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. New research in PLOS ONE uncovers an important discovery in the study of marine mammal health by being the first study to detect Otariid gammaherpesvirus 1 (OtGHV1) in free-ranging South American pinnipeds, as well as a novel herpesvirus Otariid gammaherpesvirus 8 (OtGHV8) in South American sea lions (Otaria byronia) in the Southern Hemisphere. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-reveals-herpesvirus-south-american-pinnipeds.html Plants & Animals Veterinary medicine Wed, 06 Mar 2024 17:01:03 EST news628966862 A ring of icy rocks orbiting our sun just beyond Neptune may give us a glimpse of how Neptune—and other objects in the outskirts of our solar system—were formed. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-scientists-james-webb-space-telescope.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:57:04 EST news628966621 Elon Musk's SpaceX on Wednesday announced it was eyeing March 14 as the earliest date for the next test launch of its giant Starship rocket, with which it hopes to one day colonize Mars. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-spacex-eyes-starship.html Space Exploration Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:38:05 EST news628965479 One of the greatest problems in modern physics is to reconcile the enormous difference between the energy carried by random fluctuations in the vacuum of space, and the dark energy driving the universe's expansion. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-elucidate-dark-energy.html General Physics Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:02:03 EST news628963321 Getting climate models to mimic real-time observations when it comes to warming is critical—small discrepancies can lead to misunderstandings about the rate of global warming as the climate changes. A new study from North Carolina State University and Duke University finds that when modeling warming trends in the Pacific Ocean, there is still a missing piece to the modeling puzzle: the effect of wind on ocean currents in the equatorial Pacific. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-equator-key-accurate-future-climate.html Earth Sciences Environment Wed, 06 Mar 2024 15:27:03 EST news628961221 Using some of the largest telescopes in the world, including the Subaru Telescope, a team of astronomers discovered three new natural satellites orbiting the outermost planets in our solar system—one around Uranus and two around Neptune. One of the new moons, initially detected by the Subaru Telescope, is the faintest moon ever discovered by ground-based telescopes. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-subaru-telescope-faintest-moon-icy.html Astronomy Planetary Sciences Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:52:58 EST news628959176 Bumblebees and chimpanzees can learn skills from their peers so complicated that they could never have mastered them on their own, an ability previously thought to be unique to humans, two studies said on Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-humans-bees-chimps-skills.html Plants & Animals Evolution Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:40:01 EST news628958079 Invasive plants can stay dormant for decades or even centuries after they have been introduced into an environment before rapidly expanding and wreaking ecological havoc, according to a new study led by the University of California, Davis. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-invasive-hidden-ecological-threat.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:39:03 EST news628958341 Ancient stone tools found in western Ukraine may be the oldest known evidence of early human presence in Europe, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-ancient-stone-tools-ukraine-date.html Archaeology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:30:36 EST news628957816 Neutron star mergers are a treasure trove for new physics signals, with implications for determining the true nature of dark matter, according to research from Washington University in St. Louis. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-physics-debris-colliding-neutron-stars.html Astronomy Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:24:12 EST news628957449 Scientists have revealed why some white dwarfs mysteriously stop cooling—changing ideas on just how old stars really are and what happens to them when they die. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-astrophysicists-unveil-phenomenon-textbook-definition.html Astronomy Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:23:46 EST news628957423 Many vaccines, including vaccines for hepatitis B and whooping cough, consist of fragments of viral or bacterial proteins. These vaccines often include other molecules called adjuvants, which help to boost the immune system's response to the protein. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-scientists-nanoparticle-vaccines-adjuvant.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:00:01 EST news628942369 For years, controversy has swirled around how a Cretaceous-era, sail-backed dinosaur—the giant Spinosaurus aegyptiacus—hunted its prey. Spinosaurus was among the largest predators ever to prowl the Earth and one of the most adapted to water, but was it an aquatic denizen of the seas, diving deep to chase down its meals, or a semiaquatic wader that snatched prey from the shallows close to shore? https://phys.org/news/2024-03-analysis-uncovers-major-issues-earlier.html Paleontology & Fossils Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:00:01 EST news628942673 Greg Rouse, a marine biologist at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and other researchers have discovered a new species of deep-sea worm living near a methane seep some 50 kilometers (30 miles) off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. Rouse, curator of the Scripps Benthic Invertebrate Collection, co-authored a study describing the new species in the journal PLOS ONE. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-deep-sea-worm-methane-seep.html Plants & Animals Ecology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:00:01 EST news628942718 New research finds around a quarter of Labrador retriever dogs face a double-whammy of feeling hungry all the time and burning fewer calories due to a genetic mutation. The results are published in the journal Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-genetic-mutation-quarter-labradors-hard.html Molecular & Computational biology Veterinary medicine Wed, 06 Mar 2024 14:00:01 EST news628942750 A computational model of the more than 26 million atoms in a DNA-packed viral capsid expands our understanding of virus structure and DNA dynamics, insights that could provide new research avenues and drug targets, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers report in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-atom-packaged-viral-genome-reveals.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 13:17:03 EST news628953421 Whereas humans have one receptor on their tongues that can detect all sorts of sweet things, from real sugar to artificial sweeteners like aspartame, insects have many receptors that each detect specific types of sugars. Yale researchers have now uncovered one way insect receptors are able to be so selective, an insight they say will help us understand how animals decipher the chemical world and how we might mimic that ability in the future. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-insects-sugars.html Cell & Microbiology Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 13:13:03 EST news628953181 The idea of objects seamlessly disappearing, not just in controlled laboratory environments but also in real-world scenarios, has long captured the popular imagination. This concept epitomizes the trajectory of human civilization, from primitive camouflage techniques to the sophisticated metamaterial-based cloaks of today. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-drone-invisibility-autonomous-sea-air.html General Physics Optics & Photonics Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:47:03 EST news628951621 The corn leafhopper Dalbulus maidis has become a serious problem for farmers. This tiny insect is now widely distributed in the Americas, from the south of the United States to the north of Argentina. In Brazil, it uses only corn plants as hosts, and little is known about its survival mechanisms in the absence of these plants. In corn, it causes damage directly by sucking sap from the phloem, the vascular tissue that conducts sugar and other metabolic products downward from the leaves. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-fungus-corn-leafhopper-extremely-pest.html Ecology Agriculture Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:42:04 EST news628951321 Hate speech incidents are widespread in all areas of society and are often unchallenged by uninvolved bystanders. LMU researchers have investigated what significance the reactions of bystanders to verbal hate attacks have for the formation of social norms. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-responsibility.html Social Sciences Political science Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:31:33 EST news628950688 A research team led by the Paul Scherrer Institute has spectroscopically observed the fractionalization of electronic charge in an iron-based metallic ferromagnet. Experimental observation of the phenomenon is not only of fundamental importance. Since it appears in an alloy of common metals at accessible temperatures, it holds potential for future exploitation in electronic devices. The discovery is published in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-weird-electron-behavior-weirder-fractionalization.html Condensed Matter Quantum Physics Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:29:06 EST news628950541 Entropy is often associated with disorder and chaos, but in biology it is related to energy efficiency and is closely linked to metabolism, the set of chemical reactions that sustain life. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-individual-red-blood-cells.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:28:59 EST news628950536 Evaporation is a natural process so ubiquitous that most of us take it for granted. In fact, roughly half of the solar energy that reaches the Earth drives evaporative processes. Since 2017, researchers have been working to harness the energy potential of evaporation via the hydrovoltaic (HV) effect, which allows electricity to be harvested when fluid is passed over the charged surface of a nanoscale device. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-nanodevices-energy-evaporating-seawater.html Nanophysics Nanomaterials Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:28:55 EST news628950532 Collaborative research that combined experiments at Yale University and molecular dynamics simulations at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory provides new insights into solving a major technical obstacle to efficient and sustainable industrial operations. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-scientists-reveal-molecular-mysteries-silica.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:28:36 EST news628950514 Researchers from the Bhogaraju Group at EMBL Grenoble have gained new insights into how a cancer-relevant family of proteins bind their targets. The results of the study, published in The EMBO Journal, could potentially help in the development of drugs against certain chemotherapy- and radiotherapy-resistant cancers. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-relationships-cancer-proteins.html Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:28:31 EST news628950509 A team of chemists led by Prof. Albert Heck puts a new spin on analyzing and understanding molecules. By ingeniously improving current measuring equipment, the team was able to trap and observe individual molecules for a much longer period—up to 25 seconds. This extended observation time enabled them to see the finer details of molecules, enhancing their understanding. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-chemists-barriers-super-resolution-molecule.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 06 Mar 2024 12:20:03 EST news628950001 Two physicists at the University of Konstanz are developing a method that could enable the stable exchange of information in quantum computers. In the leading role: photons that make quantum bits "fly." https://phys.org/news/2024-03-photons-quantum-bits-fly-stable.html Optics & Photonics Quantum Physics Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:47:03 EST news628948021 Early experiences in an animal's life can have a significant impact on its capacity to thrive, even years or decades later, and DNA methylation may help record their effects. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-early-life-adversity-term-signatures.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:44:04 EST news628947842 Astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy (IfA) have uncovered the closest recorded occurrence of a star being torn apart by a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Using the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) system, on February 22, 2023, the team detected a sudden surge in brightness followed by a rapid dimming in the galaxy NGC 3799, located about 160 million light-years from Earth. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-star-ripped-black-hole-rare.html Astronomy Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:38:02 EST news628947481 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, within the Department of Theoretical Biology, characterized a recently discovered dynamical regime of microbial communities and used it to explain empirical patterns of marine plankton. There, strong and diverse interactions, combined with weak dispersal, fuel a continuous turnover of the small set of very abundant species, such that success is ephemeral and every species is equivalent in alternating between rarity and dominance. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-insights-dynamics-microbial-communities.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Wed, 06 Mar 2024 11:31:02 EST news628947061