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. Eighty years ago, Canada enacted executive orders to banish more than 10,000 Canadians of Japanese descent, stripping thousands of citizenship in the process. Named a Top 100 Book of 2025 by The Hill Times and described as "essential reading for history buffs" by The Globe and Mail, a new book from University of Victoria (UVic) historian Jordan Stanger-Ross and University of Alberta legal scholar Eric M. Adams tells the untold story of Japanese Canadians facing banishment after the war and the legal battle that challenged notions of citizenship, race and rights. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-expert-qa-war-legal-canadian.html Social Sciences Mon, 12 Jan 2026 10:21:15 EST news687435661 Despite the pistachio-colored glow and sulfurous odor, the Baltimore harbor continues to improve in water quality year after year—even if swimming right now isn't advisable. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-baltimore-harbor-health-pistachio-tide.html Environment Mon, 13 Oct 2025 09:29:10 EDT news679566544 Something strange happens when two kinds of seals living in the waters around Cape Cod get infected with influenza—harbor seals get sick but gray seals don't. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-gray-perplex-scientists-lack-response.html Ecology Wed, 03 Sep 2025 08:32:05 EDT news676107122 Eighty years ago this week, Japan surrendered after nearly four years of war in the Asia-Pacific. For Australia, this meant the end of not only the war in the Pacific, but also the Second World War that had begun six years earlier, in September 1939. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-wwii-dominates-australians-knowledge-military.html Political science Fri, 15 Aug 2025 09:46:18 EDT news674469975 Survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki said receiving a Nobel Peace Prize has given them a fresh incentive to campaign for nuclear disarmament ahead of the 80th anniversary of the 1945 attacks. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-japanese-atomic-survivors-nobel-peace.html Other Tue, 24 Dec 2024 10:24:24 EST news654258259 Maryland officials investigated a fish kill on Sept 04 in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, after about 24,000 dead fish were observed between the Rusty Scupper and the Maryland Science Center, as well as near Piers 5 and 6. https://phys.org/news/2024-09-fish-results-dead-baltimore-harbor.html Plants & Animals Thu, 05 Sep 2024 08:40:01 EDT news644743738 Summer is coming and that means more boats in the sea. Danish coastal waters are especially cluttered with small boats in the summertime: Locals water skiing, going fishing or just riding around the beautiful bays and fjords. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-constantly-food-harbor-porpoises-vulnerable.html Plants & Animals Thu, 23 May 2024 11:30:21 EDT news635682618 Problem saltwater crocodiles are typically traveling between 100km and 200km to Darwin Harbor potentially in search of new resources or territories, according to a new study on the migration of the reptiles. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-reveals-saltwater-crocodiles-caught-northern.html Plants & Animals Fri, 15 Dec 2023 12:34:03 EST news621866042 Weather data from several ships bombed by Japanese pilots at Pearl Harbor has been recovered in a rescue mission that will help scientists understand how the global climate is changing. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-weather-battleships-logbooks-scientists-climate.html Earth Sciences Mon, 18 Sep 2023 09:51:03 EDT news614249461 A team of marine scientists has found that harbor seals tend to put more space between themselves and their neighbors than gray seals do. In their study, reported in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group studied seal behavior on the shores of the Dutch Wadden Sea and the behaviors that might constitute a response to spreadable diseases. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-harbor-distance-gray-disease.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Aug 2023 10:30:01 EDT news610794853 In watching the reaction of advocates and experts to the Supreme Court's decision in EPA v. West Virginia, I was struck by their dismay that the EPA would no longer be able to implement rapid sweeping change in the nation's energy system. I have a little news for these experts: the EPA was never going to be able to quickly decarbonize the economy. It was always going to be a slow and gradual process. In Lisa Friedman's New York Times piece last week about the EPA's new approach to greenhouse regulation, she reported that: https://phys.org/news/2022-07-pace-transition-environmentally-sustainable-economy.html Environment Tue, 12 Jul 2022 12:03:05 EDT news576846181 Most bottom-dwelling marine invertebrate animals, such as sponges, corals, worms and oysters, produce tiny larvae that swim in the ocean prior to attaching to the seafloor and transforming into juveniles. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and led by University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa researchers revealed that a large, complex molecule, called lipopolysaccharide, produced by bacteria is responsible for inducing larval marine tubeworms, Hydroides elegans, to settle to the seafloor and begin the complex processes of metamorphosis. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-seafloor-animal-cued-bacterial-compound.html Ecology Wed, 18 May 2022 04:09:51 EDT news572065778 Most animals produce calls that reflect their body size. A larger animal will sound lower-pitched because its vocal tract, the air-filled tube that produces and filters sounds, is longer. But harbor seals do not always sound like they look. They may sound larger—perhaps to impress a rival—or smaller—perhaps to get attention from their mothers. Are these animals very good at learning sounds (vocal learners), or have their vocal tracts adapted to allow this vocal flexibility? https://phys.org/news/2022-04-anatomical-harbor-good-varied.html Plants & Animals Fri, 29 Apr 2022 10:52:38 EDT news570448355 U.S. public health officials on Tuesday began investigating how civilians have been affected by the leakage of petroleum into Pearl Harbor's tap water from a Navy fuel storage facility. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-agencies-navy-fuel-leak-effect.html Environment Wed, 05 Jan 2022 03:48:42 EST news560576920 Harbor porpoises have rebounded in a big way off California. Their populations have recovered dramatically since the end of state set-gillnet fisheries that years ago entangled and killed them in the nearshore waters they frequent. These coastal set-gillnet fisheries are distinct from federally-managed offshore drift-gillnet fisheries. They have been prohibited in inshore state waters for more than a decade. The new research indicates that the coastal set gillnets had taken a greater toll on harbor porpoise than previously realized. https://phys.org/news/2021-01-california-harbor-porpoises-rebound-coastal.html Plants & Animals Thu, 21 Jan 2021 11:20:05 EST news530450400 Using recordings from MBARI's deep-sea hydrophone, marine-mammal researchers have found that the sounds of seal bombs could have significant impacts on the behavior of harbor porpoises in and around Monterey Bay. Seal bombs are explosive charges (roughly equivalent to an M-80 or cherry bomb) that commercial fishers throw into the ocean to discourage sea lions from interfering with their operations. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-harbor-porpoises.html Ecology Wed, 05 Aug 2020 08:28:17 EDT news515834887 A small team of researchers from Syracuse University, Cornell University and the Humpback Whale Monitoring Program in Glacier Bay National Park reports evidence of harbor seals having difficulty being heard over the noise from cruise ships during mating season. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, the group describes studying noise off the coast of Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park and what they learned about it. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-harbor-difficult-heard-noise-cruise.html Plants & Animals Wed, 08 Apr 2020 10:40:02 EDT news505560304 NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible image of Phanfone as it continues moving through the South China Sea. Visible imagery showed that the storm is less organized and elongated as the storm weakened from a typhoon to a tropical storm. https://phys.org/news/2019-12-nasa-elongated-phanfone-tropical-storm.html Earth Sciences Fri, 27 Dec 2019 11:12:40 EST news496667554 Imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed that a tropical low-pressure area has consolidated and organized in the Southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji. https://phys.org/news/2019-12-nasa-noaa-satellite-tropical-cyclone-sarai.html Environment Thu, 26 Dec 2019 10:32:05 EST news496578717 Imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed that a tropical depression in the Arabian Sea has consolidated and organized despite facing wind shear. Tropical Depression 06A is now Tropical Cyclone 06A. https://phys.org/news/2019-12-nasa-noaa-satellite-tropical-cyclone-06a.html Environment Tue, 03 Dec 2019 13:06:27 EST news494600785 A new Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) study indicates that the contaminated water of New Bedford Harbor may pose an airborne health hazard for residents living nearby in Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, and New Bedford. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared the southeastern Massachusetts harbor a Superfund site and has been cleaning up sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) since the 1990s, focusing efforts on PCB levels in the sediment and in fish consumed from the harbor, and associated cancer risks. https://phys.org/news/2019-12-potentially-air-contamination-bedford-harbor.html Environment Tue, 03 Dec 2019 12:04:15 EST news494597053 Wearable devices fitted to harbor seals reveal their movements around the Oregon coast, for a population that has been increasing following the implementation of marine reserves and protection acts. The study publishes July 31, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sheanna Steingass from Oregon State University, USA, and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2019-07-oregon-coast-harbor-movements-wearable.html Ecology Wed, 31 Jul 2019 14:00:08 EDT news483774371 Thirty years ago, during the 1988 presidential campaign, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush took a boat ride across Boston Harbor and derided the environmental record of his rival, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, calling the polluted waters a "harbor of shame." Bush was right. For decades Boston had been dumping barely treated sewage into the harbor, although a court-ordered cleanup was just starting. https://phys.org/news/2019-01-tumor-free-flounder-dividend-cleanup-boston.html Environment Thu, 10 Jan 2019 11:30:17 EST news466342194 A first-of-its-kind retrospective study concludes that environmental cleanup projects can provide high value to society, making them economically viable alternatives to coastal development projects. The analysis of Boston Harbor suggests the capitalized value of restored ecosystem services now stands at between $30 and $100 billion—far outweighing the $5 billion cleanup cost. Published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the study demonstrates that the post-cleanup value of healthy ecosystems and their associated benefits should be considered when evaluating options for coastal areas. https://phys.org/news/2018-12-boston-harbor-cleanup-economically.html Environment Mon, 17 Dec 2018 02:00:02 EST news464171449 The Allen Marine tour boat pushed off the dock at the Sitka Crescent Harbor on a clear crisp October afternoon with University of Alaska Southeast researchers, alumni and supporters of the university in search of humpback whales. It didn't take long to find them. https://phys.org/news/2018-12-humpback-whales-linger-sitka.html Plants & Animals Thu, 13 Dec 2018 09:30:03 EST news463914466 A canary in a coal mine? How about a flounder in a harbor? https://phys.org/news/2018-11-tumor-free-flounder-underscores-boston-harbor.html Environment Thu, 29 Nov 2018 15:18:08 EST news462727074 On December 16, 1773, the Boston tea party protestors threw more than 340 chests full of tea—the equivalent of about 18 and a half million teabags—into the harbor. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-video-boston-harbor-tea.html Other Thu, 04 Oct 2018 11:40:02 EDT news457871994 The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service started the Safe Harbor program in North Carolina in 1995 to reduce conflict between landowners and conservation officials and to encourage private landowners to take steps to benefit endangered Red-cockaded Woodpeckers on their land. The program has successfully reduced conflict over conservation and reduced the abandonment of nest clusters, but a new study from The Condor: Ornithological Applications shows that while the program may have raised landowners' awareness of and tolerance for their feathered neighbors, it has largely failed to improve breeding success of birds on private lands. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-endangered-woodpeckers-persist-struggle-private.html Ecology Wed, 24 Jan 2018 03:08:32 EST news435985703 A new study by scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Cornell University and Duke University is the first in a series to understand how marine mammals like porpoises, whales, and dolphins may be impacted by the construction of wind farms off the coast of Maryland. The new research offers insight into previously unknown habits of harbor porpoises in the Maryland Wind Energy Area, a 125-square-mile area off the coast of Ocean City that may be the nation's first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. https://phys.org/news/2017-05-scientists-track-porpoises-impact-offshore.html Ecology Fri, 05 May 2017 18:04:20 EDT news413226241 Sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCBs, from the bottom of the New Bedford Harbor is the No. 1 source of airborne PCBs in the neighborhoods surrounding the port, according to new research by the University of Iowa and Boston University School of Public Health. https://phys.org/news/2017-03-bedford-harbor-major-source-airborne.html Environment Fri, 10 Mar 2017 15:45:50 EST news408383141