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. A mother bat has one crucial challenge: find her own babies among hundreds of other bats in the colony. Making sure she cares for and nurses only her own offspring is important to ensuring their survival. Among Japanese house bats, mothers keep track of their pups using the babies' isolation calls. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mother-hearts-faster-babies-cries.html Plants & Animals Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:01 EDT news711882721 Rising temperatures and increasing drought are shortening crop-growing seasons in many parts of the world. Now scientists in Sweden report new advances toward engineering more efficient photosynthesis, work that could eventually contribute to efforts to adapt crops for climate change. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-climate-resilient-crops-mind-tackles.html Biotechnology Thu, 22 Oct 2026 19:20:01 EDT news711904861 The presence of non-native trees is often seen as an obstacle to the recovery of tropical forests regrowing in previously deforested areas. To better understand the behavior of these plants over time in both humid and dry forests, researchers from approximately 60 institutions analyzed data from over 1,500 areas of forest regeneration across the Americas. The results, published in the journal Nature Plants, indicate that the initial dominance of exotic species is temporary. They multiply easily during the first 10 to 20 years, taking advantage of abundant sunlight in open areas. However, they decline as native trees grow and shade the forest. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-natural-forest-regeneration-curb-invasive.html Plants & Animals Thu, 22 Oct 2026 17:20:10 EDT news711902821 In a review article recently published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Leicester (United Kingdom), report on how human activity has altered Earth's sediments over the decades. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-microplastics-sediment-decades-human-worldwide.html Earth Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:20:19 EDT news711901381 From 2010 to 2024, the Amazon rainforest—the largest tropical rainforest on the planet—released an average of 1.17 billion metric tons more carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere than it absorbed each year. Wildfires were the main source, emitting approximately 1.47 billion metric tons of CO₂ per year—far exceeding the forest's absorption capacity of 300 million metric tons per year. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-wildfires-amazon-emit-billion-metric.html Earth Sciences Thu, 22 Oct 2026 13:00:20 EDT news711890465 Biological clocks are often associated with light. Historically, most people started their days when the sun was up and ended their days when the sun set. But new research from Carnegie Mellon University suggests that some of the body's most important timekeepers live in the gut. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gut-bacteria-food-cues-nutrient.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:00:34 EDT news711801722 Tiny underwater algae sway gently in the current. All of a sudden, a light shines on them and they form robotlike arms that start to pick up small rocks and put them in floating baskets. Sounds like science fiction, but researchers from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands) have created a small soft robot arm covered with minuscule algae that can grasp and lift objects. And it's powered by light. This next step in biotechnology has been published in Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-algae-powered-soft-robot-arm.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 22 Oct 2026 05:39:19 EDT news711866320 Why has the yeast Candida auris become a dangerous pathogen worldwide in just a few years? This question is on the minds of many researchers. Carla Schuh and Chaitanya Gokhale from the Biocentre at the University of Würzburg have now summarized the current state of knowledge in a review article in the journal mSphere. To that end, they analyzed around 180 studies by other researchers. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-candida-auris-harbinger-dangerous-fungal.html Evolution Wed, 21 Oct 2026 19:00:01 EDT news711814201 Imagine encountering a rattlesnake in your backyard or while on a hike. It will most likely "freeze" to avoid attracting attention, but if it feels especially threatened, it may rattle and even strike, delivering a painful dose of venom. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-rattlesnakes-alike-personality-venom.html Plants & Animals Wed, 21 Oct 2026 17:40:01 EDT news711793881 Moderately cold temperatures have proven to effectively extend lifespan and delay age-related decline in animals. However, how cold temperatures trigger these beneficial effects at the molecular level has remained largely unclear. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-newly-metabolic-pathway-cold-lifespan.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:00:34 EDT news711734162 Earlier this year, an outbreak of Andes hantavirus on a cruise ship, which killed three passengers and sickened 13, highlighted the lack of approved vaccines or treatments for the virus. In a study published in Nature, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and collaborators from Institut Pasteur and LSU Health Shreveport show how the virus recognizes its target on a human cell, a finding that could lead to effective therapies against Andes virus and other hantaviruses. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-scientists-reveal-deadly-andes-hantavirus.html Cell & Microbiology Wed, 21 Oct 2026 11:00:15 EDT news711712681 The identity of a mysterious skeleton found in a Roman sarcophagus in the grounds of Westminster Abbey more than 150 years ago appears closer to being solved. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-mystery-skeleton-roman-sarcophagus-westminster.html Archaeology Tue, 20 Oct 2026 19:10:01 EDT news711634861 New results from the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) provide strong evidence that smashing oxygen nuclei together at nearly the speed of light generates a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a type of matter that existed just after the birth of the universe. The data, just published in Physical Review Letters, show that energetic jets of particles lose energy as they traverse the hot, dense matter left in the collision's wake. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-oxygen-collisions-evidence-jet-quenching.html General Physics Tue, 20 Oct 2026 17:20:01 EDT news711719881 Some 23,000 years ago, during the coldest part of the last ice age, people walked across the muddy margins of an ancient lake in what is now White Sands National Park, New Mexico. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-early-humans-america-climate-chaos.html Archaeology Sun, 18 Oct 2026 17:40:01 EDT news711294961 When a massive environmental disaster strikes, do societies simply collapse and disappear? Or do people find a way to adapt, rebuild and recover? https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ancient-volcanic-eruption-resilience-today.html Earth Sciences Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:00:05 EDT news711298328 When scientists talk about scavengers, you might imagine an animal sniffing out or stumbling across a carcass, eating as much as possible and slinking away. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-australian-scavengers-dont-approach-carcass.html Plants & Animals Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:00:01 EDT news711284249 In a discovery that could offer a new way to control quantum properties in two-dimensional materials, researchers at Cornell have found that electrically sliding the layers of ultrathin graphene can switch the material between distinct magnetic states that persist even after the voltage is removed. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-electrical-graphene-magnetic-states.html Nanophysics Sat, 17 Oct 2026 08:00:06 EDT news711213693 Plants begin responding to spaceflight almost immediately after leaving Earth, according to a new University of Florida study that captured the earliest stages of biological adaptation during a commercial suborbital mission. Published in the journal npj Microgravity, the study reports the results of an experiment conducted by a UF astronaut during Blue Origin's New Shepard NS-26 flight on Aug. 29, 2024. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-shift-gene-minutes-spaceflight-reveals.html Space Exploration Fri, 16 Oct 2026 19:00:01 EDT news711376001 Since its introduction more than 150 years ago, the thought-provoking idea of Maxwell's demon has profoundly shaped our understanding of the relationship between information and energy. Maxwell's demon is an imagined microscopic gatekeeper that exploits information at the microscopic scale to produce macroscopic work. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-maxwell-demon-concealed-usable-energy.html General Physics Fri, 16 Oct 2026 14:50:01 EDT news711377401 On May 10, 2025, a spacecraft built in the Soviet Union to land on Venus came home. Launched in 1972, Cosmos-482 was stranded by a failed upper stage of its rocket and circled Earth for 53 years. In its last days, several space agencies and research groups forecasted when it would fall, and therefore where. Roscosmos later reported that it came down in the Indian Ocean, west of Jakarta. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-air-deep-uncontrolled-satellites-rocket.html Space Exploration Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:40:12 EDT news711280994 Could a cheap roll of duct tape help protect your home from flooding? New research suggests it could make a surprisingly big difference. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-duct-tape-floodwater-sandbags-laboratory.html Materials Science Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:40:05 EDT news711359416 The likely manipulation of citation numbers by research paper mills in high-impact cancer journals has been uncovered by an international team of academic researchers. Their findings point to an organized campaign to inflate citations on paper mill–produced journal articles published in established molecular oncology journals. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fraudulent-paper-mills-scientific-citations.html Economics & Business Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:00:05 EDT news711362048 Researchers at the University of Miami have identified a group of previously unknown viruses that bridge an evolutionary gap between viruses and cellular protein compartments, a discovery with implications for both biotechnology and scientists' understanding of the origins of life. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-newly-viruses-reveal-evolutionary-link.html Evolution Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:40:10 EDT news711297722 Silicon spin qubits are a promising platform for building scalable quantum computers as they are compatible with the semiconductor manufacturing technologies used to produce today's computer chips. However, they have an important weakness: silicon spin qubits typically lose accuracy when several qubits are under parallel control. To be useful, quantum computers will need to operate many qubits simultaneously without compromising the accuracy of their operations. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-silicon-qubits-surpass-gate-fidelity.html Quantum Physics Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:20:05 EDT news711293821 On Oct. 17, 1346, the Battle of Neville's Cross was fought outside Durham in the northeast of England. It was a decisive moment in Anglo-Scottish history that led to the capture of King David II of Scotland. Yet few have heard of it. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-littleknown-14th-century-english-scottish.html Archaeology Thu, 15 Oct 2026 16:20:05 EDT news711283975 A super El Niño fueling record ocean temperatures poses a "terrifying" threat to the world's fragile coral reefs, the chair of the U.N.'s expert nature panel told AFP. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-el-nio-threat-coral-reefs.html Ecology Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:22:51 EDT news711292889 In 2024, a collaborative Penn venture introduced a more objective way for people to examine how different outlets cover the same events and ultimately decide how they perceive and use information shared in the media. The Media Bias Detector, conceived in Penn's Computational Social Science (CSS) Lab, a joint venture of Penn Engineering, the Annenberg School for Communication and the Wharton School, uses artificial intelligence to analyze news articles for characteristics including topic, tone, political lean, and the facts and people included in coverage. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-ai-media-bias-voters-news.html Social Sciences Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:00:12 EDT news711283345 A round hole in the shoulder blade (scapula) of a Neanderthal whose partial remains were unearthed in a cave in Iraqi Kurdistan may be the earliest known example of lethal interpersonal violence with a wooden spear in the hominin fossil record. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-fatal-neanderthal-wound-earliest-evidence.html Archaeology Thu, 15 Oct 2026 11:00:18 EDT news711273301 Flat is fine for a sheet of paper, but many of the most useful molecules need depth. Now, researchers from Japan have found a way to give them that depth using nothing more than a single carbon atom. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-carbon-atom-flat-molecules-3d.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 14 Oct 2026 18:00:01 EDT news711209881 Why is there life on Earth? It's one of the oldest questions humans have asked, and as far as we know, our planet is the only one that holds the answer. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-earth-mantle-oxygen-billion-years.html Earth Sciences Wed, 14 Oct 2026 15:20:01 EDT news711197461