaden-definition-children-urges.html Social Sciences Education Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:11:18 EDT news610211475 Wildfires are an ancient force shaping the environment, but they have grown in frequency, range and intensity in response to a changing climate. At the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, scientists are working on several fronts to better understand and predict these events and what they mean for the carbon cycle and biodiversity. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-wildfire-long-term-impacts.html Environment Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:10:42 EDT news610211436 Rice University physicists have shown that immutable topological states, which are highly sought for quantum computing, can be entangled with other manipulable quantum states in some materials. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-materials-immutable-topological-states-entangled.html General Physics Quantum Physics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:10:29 EDT news610211424 When you are driving through a rain storm, traction is key. If your tires lack sufficient tread, your vehicle will slip and slide, and you won't have the grip needed to maneuver safely. When torrential rains hit near-shore, shallow water ecosystems, sea urchins experience a similar challenge. Heavy precipitation can alter the concentration of salt in the ocean waters, causing lower salinity levels. Even a slight change in salinity can affect the ability of sea urchins to securely attach their tube feet to their surroundings—like tires gripping the road. This becomes a matter of life and death for the small spiny creatures, as they rely on their adhesive structures to move in the wave-battered rocky area near the seashore. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-sea-urchins-struggling-climate-ecosystems.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:09:13 EDT news610211348 A rash of storms in Texas in recent years—from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 to the deep freeze in 2021—has put big chunks of the population in danger and left millions without electricity or water for long periods. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-water-purifying-cup-drinkable-creeks-streams.html Nanomaterials Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:56:57 EDT news610207011 Previous studies in humans and animals have shown that hosts in a social condition (sharing the same space) harbor a more similar microbiota composition. Microbial transmission between hosts, which is increased when living in the same household, leads to similar species inhabiting the gut. However, whether bacterial evolution in the gut is affected by microbiota transmission has remained unknown. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-power-host-social-interactions-bacterial.html Evolution Cell & Microbiology Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:55:53 EDT news610206950 A new study by an interdisciplinary team of researchers across six different countries has found that affective polarization, or the tendency to dislike people who belong to opposing political parties while favoring people from their own political party, is a global bias—not just an American one. The research further indicates that the dislike grows stronger when two people think about political issues the same way but come away with different beliefs about those issues. The work is published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-political-animosity-global.html Political science Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:35:56 EDT news610205752 Duct tape found at crime scenes can provide forensic scientists with important information, but no standardized protocol for analyzing it has ever existed. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-duct-tape-evidence-court-method.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:30:34 EDT news610205428 Steric zippers are a specific type of hydrophobic packing structure that form between two adjacent layers of peptide β-sheets in amyloid and similar fibrils. These structures play a crucial role in the stability and propagation of amyloid fibrils, and can aid in designing new peptide-based materials. However, creating artificial steric zippers is challenging owing to the strong aggregation tendency of β-sheet peptides. This often leads to the formation of gels and fibrils, making it difficult to obtain structures in their crystalline form. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-steric-zipper-interactions-artificial-crystalline.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:30:10 EDT news610205406 A single accessory—an ornate necklace from a child's grave in ancient Jordan—provides new insights into social complexity of Neolithic culture, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Hala Alarashi of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain, and the Université Côte d'Azur, France and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-neolithic-necklace-child-grave-reveals.html Archaeology Social Sciences Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189573 In an analysis of more than 5,000 people, frequently working in teams was associated with a greater tendency for women and white men to put in extra effort at work, while other links between job conditions and effort varied between genders and ethnoracial groups. Wei-hsin Yu of the University of California, Los Angeles, U.S, and Janet Chen-Lan Kuo of National Taiwan University, Taiwan, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-teamwork-environments-linked-white-employees.html Social Sciences Economics & Business Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189589 Interest in local bird feeding appears to have ramped up in countries all over the world during the pandemic lockdowns, even in countries not historically noted for bird feeding practices, according to a study published August 2, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jacqueline Doremus from California Polytechnic State University and Liqing Li from Texas A&M University College Station, US, and Darryl Jones from Griffith University, Australia. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-bird-surged-countries-worldwide-covid-.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189622 In a study involving more than 500 people, participants correctly identified speech deepfakes only 73% of the time, and efforts to train participants to detect deepfakes had minimal effects. Kimberly Mai and colleagues at University College London, UK, presented these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on August 2, 2023. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-speech-deepfakes-frequently-people.html Social Sciences Wed, 02 Aug 2023 14:00:01 EDT news610189556 A collaboration of nuclear theorists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Temple University, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poland, and the University of Bonn, Germany, has used supercomputers to predict the spatial distributions of charges, momentum, and other properties of "up" and "down" quarks within protons. The results, just published in Physical Review D, revealed key differences in the characteristics of the up and down quarks. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-reveal-high-resolution-view-quarks-protons.html Quantum Physics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:18:35 EDT news610201107 A common metal paper clip will stick to a magnet. Scientists classify such iron-containing materials as ferromagnets. A little over a century ago, physicists Albert Einstein and Wander de Haas reported a surprising effect with a ferromagnet. If you suspend an iron cylinder from a wire and expose it to a magnetic field, it will start rotating if you simply reverse the direction of the magnetic field. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-scientists-unusual-ultrafast-motion-layered.html Condensed Matter Quantum Physics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:17:30 EDT news610201043 "A place for everything and everything in its place"—making sense of order, or disorder, helps us understand nature. Animals tend to fit nicely into categories: Mammals, birds, reptiles, whatever an axolotl is, and more. Sorting also applies to materials: Insulator, semiconductor, conductor, and even superconductor. Where exactly a material lands in the hierarchy depends on a seemingly invisible interplay of electrons, atoms, and their surroundings. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-rare-physics-superconductor.html Superconductivity Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:15:33 EDT news610200917 At particle accelerator facilities around the world, scientists rely on powerful X-rays to reveal the structure and behavior of atoms and molecules. Now, researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have calculated how to make X-ray pulses at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFEL) even brighter and more reliable by building a special cavity chamber and diamond mirrors around an XFEL. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-x-ray-laser-brightness-power-crystal.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:10:10 EDT news610200606 It's a hot day at a Santa Monica beach, and the children splashing each other aren't the only youngsters in the water. Somewhere not far from the shore swims a group of five or more juvenile white sharks. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-attention-beachgoers-sharks-wrong.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:00:01 EDT news610199025 As firefighters battle a massive wildfire that continues to grow in the eastern Mojave Desert, national park officials and ecologists are preparing for habitat losses that are likely to alter the landscape forever. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-joshua-trees-massive-wildfire-threatens.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 02 Aug 2023 12:50:01 EDT news610198956 Earth's soil contains large stocks of carbon—even more carbon than in the atmosphere. A significant portion of this soil carbon is in organic form (carbon bound to carbon), called soil organic carbon (SOC). However, SOC has historically been greatly diminished by agricultural activity, releasing that carbon into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, contributing to climate change. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-method-accurate-efficient-soil-carbon.html Ecology Agriculture Wed, 02 Aug 2023 12:46:40 EDT news610199195 Cadmium naturally occurs in the soil of much of Latin America's cacao farms, and is absorbed by the plants. With EU regulations restricting the amount of cadmium allowed in chocolate imports, it is important for farmers to know where they can grow cacao that is fit for the global market. Researchers have compiled a map that aims to address this challenge. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-cadmium-cacao-problem-isnt-bad.html Ecology Agriculture Wed, 02 Aug 2023 12:45:57 EDT news610199139 Photothermal catalysis, fueled by clean solar energy, offers an efficient solution for converting waste plastic into valuable chemicals. This catalytic process harnesses the power of solar energy and converts it into chemical energy. However, the development of photothermal catalysts that exhibit high conversion efficiency and catalytic activity poses significant challenges. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-solar-driven-conversion-plastics-blocks.html Materials Science Wed, 02 Aug 2023 12:45:07 EDT news610199103