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. Researchers at Oregon State University have potentially found a new way to treat the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma, whose two-year survival rate is less than 30%. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sugar-coated-nanoparticles-aggressive-brain.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:00:04 EDT news701512861 Researchers are constantly sifting through new spectral data gathered by powerful telescopes, like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Most of the time, when they identify spectral features—specific absorption or emission lines from different types of light gathered from a planet, moon or star—these features are known to be caused by certain atoms or molecules. For example, the emission line at 426.7 nanometers is known to come from singly ionized carbon, representing a specific atomic transition between energy states of a carbon ion. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-titan-pluto-mysterious-spectral-feature.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:00:04 EDT news701346373 The Caspian Sea, the largest inland body of water on Earth, is shrinking. Not fluctuating, not entering another natural cycle, but shrinking. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-caspian-sea-lost-area-size.html Earth Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:20:07 EDT news701342377 With the release of "Disclosure Day," Steven Spielberg's new film about aliens, a question as old as science fiction itself resurfaces: If aliens were to arrive on Earth, would they come to conquer us, to study us ... or perhaps to eat? https://phys.org/news/2026-06-aliens-earth-tomorrow.html Astrobiology Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:00:01 EDT news700914658 If you've noticed more whales visiting local waters, you're not imagining it: Vancouver's gargantuan guests are here thanks to the season, great grub and conservation successes, researchers say. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-qa-whales-vancouver-legally.html Plants & Animals Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:20:01 EDT news700931574 The world has never had more data, more models or more economists. It has rarely felt more out of control. Uncertainty, not risk, has become the defining condition of our era. Central bankers invoke it. Political leaders use it to defer decisions and justify extraordinary ones. Academics are struggling to adapt their theories to a brave new world of unexpected outcomes and erratic policy choices. The IMF's World Uncertainty Index—which tracks how often the word appears in economic and political reporting across 143 countries—has been running at historically elevated levels for the better part of a decade, with fresh spikes after every major shock. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-global-uncertainty-legitimacy-resilience-crucial.html Economics & Business Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:40:03 EDT news700744801 Current climate and nature policies are working at cross-purposes, wasting public funds and causing unintended damage to ecosystems, according to a major new report co-authored by a University of York researcher. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fragmented-environmental-policies-failures-experts.html Environment Wed, 10 Jun 2026 10:00:04 EDT news700302301 Sloths are the slowest mammals on the planet, but living in dense jungles has made them notoriously difficult to study. For the first time, scientists have now sequenced and analyzed the two-toed sloth genome and revealed the genetics behind its extremely slow metabolism. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sloths-dna.html Evolution Tue, 09 Jun 2026 12:00:03 EDT news700222262 Astronomers have identified a possible new example of one of the universe's strangest galaxy types: galaxies that appear to contain little or no dark matter. The newly studied pair, FCC 224 and FCC 240, on the outskirts of the Fornax Cluster, share several unusual traits with the only known pair of controversial dark-matter-deficient galaxies. The findings were uploaded to the arXiv preprint server on May 22. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-dark-deficient-twins-fornax-cluster.html Astronomy Tue, 09 Jun 2026 09:20:03 EDT news700143095 Graphene, the "wonder material," has shaped much of Suprem Das's research career. From nano-manufacturing to advanced printing for applications such as sensing and energy, Das is committed to finding graphene solutions with real-world impact. Das and his team manufacture graphene in the form of printable ink for various applications. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nanoscale-phosphate-electrochemical-sensor.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 04 Jun 2026 07:00:01 EDT news699770221 Computational chemists at the University of Amsterdam's Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences have developed a comprehensive software suite to create accurate models of DNA in biomolecular assemblies. Called MDNA, the user-friendly molecular modeling toolkit helps biochemists, molecular biologists, bioinformaticians, and biophysicists to visualize and analyze DNA structures and perform accurate simulations. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-source-software-rapid-dna-generation.html Biotechnology Wed, 03 Jun 2026 16:00:03 EDT news699715022 Researchers at Eurac Research have obtained a detailed picture of the microbial community associated with Ötzi, Europe's oldest known natural human mummy. The study provides insights into a complex microbiome, ranging from the gut flora of a Copper Age human to cold-adapted yeasts. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-tzi-iceman-microbiome-year-relationship.html Cell & Microbiology Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:00:02 EDT news699547952 Cities around the world are planting more trees to cope with rising urban heat. But our research shows trees alone are often not enough. In some cases, the wrong kind of greening can even make streets feel less comfortable on a hot day. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-trees-greenery-cool-cities-18c.html Earth Sciences Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:20:06 EDT news699527161 For years, scientists studying bowhead whales have relied on a simple idea: if a whale makes a long, square or U-shaped dive, it's feeding time. A new study demonstrates that assumption may not hold water. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-bowhead-whale.html Plants & Animals Thu, 28 May 2026 18:20:01 EDT news699196621 Around 1 in 5 Americans say they've seen a ghost. I'm not one of them, and I probably never will be. I blame my brain. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-brain-wired-ghost-psychologist-factors.html Social Sciences Thu, 28 May 2026 14:00:03 EDT news699190021 On the moon, the lack of atmosphere and accompanying features such as biological activity, oxygen-rich air, flowing water and rain, wind, and most erosion allows the lunar regolith to preserve a long-term record of surface processes in the space environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-regolith-reveal-nanoscale-space-weathering.html Astronomy Thu, 28 May 2026 10:20:07 EDT news699178261 On May 22, 2026, the Pentagon released a second batch of previously classified photos and videos showing what appear to be unexplained flying objects. These file dumps were the culmination of a process that was set in motion back in July 2023, when a group of government whistleblowers testified before Congress that the U.S. government was secretly in possession of extraterrestrial spacecraft and suspected alien body parts. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-aliens-earth-aerospace-scientist-interstellar.html Astrobiology Wed, 27 May 2026 10:01:14 EDT news699094082 Pomegranate peel discarded by food vendors could soon help clean up contaminated water, thanks to research from the Department of Chemistry at the Faculty of Science. Led by Professor Sam Li, the research team developed a nanoscale carbon material derived from the fruit waste that is capable of efficiently removing 4-nitrophenol (4-NP), a persistent industrial pollutant, from water. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-upcycle-pomegranate-high-purifier.html Nanomaterials Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:05 EDT news699000361 When we think about highly sensitive medical testing, we often imagine a hospital laboratory filled with large instruments, trained technicians, and carefully controlled conditions. This is especially true for optical biosensing, where scientists try to detect extremely small changes caused by biomolecules binding to a sensor surface. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-based-sensor-ultrasensitive-disease-portable.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 21 May 2026 17:40:01 EDT news698499656 Azara's owl monkeys, a small primate species found in South America, are heavier today than those that lived a quarter-century ago, and evidence suggests that rising temperatures might have driven the weight gain, according to a Yale-led study of a wild population. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-climate-spurs-weight-gain-owl.html Plants & Animals Wed, 20 May 2026 14:03:45 EDT news698504595 In the HiPEQ project, a consortium of industry and research partners has developed new laser-based approaches to enable miniaturized, robust beam sources for quantum technology. Among others, the consortium also used lasers to grow novel optical insulator crystals. The project achieved significant progress from November 2021 to July 2025. Fraunhofer ILT in Aachen played a key role by co-developing the laser processes needed. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-laser-enable-robust-miniaturized-sources.html Optics & Photonics Tue, 19 May 2026 17:40:04 EDT news698424181 How does an ecosystem distribute its energy across body sizes? A new study suggests the answer depends on where you are—and how much humans have altered the landscape. Analyzing communities of birds and mammals worldwide, researchers show that larger-bodied species can, on average, capture more energy per species than smaller ones, particularly in highly productive environments. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-productive-ecosystems-larger-animals-capture.html Plants & Animals Thu, 14 May 2026 16:09:27 EDT news697993742 Most Americans tend to think about bats only around Halloween, but the U.S. economy benefits from these furry flying mammals every day. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-worth-deaths-taxpayers-wider-economy.html Ecology Thu, 14 May 2026 12:25:13 EDT news697980242 Nasa is developing ways to use nuclear power to send spacecraft to their destinations. Nuclear propulsion could greatly reduce the journey time to Mars, perhaps cutting a voyage of more than six months to three or four months. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-nasa-big-nuclear-journey-mars.html Space Exploration Wed, 13 May 2026 12:48:49 EDT news697895284 A reexamination of microfossils found in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul shows that the marks previously interpreted as traces of worms or other small oceanic animals are actually communities of fossilized microscopic bacteria and algae. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-brazilian-microfossils-animal-algae-bacteria.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 11 May 2026 19:20:03 EDT news697736042 When delegates gathered for COP30 in Belém, Brazil in November 2025, they scrutinized various sectors of the global economy for their contributions to rising greenhouse gases. Agriculture, aviation, steel, cement—all were on the table. One topic not discussed was war. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-wars-destroy-climate-military-emissions.html Environment Mon, 04 May 2026 13:20:01 EDT news697114742 There are tens of thousands of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that represent some of the most easily accessible resources in the solar system. Planning trajectories to rendezvous with these miniature worlds is notoriously difficult, and requires a massive amount of computational power to calculate. But a new paper from astrodynamicist Alessandro Beolchi of Khalifa University of Science and Technology and his co-authors offers a much less computationally intensive way to find these trajectories, and has the added bonus of finding much less energy-intensive paths to boot. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-trajectories-asteroids.html Space Exploration Fri, 01 May 2026 13:20:07 EDT news696850261 A research team from the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA) has led the paleohistological study of Ampelomeryx ginsburgi, a giraffomorph ruminant from the Middle Miocene recovered at the Els Casots site (Catalonia, Spain). Through microscopic analysis of bone tissues, the researchers were able to determine that this peculiar animal reached skeletal maturity at three years of age, while reproductive maturity began around the second year. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ampelomeryx-grew-life-history-giraffe.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 29 Apr 2026 13:40:07 EDT news696681781 A study conducted in the Brazilian state of Amazonas has demonstrated that small amounts of Amazonian dark earth (ADE)—an anthropogenic soil created by ancient Amazonian populations—can increase the height and diameter of the pink trumpet tree (Handroanthus avellanedae) by up to 55% and 88%, respectively. This tree also occurs in the Atlantic Forest. The research is published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-soil-fertilization-amazonian-dark-earth.html Plants & Animals Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:40:06 EDT news696612241 Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have implemented an advanced microscopy technique to visualize multiple biomolecules inside the nucleus of a cancer cell simultaneously at incredibly high resolution. The biomolecules they visualized include critical components of the cell's transcription machinery and proteins that provide structural support to the nucleus—providing one of the first detailed maps of nuclear organization. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-high-resolution-imaging-nanoscale-nuclear.html Cell & Microbiology Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:00:01 EDT news696256202