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. While the highly virulent avian influenza strain has only recently been discovered on Australian shores, researchers at Deakin University have been working behind the scenes for years, anticipating what an outbreak might look like. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bird-movements-track-global-virus.html Plants & Animals Sun, 06 Sep 2026 17:00:01 EDT news707401817 Lakes may look like picturesque stopping points along a river or stream, but they can have a big influence on what happens to carbon as it moves through a landscape. New research suggests that the more lake-rich a network of streams is, the more carbon is released into the atmosphere rather than carried downstream. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-lakes-theyre-carbon.html Earth Sciences Sat, 05 Sep 2026 08:20:01 EDT news707386128 Every 13 or 17 years, swarms of cicadas emerge from the ground, their black bodies, orange-tinged wings and ruby-red eyes enveloping trees and forests. It is a biological marvel unique in the insect world, and when it happens, it is impossible not to notice. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-periodical-cicadas-doomed-extinction.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2026 16:40:02 EDT news707746681 Some of the most intriguing scientific breakthroughs happen when researchers aren't explicitly looking for them. Take, for example, the pygmy raccoon (Procyon pygmaeus), a critically endangered species that lives only on Cozumel Island, Mexico. Scientists were observing them for a study on the impact of tourism on their populations when they made an accidental discovery. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-critically-endangered-pygmy-raccoons-paper.html Plants & Animals Fri, 04 Sep 2026 10:30:02 EDT news707734698 Two tiny ant fossils recovered in southern Saskatchewan are helping scientists better understand the evolutionary history of modern ants. Ant fossils dating from 72–56 million years ago are rare. What happened to insects such as ants during this period that saw a mass extinction wipe out all non-bird dinosaurs? How did that event reshape their world? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-fossils-reveal-big-insights.html Evolution Thu, 03 Sep 2026 19:20:01 EDT news707668441 About 200 million years ago, furry, little egg-laying creatures evolved the ability to feed their offspring with a secretion from special glands: milk. Their evolutionary journey continued, and by about 160 million years ago, the first mammals with a real placenta had come into being. Instead of laying eggs, they gave birth to live young that had been connected directly to their mother via a placenta during pregnancy, allowing the exchange of oxygen, nutrients and waste products. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-early-mammals-werent-loners-pairs.html Evolution Thu, 03 Sep 2026 16:00:02 EDT news707660041 Scientists at UMass Chan Medical School and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole have shown that the four core clock genes responsible for maintaining circadian rhythms in animals—Per, Cry2, Bmal1 and Clk—also regulate circatidal behavior in the crustacean P. hawaiensis. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tiny-crustacean-scientists-genes-circatidal.html Plants & Animals Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:40:01 EDT news707646781 Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) featured prominently in the news during 2020 as it took the lives of millions of birds across the globe. While the worst seems to be behind us, population-level effects are just now emerging. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ddt-flu-peregrine-falcons-san.html Plants & Animals Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:40:03 EDT news707644561 The hidden world of quantum mechanics exists at scales many orders of magnitude smaller than living organisms, yet scientists have long theorized that quantum effects play an important role in biology. Birds' ability to sense magnetic fields during migration is one of the best-known mysteries in this field, with leading theories suggesting that this sensing could be achieved by exploiting quantum entanglement. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-quantum-algorithm-birds-migrate.html Quantum Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2026 09:20:07 EDT news707643721 Earth may have been pushed deeper into a global deep freeze by something surprisingly ordinary: salt. Around 700 million years ago, Earth entered periods of extreme glaciation known as Snowball Earth, when ice is thought to have spread across much or potentially all of the planet's surface. Scientists have long known that expanding ice could have helped drive this transition: As bright ice replaces darker ocean water, more sunlight is reflected back into space, causing the planet to cool further and allowing even more ice to form. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-salt-earth-frozen-world-million.html Earth Sciences Thu, 03 Sep 2026 07:40:06 EDT news707385271 For the first time, geographers from Durham University have used freely available satellite radar images to track emperor penguins through the polar winter—giving a year-round view of their movements. Monitoring the endangered birds through Antarctica's dark months is important because this is a key stage in their breeding cycle. Emperor penguins rely on stable sea ice attached to the coastline for roughly nine months to breed and raise chicks. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tracking-emperor-penguins-space.html Plants & Animals Wed, 02 Sep 2026 11:20:03 EDT news707561703 On a high Norwegian plateau in late May, patches of bare ground begin to appear through the snow, and with them arrive some of Europe's most approachable birds. Eurasian dotterels breed on exposed mountain ridges and Arctic tundra from Scotland, through Scandinavia, to Siberia, and are famously tolerant of people—a trait that has long made them easy prey for hunters. They are unusual in another sense, too. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-summer-odyssey-female-dotterels-multiple.html Plants & Animals Wed, 02 Sep 2026 09:20:09 EDT news707557949 Many animal species, ranging from peacocks and birds of paradise to some lizards, fish and beetles, display physical features or ornaments that can attract potential mates. These ornaments can include colorful plumage, elaborate tails or fins, inflatable throat sacs and elongated eye stalks. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-peacock-displays-outpace-antlers-tusks.html Evolution Wed, 02 Sep 2026 07:20:05 EDT news707483354 What makes birdsong beautiful? Answering this question could help us understand how soundscapes make the natural world relaxing for humans, opening the door to improving parks, upgrading the design of stressful places like waiting rooms and promoting conservation through birds with especially lovely songs. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-scientists-key-ingredients-birdsong-pretty.html Plants & Animals Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:01 EDT news707389981 Influenza viruses constantly shapeshift to evade recognition by the immune system. This shapeshifting occurs in critical proteins like hemagglutinin (HA), which controls how the virus attaches to human cells before entering them. Influenza viruses can evade immunity in two major ways: through the gradual accumulation of mutations that make HA harder for the immune system to recognize or through reassortment events that can introduce substantially different viral proteins and potentially lead to flu pandemics. To address this challenge, seasonal flu vaccines remain the primary approach because they can be developed to target the flu viruses circulating most predominantly in a given season. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-amino-acid-swap-nanoparticle-vaccine.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 01 Sep 2026 19:20:04 EDT news707502181 The temporal structure of speech rhythms resembles that of the communication signals of numerous animal species. This is shown by a study conducted by a research team from the Leibniz Center for General Linguistics (ZAS) in Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, the University of Regensburg and the Institute for Advanced Studies at Aix-Marseille University. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-tune-nature-human-speech-rhythm.html Evolution Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:40:03 EDT news707484422 The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) tropical forests stretch across an extraordinary landscape of rivers, wetlands, savannas and towering trees. But in a forest this vast, biodiversity doesn't exist on a single plane. It climbs into the canopy. It moves between branches and vines, disappears into the understory and travels across the forest floor. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-forest-floor-treetops-cameras-reveal.html Plants & Animals Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:20:03 EDT news707481541 Ocean plastic pollution is accidentally on the menu for southern giant petrel chicks. Even small nibbles of it may affect their physiology during development, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and Argentina's National Research Council (CONICET). https://phys.org/news/2026-08-small-amounts-ocean-plastic-affect.html Plants & Animals Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:20:06 EDT news707410981 Europe is no stranger to powerful windstorms, but some storms capable of causing serious damage have an unusual origin. Tropical cyclones can occasionally travel north from lower latitudes and reach Europe, where they can bring damaging winds and heavy rain even after losing some of their tropical characteristics. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-uk-ireland-greatest-rare-tropical.html Earth Sciences Mon, 31 Aug 2026 10:00:07 EDT news707137390 In 1899, scientists began tracking avian migration by placing a small ring with an identifier around birds' ankles. Researchers then had to recapture the birds elsewhere, leaving the journey between those points a mystery. Today, GPS tags allow researchers to see every stage of bird migration. The tags are small, have long-lasting batteries and solar panels, and track dozens of metrics. Migration is no longer described as just a theoretical range but rather as an exact map. Despite this technological advancement, the routes of many species in their respective flyways remain undescribed. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-picture-eagle-migrations.html Plants & Animals Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:40:02 EDT news707225749 There is an old saying that nature is the best medicine, and it turns out bumblebees might agree. A new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science suggests that buff-tailed bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) may self-medicate when exposed to a fungal brood disease. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-bumblebees-medicate-exposed-fungal-infections.html Plants & Animals Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:50:01 EDT news707125828 Why do humans rely on XY chromosomes to determine sex, while birds use ZW—and many reptiles use neither, letting temperature decide instead? Sex determination is remarkably diverse across the animal kingdom. In genotypic sex determination (GSD), sex is encoded in the genome: XX individuals are female and XY males in humans and most mammals, while in the ZW system, found in birds and some reptiles, males are ZZ and females ZW. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-xy-zw-gecko-chromosomes-reveal.html Evolution Thu, 27 Aug 2026 14:00:08 EDT news707044201 With their charming waddles, heat-conserving huddles and tuxedo-like plumage, emperor penguins are among the world's most recognizable animals. Recent satellite surveys estimate that hundreds of thousands of the flightless birds live in 66 colonies spread around Antarctica's inaccessible, frozen coastlines. But those numbers could fall in the coming decades because emperor penguins rely on landfast (or fast) ice—a type of sea ice attached to the shoreline—to breed, raise chicks and molt. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-emperor-penguin-colonies-reveal-decades.html Plants & Animals Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:20:01 EDT news707048941 When an athlete swings upside down atop a 7-meter (23-foot) pendulum, it may seem like a feat of strength, courage or technique. A new study suggests it is something more fundamental: a striking demonstration of how intelligence emerges from the interaction of brain, body and environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-physics-kiiking-estonia-extreme-sport.html General Physics Thu, 27 Aug 2026 12:09:22 EDT news707051333 When engineers look to nature for inspiration, they often turn to living systems. The flight of birds has influenced aircraft design, gecko feet inspired new adhesives and lotus leaves led to the development of self-cleaning surfaces. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-geomimicry-framework-sustainable-materials.html General Physics Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:27:53 EDT news707038047 We share our planet with millions of plants and animals. This variety of life is known as biodiversity, a term encompassing everything from microscopic genes to entire ecosystems, such as deserts and vibrant coral reefs. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-species-discoveries-reveal-emerging-biodiversity.html Ecology Thu, 27 Aug 2026 08:20:04 EDT news707032202 For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the remarkable coordinated movements of flocking birds, swarming insects and schooling fish. Researchers have studied these natural phenomena to understand the rules of interactions between individuals that can produce complex group-level behavior. A collaboration of physicists and neurobiologists at the University of California San Diego has been studying schools of micro glassfish (Danionella cerebrum) to understand how the interactive mental processes of individual fish produce group-level decisions. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-virtual-reality-reveals-glassfish-synchronize.html Plants & Animals Wed, 26 Aug 2026 19:40:02 EDT news706974061 Imagine the Western Plains of North America, from Texas to Alaska, submerged under a broad, shallow seaway. To the west lay the ancestral Rocky Mountains. To the east were low-lying plains traversed by large, sluggish rivers. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-rare-dinosaur-tracks-coniacian-age.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 26 Aug 2026 18:00:05 EDT news706968249 Capuchin monkeys hunt prey when fruits and vegetables become scarce, potentially mirroring the habits of human ancestors, according to a study published in PLOS One by Susana Carvalho (Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique), Noemi Spagnoletti (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy) and colleagues. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-fruits-veggies-scarce-monkeys-meat.html Plants & Animals Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:00:26 EDT news706953420 Moving threatened sea turtle nests to cooler, safer parts of the beach can save entire clutches from rising tides and extreme heat, but new research suggests it may have hidden consequences for the hatchlings that emerge. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-turtle-eggs-hidden-consequences.html Plants & Animals Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:30:01 EDT news706881369