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. Materials scientists at Duke University have uncovered an atomic mechanism that makes certain thermoelectric materials incredibly efficient near high-temperature phase transitions. The information will help fill critical knowledge gaps in the computational modeling of such materials, potentially allowing researchers to discover new and better options for technologies that rely on transforming heat into electricity. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-floppy-atomic-dynamics-electricity.html General Physics Fri, 04 Sep 2020 12:43:06 EDT news518442181 Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a small neutralizing antibody, a so-called nanobody, that has the capacity to block SARS-CoV-2 from entering human cells. The researchers believe this nanobody has the potential to be developed as an antiviral treatment against COVID-19. The results are published in the journal Nature Communications. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nanobody-covid-infection.html Bio & Medicine Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:50:04 EDT news518429913 Search teams looking for human remains are often slowed by painstaking on-foot pursuits or aerial searches that are obscured by forest cover. In a Science & Society article appearing September 3 in the journal Trends in Plant Science, the authors discuss utilizing tree cover in body recovery missions to our advantage, by detecting changes in the plant's chemistry as signals of nearby human remains. Though the impact of human decomposition on plants has not yet been thoroughly explored, the researchers outline the steps needed to make body recovery using vegetation more of a reality. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-dead-bodies-forensic-botanists.html Plants & Animals Other Thu, 03 Sep 2020 11:00:04 EDT news518343238 Over the past few decades, scientists have become increasingly aware of the adverse effects that human activities are having on the environment and climate on Earth. These environmental and climatic changes have several consequences, impacting both the health of living organisms and more practical aspects of society. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-exploring-impact-climate-energy-global.html Environment Thu, 03 Sep 2020 09:20:01 EDT news518338439 Demand continues for plastics and solvents made from petrochemicals, which are mainly produced by refining oil despite diminishing global oil reserves, driving forward the search for new ways to produce the chemicals we need. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-methane.html Materials Science Thu, 03 Sep 2020 07:55:43 EDT news518338540 Scalable nanoparticle-based computing architectures have several limitations that can severely compromise the use of nanoparticles to manipulate and process information through molecular computing schemes. The von Neumann architecture (VNA) underlies the operations of multiple arbitrary molecular logic operations in a single chip without rewiring the device. In a new report, Sungi Kim and a team of scientists at the Seoul National University in South Korea developed the nanoparticle-based VNA (NVNA) on a lipid chip. The nanoparticles on the lipid chip functioned as the hardware—featuring memories, processors and output units. The team used DNA strands as the software to provide molecular instructions to program the logic circuits. The nanoparticle-based von Neuman architecture (NVNA) allowed a group of nanoparticles to form a feed-forward neural network known as a perceptron (a type of artificial neural network). The system can implement functionally complete Boolean logical operations to provide a programmable, resettable and scalable computing architecture and circuit board to form nanoparticle neural networks and make logical decisions. The work is now published on Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-nanoparticle-based-architecture-nanoparticle-neural-networks.html Nanophysics Wed, 02 Sep 2020 10:20:01 EDT news518259993 An analytical breakthrough that could significantly improve our chances of finding extra-terrestrial life in our galaxy has been discovered by a team at The University of Manchester. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-breakthrough-narrows-intelligent-life-milky.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:30:01 EDT news518257353 For all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming with activity in the form of gravitational waves. Produced by extreme astrophysical phenomena, these reverberations ripple forth and shake the fabric of space-time, like the clang of a cosmic bell. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-ligo-virgo-detectors-massive-gravitational-wave.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:00:03 EDT news518238766 An alert pops up in your email: The latest spacecraft observations are ready. You now have 24 hours to scour 84 hours-worth of data, selecting the most promising split-second moments you can find. The data points you choose, depending on how you rank them, will download from the spacecraft in the highest possible resolution; researchers may spend months analyzing them. Everything else will be overwritten like it was never collected at all. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-magnetic-eruptions-space-ai.html Astronomy Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:46:16 EDT news518251570 Animal species that are at home in the high mountains are finding their habitats reduced and fragmented by roads. In addition, they face competition from scavengers from lower boreal areas that find their way to the mountains. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-red-fox-displaces-arctic-littering.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 01 Sep 2020 09:58:55 EDT news518173131 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) astronomers have detected 18 very metal-poor stars in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. They found that one of the stars from the sample has an extremely low metallicity, slightly below -3.0. The study was reported in a paper published August 22 on the arXiv preprint repository. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-astronomers-metal-poor-stars-sagittarius-dwarf.html Astronomy Tue, 01 Sep 2020 09:00:01 EDT news518163610 It is very hard to take a photo of a hummingbird flapping its wings 50 times per second. The exposure time has to be much shorter than the characteristic time scale of the wing beat, otherwise you will only see a colorful blur. A similar problem is encountered in solid-state physics, where the aim is to determine the magnetic properties of a material. The magnetic moment at a certain location can change very quickly. Therefore, researchers require measuring methods that are fast enough to resolve these fluctuations. With this basic idea in mind, scientists at TU Wien (Vienna), in collaboration with research groups from Würzburg (Germany), has now succeeded in solving a puzzle of solid-state physics. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-material-properties-results.html General Physics Tue, 01 Sep 2020 07:24:12 EDT news518163803 In 2019, Google claimed it was the first to demonstrate a quantum computer performing a calculation beyond the abilities of today's most powerful supercomputers. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-theory-hints-efficient-quantum-algorithms.html Quantum Physics Mon, 31 Aug 2020 10:41:45 EDT news518089300 Radio astronomers have detected jets of hot gas blasted out by a black hole in the galaxy at the heart of the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster, located 5.9 billion light-years away in the constellation Phoenix. This is an important result for understanding the coevolution of galaxies, gas, and black holes in galaxy clusters. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-hole-cold-heart-phoenix.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 09:32:47 EDT news518085164 It shouldn't be any secret that mitochondria can make their own fatty acids. The enzymes mitochondria use to do it were discovered decades ago. Unfortunately, only a few individuals among the biologically literate masses have come to appreciate this critical fact about mitochondrial behavior. Perhaps the bigger issue is why mitochondria would go to all the trouble when cells can already make all the fatty acids they need. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-mitochondria-cells-fatty-acid-synthesis.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 31 Aug 2020 07:37:23 EDT news518078235 Ammonia (NH3) is a colorless, gaseous and water-soluble compound used in several sectors, including agriculture, the energy sector, and a variety of industries. For over a century, the main way of producing large quantities of ammonia has been via the Haber-Bosch process, which entails the use of high pressure to produce a chemical reaction that enables the direct synthesis of ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-strategy-electrochemical-reduction-nitrate-ammonia.html Materials Science Mon, 31 Aug 2020 07:35:02 EDT news518078093 If you've ever seen a bat flying around at sunset, chances are good it was a vesper bat. They're the biggest bat family, made up of 500 species, found on every continent except Antarctica. And most of them look a lot alike—they're little, with fuzzy grayish-brown fur, sort of the sparrows of the bat world. That can make it hard to tell the different species apart. But scientists just discovered three new species and two new genera of vesper bats in Africa by comparing the bats' genes, their teeth and skulls, the high-frequency calls they make when echolocating, and the tiny bones in their penises. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-penis-bones-echolocation-genes-reveal.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:14:40 EDT news517756473 A team of researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has found a way to speed up photosynthesis in algae by applying a conjugated polymer. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes experiments with applying polymers to algae and what they learned from them. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-light-harvesting-polymers-photosynthesis-algae.html Biotechnology Thu, 27 Aug 2020 10:00:02 EDT news517740637 Genes from a tiny shrimp-like crustacean could help in the search for the origin of insect wings, a new study finds. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-wings-crustacean-insect.html Evolution Ecology Thu, 27 Aug 2020 09:18:54 EDT news517738732 A cosmic dance between two merging galaxies, each one containing a supermassive black hole that's rapidly feeding on so much material it creates a phenomenon known as a quasar, is a rare find. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-maunakea-observatories-pairs-merging-supermassive.html Astronomy Thu, 27 Aug 2020 08:21:49 EDT news517735304 The detection more than a decade ago by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope of an excess of high-energy radiation in the center of the Milky Way convinced some physicists that they were seeing evidence of the annihilation of dark matter particles, but a team led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine has ruled out that interpretation. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dark-destruction-extra-galaxy-center.html Astronomy Space Exploration Wed, 26 Aug 2020 15:15:12 EDT news517673704 Plants have a unique ability to safeguard themselves against pathogens by closing their pores—but until now, no one knew quite how they did it. Scientists have known that a flood of calcium into the cells surrounding the pores triggers them to close, but how the calcium entered the cells was unclear. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-door-infection.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 26 Aug 2020 11:00:06 EDT news517655780 A team at the Max Dellbruck Center has answered a question that has puzzled scientists for some 40 years. In the journal Cell, the group explains how cells are able to switch on completely different signaling pathways using only one signaling molecule: the nucleotide cAMP. To achieve this, the molecule is virtually imprisoned in nanometer-sized spaces. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-enzyme-prisons-cell-molecule.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:42:53 EDT news517578160 The origin of life on Earth is a topic that has piqued human curiosity since probably before recorded history began. But how did the organic matter that constitutes lifeforms even arrive at our planet? Though this is still a subject of debate among scholars and practitioners in related fields, one approach to answering this question involves finding and studying complex organic molecules (COMs) in outer space. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-cosmic-complex-molecules-radiofrequency-footprint.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Aug 2020 11:10:56 EDT news517572652 A nearby star, the host of two (and possibly three) planets, was initially thought to be quiet and boring. These attributes are sought-after as they create a safe environment for their planets, especially those that may be in what scientists call "the habitable zone" where liquid water could exist on their surfaces and life might be possible. But astronomers at Arizona State University have announced that this nearby star turns out to be not so tame after all. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planets-safe-stellar-flares-thought.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:40:56 EDT news517567253 A team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory created a computational model of the proteins responsible for the transformation of mercury to toxic methylmercury, marking a step forward in understanding how the reaction occurs and how mercury cycles through the environment. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-protein-explore-toxic-methylmercury.html Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:18:44 EDT news517565921 Fifty potential planets have been confirmed by a new machine learning algorithm developed by University of Warwick scientists. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-planets-machine.html Space Exploration Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:08:00 EDT news517565277 A mystery surrounding the space around our solar system is unfolding thanks to evidence of supernovae found in deep-sea sediments. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-ancient-star-explosions-revealed-deep.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Aug 2020 08:47:36 EDT news517564054 A team of researchers from University of Toronto Engineering and the University of Michigan has redesigned and enhanced a natural enzyme that shows promise in promoting the regrowth of nerve tissue following injury. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-re-engineered-enzyme-reverse-spinal-cord.html Biochemistry Mon, 24 Aug 2020 16:26:32 EDT news517505188 Once in a while, over the history of life, a new trait evolves that leads to an explosion of diversity in a group of organisms. Take wings, for instance. Every group of animals that evolved them has spun off into a host of different species—birds, bats, insects and pterosaurs. Scientists call these "key innovations." https://phys.org/news/2020-08-biologists-gene-critical-columbines-iconic.html Evolution Molecular & Computational biology Mon, 24 Aug 2020 15:00:07 EDT news517483605