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. The climate of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean was far more turbulent than previously thought—and a new study suggests that people adapted anyway. An international team of scientists, spearheaded by UC San Diego's Center for Cyber-Archaeology and Sustainability (CCAS) and the University of Haifa's Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies (RIMS), has developed a new way to track ancient climate and used it to decode 4,000 years of key environmental history in the ancient Mediterranean. The paper was published in Quaternary Science Reviews on May 13. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-wetland-sediment-scientists-uncover-centuries.html Archaeology Mon, 18 May 2026 17:20:04 EDT news698337181 Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-space-snowmen-gravitational-collapse-contact.html Astronomy Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:00:15 EST news690567661 Scientists have long relied on tree rings to learn about ancient solar storms—rare bursts of high-energy particles from the sun that can disrupt satellites, power grids, and communication systems across the planet. When these particles hit Earth's atmosphere, they create a radioactive form of carbon that trees absorb and store in their wood. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-tree-scientists-disruptive-extreme-solar.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 29 Jan 2026 10:16:51 EST news688904161 Around 6,200 BCE, the climate changed. Global temperatures dropped, sea levels rose and the southern Levant, including modern-day Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, southern Syria and the Sinai desert, entered a period of drought. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-scientists-ancient-village-drought-seas.html Archaeology Tue, 30 Apr 2024 15:11:18 EDT news633708674 Spring frosts can have devastating effects on apple production, and a warming climate may be causing trees to blossom early, making them more susceptible to the damaging effects of extreme cold events. Growers' attempts to prevent the flowers from freezing by attempting to heat the canopies of their orchards largely have been inefficient. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-cyber-physical-apple-blossoms-orchards.html Biotechnology Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:57:44 EST news628433860 Researchers have identified a number of chokepoints in U.S. agricultural and food supply chains through a study that improves our understanding of agri-food supply chain security and may aid policies aimed at enhancing its resilience. The work is presented in a paper published in the July 20, 2023, issue of the journal Nature Food, "Structural chokepoints determine the resilience of agri-food supply chains in the United States," by authors including CEE Associate Professor Megan Konar and CEE Ph.D. student Deniz Berfin Karakoc. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-illuminate-resilience-food-chains.html Economics & Business Fri, 21 Jul 2023 17:26:40 EDT news609179190 Can a computer learn from the past and anticipate what will happen next, like a human? You might not be surprised to hear that some cutting-edge AI models could achieve this feat, but what about a computer that looks a little different—more like a tank of water? https://phys.org/news/2023-05-built-analogue-chaotic-future.html Quantum Physics Fri, 26 May 2023 12:26:41 EDT news604322798 With intense wildfires in the western U.S. and frequent, intense hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, the nation is again affected by extreme weather-related events resulting from climate change. In response, cities, states and regions across the country are developing policies to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide (CO2). Even though many state and local governments are committed to these goals, however, the emissions data they have to work with is often too general and too expensive to provide a useful baseline and target the most effective policy. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-scientist-carbon-dioxide-emissions-entire.html Earth Sciences Mon, 05 Oct 2020 12:35:45 EDT news521120142 As the demand for transportation fuels has plummeted in the last month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a Northern Arizona University scientist says the dramatic decrease in local air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels above cities is significant, measurable and could be historic, depending on how long commuters and other drivers stay off the road. https://phys.org/news/2020-04-carbon-dioxide-emissions-unprecedented-pandemic.html Environment Wed, 29 Apr 2020 09:23:52 EDT news507371027 Beneath many cities are complex networks of optical fibres that carry data, encoded in pulses of light, to offices and homes. Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singtel, Asia's leading communications technology group, have demonstrated a technique that will help pairs of light particles smoothly navigate these networks, a breakthrough that will enable stronger cyber security. The demonstration was performed over 10 km of Singtel's fibre network. This project, conducted in Singapore, is driven by the NUS-Singtel Cyber Security Research & Development Laboratory, a public-private partnership supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister's Office, Singapore. It relies on the expertise from the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at NUS. https://phys.org/news/2019-04-photons-optical-fibre-obstacle-stronger.html Optics & Photonics Fri, 05 Apr 2019 08:41:08 EDT news473672462 Until now, assessing the extent and impact of network or computer system attacks has been largely a time-consuming manual process. A new software system being developed by cybersecurity researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology will largely automate that process, allowing investigators to quickly and accurately pinpoint how intruders entered the network, what data they took and which computer systems were compromised. https://phys.org/news/2017-10-instant-replay-cyber.html Security Mon, 30 Oct 2017 09:51:32 EDT news428575887 A major American credit reporting agency entrusted to safeguard personal financial information said Thursday hackers looted its system in a colossal breach that could affect nearly half the US population as well as people in Britain and Canada. https://phys.org/news/2017-09-mn-affected-hack-credit-agency.html Security Fri, 08 Sep 2017 01:56:23 EDT news424054578 Distributed microgrid tech can secure the electrical grids at military bases to reduce the impact of cyberattacks, physical attacks from terrorists and natural disasters. https://phys.org/news/2017-05-solar-combat-national-power-grid.html Energy & Green Tech Mon, 08 May 2017 10:28:31 EDT news413458096 Just like credit cards, smartphones or search engines, autonomous cars will carry a trove of information about their owners as they make driving more comfortable, raising new concerns about privacy. https://phys.org/news/2016-11-autonomous-carsnew-oil-big-brother.html Hi Tech & Innovation Fri, 18 Nov 2016 04:20:11 EST news398665200 A series of spectacular cyber attacks against banks, resulting in the theft of tens of millions of dollars, has heightened fears for an industry becoming an increasingly attractive target for hackers. https://phys.org/news/2016-07-bank-hacks-financial-sector.html Security Mon, 25 Jul 2016 04:15:26 EDT news388638913 Today's security systems usually fall into one of two categories: human or machine. So-called "analyst-driven solutions" rely on rules created by living experts and therefore miss any attacks that don't match the rules. Meanwhile, today's machine-learning approaches rely on "anomaly detection," which tends to trigger false positives that both create distrust of the system and end up having to be investigated by humans, anyway. https://phys.org/news/2016-04-percent-cyber-attacks-human-experts.html Computer Sciences Mon, 18 Apr 2016 18:00:06 EDT news380221195 With enough computing effort most contemporary security systems will be broken. But a research team at the University of Sydney has made a major breakthrough in generating single photons (light particles), as carriers of quantum information in security systems. https://phys.org/news/2016-03-breakthrough-technology-cyber.html Quantum Physics Mon, 21 Mar 2016 09:51:04 EDT news377772643 Two-factor authentication is a computer security measure used by major online service providers to protect the identify of users in the event of a password loss. The process is familiar: When a password is forgotten, the site sends an SMS text message to the user's mobile phone, providing a verification code that must be entered to reset the password. Two-factor authentication may also be triggered if a user signs on from an unrecognized computer IP address. https://phys.org/news/2016-02-vulnerability-two-factor-authentication.html Security Wed, 03 Feb 2016 09:34:18 EST news373714450 Three Virginia Tech computer scientists are unveiling a novel approach to discovering stealth attacks on computers at the annual ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security. https://phys.org/news/2015-10-method-stealth-complicated.html Security Tue, 13 Oct 2015 07:12:42 EDT news363939153 From the perspective of complex systems, a range of events – from chemistry and biology to extreme weather and population ecology – can be viewed as large-scale self-emergent phenomena that occur as a consequence of deteriorating stability. Based on observing the self-organized patterns associated with these phenomena, the elusive goal has been the ability to interpret these emergent patterns to predict the related critical events. Recently, scientists at HRL Laboratories, LLC in Malibu, California sought to determine if there was a quantifiable relationship between these patterns and the network of interactions characterizing the event. By limiting their working definition of self-organization to spontaneous order emergence resulting from a non-equilibrium phase transition (that is, a change in a feature of a physical system – one that is not simply isolated from the rest of the universe –that results in a discrete transition of that system to another state), the researchers were able to detect the transition based on the principal mode of the pattern dynamics, and identify its evolving structure based on the observed patterns. They found that while the pattern is distorted by the network of interactions, its principal mode is invariant to the distortion even when the network constantly evolves. The scientists then validated their analysis on real-world markets and showed common self-organized behavior near critical transitions, such as housing market collapse and stock market crashes, thereby providing a proof-of-concept that their goal of being able to detect critical events before they are in full effect is possible. https://phys.org/news/2015-04-complicated-self-organized-patterns-emergent-behavior.html General Physics Tue, 28 Apr 2015 11:40:01 EDT news349432164 Cyberattacks loom as an increasingly dire threat to privacy, national security and the global economy, and the best way to blunt their impact may be a public-private partnership between government and business, researchers say. But the time to act is now, rather than in the wake of a crisis, says a University of Illinois expert in law and technology. https://phys.org/news/2014-08-deter-cyberattacks-public-private-partnership.html Security Mon, 25 Aug 2014 15:06:08 EDT news328197952 As rival football teams have been battling it out in this year's World Cup, cyber criminals have had their eye on a different goal – to cash in on this global distraction at any opportunity. https://phys.org/news/2014-07-world-cup-fans-latest-cyber.html Internet Fri, 11 Jul 2014 08:20:01 EDT news324283811 Bitcoin, 3-D printed candy and George Takei, the Star Trek-actor-turned-Facebook-phenomenon, are among the attractions this week at the South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, where the geek set is slowly filing out to make room for hordes of musicians descending on the city. https://phys.org/news/2014-03-tech-fest-3d-printers-bitcoin.html Consumer & Gadgets Tue, 11 Mar 2014 19:40:01 EDT news313784513 Of the many tricks used by the world's greatest military strategists, one usually works well – taking the enemy by surprise. It is an approach that goes back to the horse that brought down Troy. But surprise can only be achieved if you get the timing right. Timing which, researchers at the University of Michigan argue, can be calculated using a mathematical model – at least in the case of cyber-wars. https://phys.org/news/2014-01-cyber-attack-hackers-nextstuxnet.html Computer Sciences Mon, 13 Jan 2014 17:50:35 EST news308857824 (Phys.org) —Findings from Internet intelligence company Renesys sound an alert to a hijacking practice in the form of traffic misdirection on the Internet. A November 19 blog on the Renesys site has since caught the attention of a wider press: "Who is sending Internet traffic on long, strange trips?" asked a headline in The Christian Science Monitor earlier this month. The Renesys blog author, Jim Cowie, Chief Technology Officer, said that "We have actually observed live Man-In-the-Middle (MITM) hijacks on more than 60 days so far this year." He said about 1,500 individual IP blocks have been hijacked in events lasting from minutes to days by attackers working from various countries. Simply put, data to and from finance firms, net phone services and governments was re-routed in several attacks this year. As Michael Mimoso of Theatpost noted, "Attackers are accessing routers running on the border gateway protocol (BGP) and injecting additional hops that redirect large blocks of Internet traffic to locations where it can be monitored and even manipulated before being sent to its intended destination." https://phys.org/news/2013-12-peculiar-traffic-routes-hijacking-headaches.html Internet Sun, 08 Dec 2013 06:19:09 EST news305705922 (Phys.org) —More smartphones, more smartphone apps, and more busy smartphone users downloading apps have become attractive magnets for malware agents. A new category has grown up, not just general malware software but "mobile malware" and it continues to grow. Users have their own headaches when victimized and so do businesses. A sobering example of mobile malware surfaced this year at the Black Hat security event in August, where a Georgia Institute of Technology team showed how iPhones could be compromised with a charger, performing actions such as adding apps on the device without the user's permission. Interestingly, if that put a whammy into people's emotional feelings about phone chargers as a necessary evil, they may soon find themselves switching views in seeing chargers as a saving grace. https://phys.org/news/2013-10-charger-user-malware.html Security Sun, 06 Oct 2013 06:30:01 EDT news300256992 Recently, the global financial market experienced a series of computer glitches that abruptly brought operations to a halt. One reason for these "flash freezes" may be the sudden emergence of mobs of ultrafast robots, which trade on the global markets and operate at speeds beyond human capability, thus overwhelming the system. The appearance of this "ultrafast machine ecology" is documented in a new study published on September 11 in Nature Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2013-09-sudden-global-ecology-interacting-robots.html Computer Sciences Wed, 11 Sep 2013 05:00:02 EDT news298055619 Chinese hackers have gained access to secret designs for a slew of sophisticated US weapons programs, officials said Tuesday, possibly jeopardizing the American military's technological edge. https://phys.org/news/2013-05-weapons-hacked-chinese.html Internet Tue, 28 May 2013 10:00:04 EDT news288952486 The US Department of Energy on Monday confirmed it was the target of a cyber attack in January, which stole employee and contractor data, but said no classified data was compromised. https://phys.org/news/2013-02-energy-department-hacking-victim.html Internet Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:43:03 EST news279225768 The Flame virus believed to be part of a cyberwarfare effort against Iran was developed as early as 2006 and is linked to at least three other malware programs, a new analysis said Monday. https://phys.org/news/2012-09-flame-cyber-virus-linked-malware.html Internet Mon, 17 Sep 2012 16:29:28 EDT news267118156