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. Researchers have discovered that a bacterium found in camel crickets is capable of breaking down lignin—the stuff that makes wood tough—opening new research pathways for the development of biofuels and chemical manufacturing. The study also highlights the potential inherent in using ecosystem analysis as a tool for targeting research into the identification of commercially valuable microorganisms with industrial applications. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-cricket-bacteria-lignin-highlighting-ecology.html Ecology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 20:20:02 EDT news472226032 Researchers have discovered what gives human sperm the strength to succeed in the race to fertilise the egg. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-mathematicians-reveal-secret-human-sperm.html Mathematics Tue, 19 Mar 2019 20:10:01 EDT news472226103 Rabbits prefer to eat plants with plenty of DNA, according to a new study by Queen Mary University of London and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-rabbits-lots-dna.html Plants & Animals Tue, 19 Mar 2019 20:10:01 EDT news472226171 A team of researchers including Northwestern Engineering faculty has expanded the understanding of how virus shells self-assemble, an important step toward developing techniques that use viruses as vehicles to deliver targeted drugs and therapeutics throughout the body. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-revealing-virus-scaffold.html Biochemistry Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:35:38 EDT news472235723 At precisely 11:48 am on December 18, 2018, a large space rock heading straight for Earth at a speed of 19 miles per second exploded into a vast ball of fire as it entered the atmosphere, 15.9 miles above the Bering Sea. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-powerful-meteor-satellites.html Space Exploration Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:29:17 EDT news472235349 What makes one person different from one another, and how did these differences evolve? https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hot-genetic-variation-evolved-human.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational Biology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 14:11:24 EDT news472223474 The study of evolution is revealing new complexities, showing how the traits most beneficial to the fitness of individual plants and animals are not always the ones we see in nature. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-nature-rewind-evolution.html Evolution Tue, 19 Mar 2019 14:10:43 EDT news472223429 The vast majority of people who fish in the world do so for pleasure, not food. Yet despite the substantial impacts these fishers have on fish populations and aquatic ecosystems worldwide, fishery management approaches still focus on the production of protein rather than quality leisure. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-fishing-fun-food-stock-recreational.html Ecology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 14:08:21 EDT news472223288 When nutrients are dangerously low, a group of bacteria have been found to take the drastic measure of getting rid of their tails. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-starving-bacteria-eject-tails-energy.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 14:00:04 EDT news472218435 A NASA spacecraft that will return a sample of a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu to Earth in 2023 made the first-ever close-up observations of particle plumes erupting from an asteroid's surface. Bennu also revealed itself to be more rugged than expected, challenging the mission team to alter its flight and sample collection plans, due to the rough terrain.  https://phys.org/news/2019-03-osiris-rex-reveals-asteroid-bennu-big.html Space Exploration Tue, 19 Mar 2019 13:58:57 EDT news472222720 Mutualisms, which are interactions between members of different species that benefit both parties, are found everywhere—from exchanges between pollinators and the plants they pollinate, to symbiotic interactions between us and our beneficial microbes. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-natural-favors-cheaters.html Evolution Ecology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 13:54:27 EDT news472222458 Researchers have detected a radio signal from abundant interstellar dust in MACS0416_Y1, a galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Standard models can't explain this much dust in a galaxy this young, forcing us to rethink the history of star formation. Researchers now think MACS0416_Y1 experienced staggered star formation with two intense starburst periods 300 million and 600 million years after the Big Bang with a quiet phase in between. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-fall-ziggy-star-formation-rich.html Astronomy Tue, 19 Mar 2019 13:00:01 EDT news472205676 The first data received from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Ryugu is helping space scientists explore conditions in the early solar system. The space probe gathered vast amounts of images and other data providing researchers clues about Ryugu's history, such as how it may have formed from a larger parent body. These details in turn allow scientists to better estimate quantities and types of materials essential for life that were present as Earth formed. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-hayabusa2-ingredients-life-early-solar.html Space Exploration Astrobiology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:50:01 EDT news472205758 Astronomers found a pulsar hurtling through space at nearly 2.5 million miles an hour—so fast it could travel the distance between Earth and the Moon in just 6 minutes. The discovery was made using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). https://phys.org/news/2019-03-fermi-satellite-clocks-cannonball-pulsar.html Astronomy Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:49:43 EDT news472218575 Can tokamak fusion facilities, the most widely used devices for harvesting on Earth the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars, be developed more quickly to produce safe, clean, and virtually limitless energy for generating electricity? Physicist Jon Menard of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has examined that question in a detailed look at the concept of a compact tokamak equipped with high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. Such magnets can produce higher magnetic fields—necessary to produce and sustain fusion reactions—than would otherwise be possible in a compact facility. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-fusion-power-unlimited-energy-earth.html Plasma Physics Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:40:05 EDT news472217993 Blackpoll warblers that breed in western North America may migrate up to 12,400 miles roundtrip each year, some crossing the entire North American continent before making a nonstop trans-ocean flight of up to four days to South America. Now a new study led by first author Bill DeLuca at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and project lead Ryan Norris at the University of Guelph, Ontario offers details of the feat. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-north-america-atlantic-enormous-migration.html Ecology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:39:27 EDT news472217951 A new study identifies a single molecule as a key entry point used by two types of dangerous bacteria to break through cellular barriers and cause disease. The findings, published March 19 in the journal mBio, suggest that blocking the interaction between the molecule, known as CD40, and bacteria may represent a universal strategy for preventing life-threatening illnesses, including toxic shock syndrome. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-molecule-bacteria-breach-cellular-barriers.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:34:29 EDT news472217648 Using nanotechnology, UCF researchers have developed the first rapid detector for dopamine, a chemical that is believed to play a role in various diseases such as Parkinson's, depression and some cancers. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-sensor-brain-disorders-seconds.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:31:25 EDT news472217474 An international team led by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and in collaboration with scientists from the United Kingdom, Turkey and Israel, has analyzed eight prehistoric individuals, including the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer, and found that the first Anatolian farmers were direct descendants of local hunter-gatherers. These findings provide support for archaeological evidence that farming was adopted and developed by local hunter-gatherers who changed their subsistence strategy, rather than being introduced by a large movement of people from another area. Interestingly, while the study shows the long-term persistence of the Anatolian hunter-gatherer gene pool over 7,000 years, it also indicates a pattern of genetic interactions with neighboring groups. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-anatolian-farmers-local-hunter-gatherers-agriculture.html Archaeology & Fossils Tue, 19 Mar 2019 12:00:01 EDT news472206958 A discovery by researchers at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) has uncovered a common blueprint for proteins that have antimicrobial properties. This finding opens the door to design and development of a new generation of anti-infectives active against pathogens that have become resistant to conventional antibiotics. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-scientists-common-blueprint-protein-antibiotics.html Biochemistry Tue, 19 Mar 2019 11:11:43 EDT news472212691 A team from the Institute of Forest Sciences at the University of Freiburg shows that the extraction of ground water for industry and households is increasingly damaging floodplain forests in Europe given the increasing intensity and length of drought periods in the summer. The scientists have published their results in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-floodplain-forests-threat.html Environment Tue, 19 Mar 2019 10:49:59 EDT news472211390 A new computer program that spots when information in a quantum computer is escaping to unwanted states will give users of this promising technology the ability to check its reliability without any technical knowledge for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-leakage-quantum.html Quantum Physics Tue, 19 Mar 2019 10:00:08 EDT news472196916 A newly discovered parasitic cycle, in which ocean bacteria keep phytoplankton on an energy-sapping treadmill of nutrient detoxification, may offer a preview of what further ocean warming will bring. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-discovery-parasitic-arsenic-glimpse-life.html Earth Sciences Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:59:22 EDT news472208354 Carbon monoxide detectors in our homes warn of a dangerous buildup of that colorless, odorless gas we normally associate with death. Astronomers, too, have generally assumed that a build-up of carbon monoxide in a planet's atmosphere would be a sure sign of lifelessness. Now, a UC Riverside-led research team is arguing the opposite: celestial carbon monoxide detectors may actually alert us to a distant world teeming with simple life forms. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-carbon-monoxide-detectors-extraterrestrial-life.html Astronomy Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:52:02 EDT news472207910 An international team of astrophysicists observed for the first time that the jet of a quasar is less powerful on long radio wavelengths than earlier predicted. This discovery gives new insights in the evolution of quasar jets. They made this observation using the international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope, which produced high-resolution radio images of quasar 4C+19.44, located over 5 billion light-years from Earth. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-energy-loss-unexpected-insights-evolution.html Astronomy Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:40:50 EDT news472207242 'Dead zones' could become increasingly common in lakes in future due to climate change, reducing fish numbers and releasing toxic substances into drinking water. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-lake-dead-zones-fish-poison.html Earth Sciences Environment Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:40:37 EDT news472207229 Light driven movement is challenging in nonliquid environments as micro-sized objects can experience strong dry adhesion to contact surfaces and resist movement. In a recent study, Jinsheng Lu and co-workers at the College of Optical Science and Engineering, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and the Institute of Advanced Technology in China and Singapore, developed a vacuum system and achieved rotary locomotion where a micrometer-sized, metal hexagonal plate approximately 30 nm in thickness revolved around a microfiber. They powered the motor (plate-fiber) using a pulsed light, which was guided on the fiber by an optically excited Lamb wave. The procedure enabled a plate-fiber geometry motor favorable for optomechanical applications in practice; results of the study are now published on Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-nanoscale-lamb-wave-driven-motors-nonliquid.html Nanophysics Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:30:03 EDT news472113419 Nanoparticles composed of nickel and iron have been found to be more effective and efficient than other, more costly materials when used as catalysts in the production of hydrogen fuel through water electrolysis. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-cost-effective-method-hydrogen-fuel-production.html Nanomaterials Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:25:13 EDT news472206301 A pair of researchers, one with the Institute of Management and Economics at Clausthal University of Technology, the other the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, has found evidence that suggests oil prices might now be based on futures contracts instead of day-to-day price fluctuations. In their paper published in the journal Nature Energy, Esmail Ansari and Robert Kaufmann describe their study of the oil price market and suggest an explanation for its recent odd behavior. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-tight-oil-prices-based-futures.html Economics & Business Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:21:23 EDT news472206022 Women took another step forward in the still male-dominated world of science Tuesday, as American Karen Uhlenbeck won the Abel Prize in mathematics for her work on partial differential equations. https://phys.org/news/2019-03-abel-prize-maths-awarded-woman.html Mathematics Tue, 19 Mar 2019 09:13:03 EDT news472205574