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. When viruses travel through the air in tiny droplets, they can quickly start to dry out. Yet many viruses remain infectious after rehydration—something that is still not fully understood. Now, an international team of researchers has directly observed at the European XFEL how the protein shells of viruses can change shape during dehydration, offering new clues to viral resilience and opening new possibilities for virology research. The results, published in Light: Science & Applications, lay the groundwork for potential applications in virology and public health and can, for instance, help develop antiviral strategies. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ray-snapshots-reveal-viral-shells.html Biotechnology Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:50:01 EDT news701538782 Extreme weather is becoming the new normal, disrupting human communities across the globe. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-pups-seabird-chicks-extreme-weather.html Plants & Animals Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:00:03 EDT news701342391 Like humans, wildlife is increasingly vulnerable as climate change fuels longer and more intense heat waves, disrupting feeding and breeding and, in extreme cases, proving fatal. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-birds-fish-extreme-wildlife.html Environment Fri, 19 Jun 2026 17:40:01 EDT news701084918 Bee species that nest in plant stems appear to be at the greatest short-term risk from increasing temperatures due to climate change, while those that nest in the ground are better able to evade extreme heat, according to new research from Australian evolutionary ecologists. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-bees-tiny-homes-crisis-harder.html Plants & Animals Mon, 15 Jun 2026 05:00:07 EDT news700486201 Around the world, ocean warming is causing fish to move poleward in search of cooler water. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-climate-fish-cooler-route-blocked.html Plants & Animals Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:40:05 EDT news700477980 Astronomers have revealed distinct differences in atmospheric conditions between the morning and evening transition zones of the ultra-hot gas planet WASP-121 b, which separate day from night, commonly called terminators. This achievement was only possible due to the unmatched sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jwst-reveals-dawn-dusk-atmosphere.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:00:01 EDT news700214341 Ocean currents are not just horizontal motions that flow from side to side. There are also vertical currents that act like deep-sea elevators, pushing heat and carbon down into the deep, while bringing up vital nutrients and dissolved gases to the surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-satellite-reveal-southern-ocean-vertical.html Earth Sciences Tue, 09 Jun 2026 13:50:02 EDT news700230994 Antibiotics continue to drive resistance in bacteria, even after they are broken down in wastewater treatment plants and discharged into rivers and seas, new research published on World Oceans Day has shown for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-antibiotics-resistance-waterways.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:00:02 EDT news699883739 Taiwan, historically known as Formosa, holds a secret deep within its rugged interior: it is one of the rare locations on Earth capable of supporting "giant" trees—specimens that tower over 80 meters in height. Since 2014, a dedicated group, the "Taiwan tree seekers," has been on a mission to locate and document these sky-piercing giants. The multidisciplinary team is a unique blend of professional tree climbers, ecologists, geologists, and remote sensing specialists. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-heaven-sword-crowned-east-asia.html Plants & Animals Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:01 EDT news699781621 Everyone has a storm story—whether it's that time you just escaped a downpour, or the hailstorm that wrote off your car. Even though hailstorms are relatively rare, they cause significant damage. Two new studies shed light on how hail might change as the world warms. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-climate-shift-hailstorms-earth-poles.html Environment Wed, 03 Jun 2026 12:00:01 EDT news699700994 A hailstorm can undo a season's work in minutes. It can strike quickly and unevenly, shredding wheat, bruising fruit, flattening crops—while also leaving neighboring paddocks untouched. In a new Nature Climate Change study, scientists from UNSW Sydney say the geography and seasonality of that risk is changing. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hail-conditions-winter-crops.html Environment Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:40:07 EDT news699701581 Bryozoans are tiny, filter-feeding colonial invertebrates that thrive in the world's oceans today, yet for decades their origins presented a puzzling gap in the fossil record. While nearly every other major animal group made its first appearance during the Cambrian explosion roughly 530 million years ago, the bryozoan fossil record remained stubbornly silent until the Ordovician period, some 50 million years later. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-extraordinary-fossils-million-year-mystery.html Evolution Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:00:09 EDT news699636181 A team of scientists have discovered and named three new "leaf-planking" praying mantis species and recorded another mantis species turning up far from its assumed habitat. JCU Ph.D. candidate Matthew Connors recently discovered and named three new Snake Mantis species from the Kongobatha genus (K.serpens, K.spinosistyla and K.rufilinea), publishing his detailed observations of each species in the journal Zootaxa. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-mantises-planking-urban-dominance.html Plants & Animals Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:20:01 EDT news699601681 A new raptor-like dinosaur from some 70 million years ago that ate fish and behaved like modern herons has been unearthed from southern Patagonia. The new species, which has been named Kank australis, was identified based on the discovery of fossil remains including teeth, vertebrae, and toe bones. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-heron-fish-dinosaur-million-years.html Paleontology & Fossils Thu, 28 May 2026 19:10:06 EDT news699176102 The sight of a saltwater crocodile basking on a mudbank is one of the most iconic and intimidating images of northern Australia. Yet the crocodiles that inhabit the region today are just the survivors of a much richer and stranger lost world. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-years-crocodiles-australasia-ancient-apex.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 20 May 2026 14:40:07 EDT news698499640 Researchers have uncovered a remarkable fossil site in a remote part of Canada's Northwest Territories, offering unprecedented insight into the earliest evolution of complex animal life on Earth. Findings from the site represent life from the Ediacaran biota—soft-bodied organisms that lived on the seafloor more than 500 million years ago—and push back the origins of animal movement and sexual reproduction by 5–10 million years. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-discovery-fossils-northwest-canada-view.html Evolution Wed, 20 May 2026 14:00:15 EDT news698486161 From the highest mountains to the deepest ocean, the driest desert to the lushest jungle, Earth displays a dazzling array of life-forms. And eukaryotes account for many of these life-forms, including nearly all of the multicellular life we can see in the landscape. But scientists are still piecing together exactly how this domain of life evolved from simpler predecessors. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-early-complex-life-clung-oxygenated.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 20 May 2026 11:00:10 EDT news698493481 Parasitic nematodes (commonly known as roundworms) are a large, diverse and poorly studied group of disease-causing organisms that severely impact the health of humans and animals. They infect almost one-quarter of the global population and significantly impair child growth and development. Diagnosing these parasites is challenging as many species look identical, meaning common identification techniques typically miss species. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-field-ready-tool-rare-zoonotic.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 19 May 2026 16:40:03 EDT news698422201 Whether it's artificial intelligence programs or the Amazon rainforest, people often experience gratitude or protectiveness toward non-human entities because they perceive these entities as having good intentions, according to research published in the journal Emotion. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-machines-forests-strange-reshaping-human.html Social Sciences Thu, 14 May 2026 09:00:05 EDT news697875990 The four-foot-tall Emperor penguin of Antarctica may be the most iconic member of this unique family of birds, but 17 other species of penguins populate the Southern Hemisphere, many of them confined to isolated islands that make them hard to study. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-scientists-gentoo-penguins-species-totally.html Evolution Fri, 08 May 2026 13:00:01 EDT news697461182 Meeting future nickel demand for stainless steel and clean energy technologies will require tough decisions with potential environmental trade-offs, a new study has found. Dr. Jayden Hyman from The University of Queensland's School of the Environment led an international analysis of known nickel deposits, current mining and demand forecasts. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-energy-nickel-straight-earth-richest.html Environment Wed, 06 May 2026 18:40:03 EDT news697296061 A new study has unveiled a new method to cost-effectively and practically test for "forever chemicals" in water, potentially revolutionizing environmental PFAS monitoring. Led by Griffith University, the novel PFAS detection technique is a portable sensor designed to provide rapid, highly sensitive, and selective onsite testing, offering a practical alternative to laboratory-only analysis. The study, "Molecularly imprinted polyaniline-functionalized lateral-flow membrane for highly sensitive and selective per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances detection in water," has been published in Environmental Science & Technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-portable-sensor-pfas-site-lab.html Environment Wed, 06 May 2026 13:20:02 EDT news697285621 Heat stress from marine heat waves can create a toxic relationship between seagrasses and a hidden ecosystem of bacteria, transforming a previously beneficial co-existence between marine plants and microbes into a harmful one, a University of Sydney and UNSW study has found. The research is published in New Phytologist. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-hot-marine-toxic-relationship-seagrasses.html Ecology Wed, 06 May 2026 12:00:09 EDT news697284961 Methane is the second-largest greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide. According to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, anthropogenic methane emissions account for nearly 45% of current net warming, making it an important factor in global warming. An international research team led by a scholar from City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) has broken through the overlooked role of sewers as a source of methane, developing the first-ever globally applicable estimation tool and offering a new perspective on mitigating climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-sewers-climate-problem-plain-sight.html Environment Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:40:03 EDT news696518823 Researchers have developed a powerful new tool that can track how microbes spread between people with unprecedented precision, offering new ways to prevent infections and improve treatments in the future. The research, published April 24 in Nature Microbiology, describes how the new tool, called TRAnsmision Clustering of Strains (TRACS), uses genomics to distinguish between closely related strains of microbes. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-genomic-tool-untangles-microbes-identical.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 24 Apr 2026 14:20:01 EDT news696249361 Flinders University researchers have taken a revealing look inside the head of one of the first animals to crawl from the water to live on land more than 380 million years ago. Using high-tech neutron imaging, they scanned the skull and braincase of the only known specimen of Koharalepis jarviki, a large fossil fish found in freshwater rivers in the vast Lashly Mountains region of Antarctica which lived during the Devonian Period or "Age of Fishes." https://phys.org/news/2026-04-skull-devonian-fish-gondwana-revealed.html Biotechnology Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:20:07 EDT news696170303 Research into human genomic diversity has a number of applications in biomedicine, evolution, and history. However, many populations have historically been underrepresented on the human genomic map. This is the case of Native American populations, whose history of adaptation and genetic diversity remains largely unknown. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-vast-indigenous-american-genome-exposes.html Evolution Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:00:18 EDT news695980681 Beneath the lush rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula lies a hidden, subterranean world: a vast network of flooded sinkholes and anchialine caves. These unique underwater systems, which mix fresh and saltwater and are influenced by the tides, have no open connection to the surface and have served as an evolutionary refuge for millions of years. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-tiny-cave-shrimps-power-underworld.html Evolution Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:20:04 EDT news695893441 New Curtin University-led research has used a radio telescope that spans Earth to snap images that measure the immense power of jets from black holes, confirming scientists' theories of how black holes help shape the structure of the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-jets-black-hole-reveal-immense.html Astronomy Thu, 16 Apr 2026 05:00:03 EDT news695471701 An international team led by researchers at QUT has used artificial intelligence to create tiny "smart" proteins that switch on only when they detect a chosen target. Published in Nature Biotechnology, the research opens the way to a new generation of low-cost biosensors for medicine, environmental monitoring and biotechnology. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-scientists-ai-generated-proteins-smart.html Biotechnology Wed, 15 Apr 2026 05:00:02 EDT news695395801