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. As pandemic lockdowns forced humans into isolation, Earth's vegetation was thriving. The year 2020 was the greenest in modern satellite records from 2001 to 2020, according to a recent study published in Remote Sensing of Environment. Consistent growth in northern and temperate regions, combined with a brief period of tropical growth, primarily led to this remarkably verdant period. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-earth-high-greening-root.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Feb 2025 16:10:41 EST news658080637 In winter 2021, Australia's frogs started dropping dead. People began posting images of dead frogs on social media. Unable to travel to investigate the deaths ourselves because of COVID lockdowns, we asked the public to report to us any sick or dead frogs. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-pesticides-australian-frogs-mass-deaths.html Plants & Animals Tue, 30 Apr 2024 11:40:38 EDT news633696034 Imagine a jungle. It's probably a lush forest, filled with different bird songs and the hum of thousands of different kinds of insects. Now imagine a tundra: barren, windswept terrain with relatively few kinds of plants or animals. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-crowd-sourced-science-species-space.html Evolution Sat, 26 Aug 2023 06:40:01 EDT news612174690 New research finds a high variation between how pandemic mitigation measures affected immigration to different destination countries, from a slight increase to huge reductions. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-quantifying-covid-pandemic-impact-immigration.html Social Sciences Tue, 24 Jan 2023 12:35:02 EST news593786098 Electrons find each other repulsive. Nothing personal—it's just that their negative charges repel each other. So getting them to pair up and travel together, like they do in superconducting materials, requires a little nudge. https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nickelate-superconductors-intrinsically-magnetic.html Superconductivity Mon, 01 Aug 2022 13:31:40 EDT news578579495 A team of botanists from Guinea and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK have sounded the death knell for a plant in the Saxicolella genus that is endemic to a single location in Guinea. The sad discovery was made by Kew botanist Dr. Martin Cheek who investigated the plant's last-known co-ordinates using Google Earth satellite scans, following a taxonomic review of the Saxicolella genus published this week in the scientific journal Kew Bulletin. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-rare-orchid-falls-species-declared.html Plants & Animals Wed, 01 Jun 2022 13:31:42 EDT news573309100 As COVID-19's initial wave crested around the world, travel restrictions and a drop in passengers led to a record number of grounded flights in 2020. The air travel reduction cleared the skies of not just jets but also the fluffy white contrails they produce high in the atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-airplane-contrails-steeply.html Environment Mon, 07 Mar 2022 07:39:40 EST news565861174 A new study co-led by a Cornell researcher has identified serpentinite—a green rock that looks a bit like snakeskin and holds fluids in its mineral structures—as a key driver of the oxygen recycling process, which helped create and maintain the sustaining atmosphere for life on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-recycling-tectonic-plates-key-driver.html Earth Sciences Mon, 29 Nov 2021 12:34:00 EST news557411638 Carbon emissions are set to hit an all-time high by 2023 as just two percent of pandemic recovery finance is being spent on clean energy, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-covid-recovery-all-time-emissions-high.html Environment Tue, 20 Jul 2021 03:36:12 EDT news545970966 More strategic and coordinated travel restrictions likely could have reduced the spread of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic. That's according to new research published in Communications Physics. This finding stems from new modeling conducted by a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-covid-reveals-effectiveness-restrictions.html General Physics Mon, 07 Jun 2021 15:45:27 EDT news542299523 The planet Mars has no global magnetic field, although scientists believe it did have one at some point in the past. Previous studies suggest that when Mars' global magnetic field was present, it was approximately the same strength as Earth's current field. Surprisingly, instruments from past Mars missions, both orbiters and landers, have spotted patches on the planet's surface that are strongly magnetized—a property that could not have been produced by a magnetic field similar to Earth's, assuming the rocks on both planets are similar. https://phys.org/news/2021-03-planetary-science-intern-martian-crust.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 03 Mar 2021 13:07:12 EST news533999229 The 'second wave' of the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in much blame placed on a lack of appropriate safety measures. However, due to the impacts of weather, research suggests two outbreaks per year during a pandemic are inevitable. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-temperature-humidity-pandemic.html General Physics Tue, 02 Feb 2021 12:52:33 EST news531492748 While there is little doubt that COVID-19 will have lasting impacts on health and the economy, a group of researchers is bringing attention to the effects the pandemic could have on the careers of scientific researchers. Carnegie Mellon University and Max Planck Institute physicist Ulrike Endesfelder, University of Stuttgart's Dirk Pflüger and Technische Universität Braunschweig's Timo de Wolff launched a Twitter campaign #StopPandemicBias, which aims to bring broader understanding to how COVID-19 will impact scientists. Using the hashtag, they hope to crowdsource ideas that will mitigate the impact of the pandemic on research careers. https://phys.org/news/2020-07-urge-scientific-stoppandemicbias.html Social Sciences Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:06:09 EDT news515156763