Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories

Hours after rare and intense flooding hit California's Death Valley, closing roads and stranding some 1,000 people, waters were receding Saturday and police escorted many of those trapped to safe...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-receding-floodwater-police-evacuate-people.html

French authorities were preparing Saturday to give vitamins to a beluga whale that swam way up the Seine river, as they raced to save the malnourished creature, which has so far refused food.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-france-vitamins-beluga-stranded-seine.html

Jumping from rock to rock to rock over a creek formed off Austria's Jamtal glacier, scientist Andrea Fischer worries that precious scientific data will be irreversibly lost as the snow and ice me...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-austrian-scientists-reveal-glaciers-secrets.html

A trunk with its lid left open. A wooden dishware closet, its shelves caved in. Three-legged accent tables topped by decorative bowls. These latest discoveries by archaeologists are enriching kno...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-pompeii-highlight-middle-class-life-doomed.html

Experts are ignoring the worst possible climate change catastrophic scenarios, including collapse of society or the potential extinction of humans, however unlikely, a group of top scientists cla...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-chances-climate-catastrophe-scientists.html

Major flooding in California's Death Valley on Friday stranded approximately 1,000 people, buried cars and shut down all roads into and out of the famously parched national park.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-rare-people-death-valley.html

A Pakistan zoo is auctioning off a dozen lions to private collectors next week to free up space for a pride that won't stop growing.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-pakistan-lions-auction.html

Portugal recorded its hottest July on record last month, the country's weather service said Friday.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-portugal-july-worsening-severe-drought.html

Researchers at the University of California, Davis, have found a way to reduce the amount of nitrogen fertilizers needed to grow cereal crops. The discovery could save farmers in the United State...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-cereal-crops-fertilizer.html

Did the 12th century B.C.E.—a time when humans were forging great empires and developing new forms of written text—coincide with an evolutionary reduction in brain size? Think again, says a U...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-human-brain-years.html

Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, projected to draw some $1.2 billion in digital political spending, NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy (C4D) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering today launche...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-adobservatoryorg-transparency-insights-digital-political.html

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health have developed a three-dimensional structure that allows them to see how and where disease mutations on the twinkle protein can lead to mitochon...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-team-3d-twinkle-protein.html

DNA-based information is a new interdisciplinary field linking information technology and biotechnology. The field hopes to meet the enormous need for long-term data storage by using DNA as an in...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-dual-plasmid-dna-digital-storage-potential.html

A systematic review of 301 academic articles on "cultural ecosystem services" has enabled researchers to identify how these nonmaterial contributions from nature are linked to and significantly a...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-ways-nature-nurtures-human-well-being.html

A common weed harbors important clues about how to create drought resistant crops in a world beset by climate change.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-common-weed-super-key-drought-resistant.html

In the beginning, there was boredom. Following the emergence of cellular life on earth, some 3.5 billion years ago, simple cells lacking a nucleus and other detailed internal structure dominated ...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-emergence-complex-cells-orthodoxy.html

PCR tests, also called molecular tests or nucleic acid tests, are considered the gold standard in detecting the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that gives rise to COVID-19. However, they can ta...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-at-home-saliva-based-covid-effective-pcr.html

In recent work published in the journal Horticulture Research, researchers from Northeast Agricultural University and Huazhong Agricultural University characterized a negative regulator of late b...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-scientists-characterize-potato-l-type-lectin.html

Fires, heat waves, floods—the reality of climate change is front and center for millions of Americans. Yet among the downbeat of climate-related disasters, some hopeful news rang out last week ...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-shouting-distance-inflation-reduction-climate.html

Researchers at Michigan State University have shown that locusts can not only "smell" the difference between cancer cells and healthy cells, but they can also distinguish between different cancer...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-locusts-human-cancer.html

We have recently witnessed the stunning images of distant galaxies revealed by the James Webb telescope, which were previously visible only as blurry spots. Washington University in St. Louis res...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-simple-powerful-cell-secretion.html

This star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6638 in the constellation Sagittarius. The star-strewn observation highlights the dens...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-hubble-star-studded-skyfield.html

Despite signs of wear, the intrepid spacecraft is about to start an exciting new chapter of its mission as it climbs a Martian mountain.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-years-nasa-curiosity-mars-rover.html

Alongside cultural heavyweights such as Disney's "Encanto" and Warner Brothers' "The Batman," a short film created at Goddard shares the screen next week at a festival honoring standout works of ...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nasa-goddard-web-asteroid-bennu.html

NASA's ShadowCam is heading to the Moon aboard Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI)'s Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO) mission. KPLO, also known as Danuri, launched at 7:08 p.m. EDT on ...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-nasa-shadowcam-aboard-korea-pathfinder.html

A new map in Oregon that rated the wildfire risk of every tax lot in the state—labeling nearly 80,000 structures as high-risk—generated so much pushback from angry homeowners that officials a...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-oregon-wildfire-emerges-climate-flashpoint.html

Noxious gases from an Icelandic volcano threaten to pollute the air of a nearby village and risk spreading to the capital Reykjavik, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) said on Friday.

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-gases-iceland-volcano-threaten-nearby.html

Adam Wraight pulled a blue sewage "warning" sign out of the sand near Imperial Beach Pier on Thursday morning, replacing it with the more ominous yellow and red placard telling beachgoers that wa...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-tijuana-sewage-shutters-imperial-beach.html

Ultrafast pulses from X-ray lasers reveal how atoms move at timescales of a femtosecond. That's a quadrillionth of a second. However, measuring the properties of the pulses themselves is challeng...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-machine-reveals-hidden-components-x-ray.html

After an exhaustive historical investigation into the barrels of DDT waste reportedly dumped decades ago near Catalina Island, federal regulators concluded that the toxic pollution in the deep oc...

https://phys.org/news/2022-08-history-ddt-ocean-dumping-la.html