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Science & Environment News

Phys.org

Science & Environment / Phys.org

New online tool to help turn food waste into opportunity

Western Australian businesses can now make better-informed decisions about reducing food waste and turning discarded materials into valuable products, thanks to a new online toolkit.

27 Oct 2026 5:50 am
Fossils from brickworks reveal new dinosaur species that roamed England

More than 25 years after it was first discovered, a new species and genus of dinosaur have been named from the fossil collections cared for by the Natural History Museum. Paludohadros proudlovii was discovered at wienerberger

27 Oct 2026 5:40 am
New binary gene expression system enables independent control of multiple cell types

Our bodies are composed of many different types of cells that work together to build and maintain normal physiological functions. In the central nervous system, for example, neurons transmit information, while glial cells such as astrocytes regulate the environment surrounding neurons and support their function. Understanding how these cell types influence one another is essential for uncovering how our bodies develop and function.

27 Oct 2026 5:30 am
Drought forces livestock farmers to make tough decisions: Our model shows the impact on inequality

Climate change is amplifying extreme weather conditions across southern Africa. Dry seasons are getting hotter and drier, while rains are becoming heavier and more concentrated. This means greater swings between production surplus and scarcity for rural communities that make their living from the land.

27 Oct 2026 5:20 am
Inside the narcissistic brain: fMRI research sheds light on the narcissist

Many people have narcissistic traits to some degree, for example, confidence in one

27 Oct 2026 4:40 am
Water into fuel: The new nanomaterial that could upgrade green hydrogen

Generating hydrogen without releasing carbon dioxide sounds simple: pass electricity through water, split water molecules and generate green hydrogen. The hard part is the electrocatalyst. The best ones rely on platinum, ruthenium and iridium, which are scarce and expensive. We wanted to know whether a small amount of iron and nickel oxides, anchored on carbon nanofibers grown by chemical vapor deposition the right way on the right scaffold, could do the job instead. Our results are published in

27 Oct 2026 4:30 am
Freshwater flows reshape Coorong algae communities, 16 years of data reveal

Ongoing research is providing a clearer picture of how climate change can affect different aspects of the Coorong in South Australia

27 Oct 2026 3:30 am
Could ecological roles offer clues to how life began?

Producers, consumers, and decomposers play different roles in today

27 Oct 2026 3:10 am
Expanding hemp could boost Kentucky water quality and ecological diversity

Hemp has long been pitched to Kentucky farmers as a way to diversify their income. Research now suggests it could diversify the landscape itself, with measurable benefits for the state

27 Oct 2026 3:10 am
Metalens microscope switches focus with voltage, not moving optics

Just as it is difficult for a camera to keep both a nearby flower and a distant mountain sharply focused at the same time, conventional optical microscopes face a similar challenge when imaging structures located at different depths inside the body. Tighter focusing of light improves spatial resolution, but at the same time reduces the depth range over which the image remains sharply focused.

27 Oct 2026 2:50 am
Silent bacterial genes yield potential leads for future cancer drugs

Natural products produced by microorganisms are a promising source of new drugs. Researchers at the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI) and its Saarbr

27 Oct 2026 2:30 am
Can cats really thrive on vegan diets? Professor Andrew Knight responds to critics

In response to a recent article on vegan diets for cats, Phys.org received numerous messages from concerned readers. People raised a lot of concerns, mainly arguing that cats are obligate carnivores and that vegan diets could be very harmful to their health. Now, we have collected all these comments, questions and concerns and asked the researcher behind the original paper to address them. Andrew Knight, Veterinary Professor of Animal Welfare and Associate Professor at Murdoch University School

27 Oct 2026 2:15 am
Aleppo pine at risk: Climate impacts arrive decades earlier than projected

In 2020, our research published in New Phytologist showed how the height growth of Aleppo pine populations responded to climate gradients across the Mediterranean, and how these populations were expected to respond under future climate change based on decades of common-garden experiments. Since then, multiple studies on Pinus halepensis have documented diverse and often rapid growth and survival responses to recent climatic extremes.

27 Oct 2026 2:10 am
Simulations reveal design rules for high-performance DNA particle motors

DNA-nano/microparticle motors are among the fastest artificial molecular motors reported to date, moving at approximately 30 nm per second. However, they are still slower than natural motor proteins (approximately 100

27 Oct 2026 1:50 am
Shared aquifers, border hotspots: Cooperation should follow where groundwater is pumped, scientists say

Groundwater depletion and groundwater-dependent irrigation tend to concentrate close to international borders within aquifers shared by two or more countries, where pumping on one side is more likely to affect users on the other, according to a publication by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).

27 Oct 2026 1:40 am
Hydrogen production from seawater: Low-cost catalyst could cut energy use and resist corrosion

Using a range of advanced characterization techniques, researchers say they have developed a novel method with the potential to produce hydrogen from seawater using a process that requires less energy, resists corrosion and could support more economical hydrogen production.

27 Oct 2026 1:30 am
New research finds frequent disease outbreaks in B.C. salmon farms, endangering wild salmon

A new study with unprecedented access to Atlantic salmon farms in British Columbia raises urgent questions about the federal government

27 Oct 2026 1:30 am
Botanists comb Gabon

Each year, Gabon

27 Oct 2026 1:10 am
Scientists produce less disruptive research as they age, but their breakthroughs are more likely to last

Science often advances in small steps, with researchers gradually building on previous discoveries. But every now and then, a breakthrough comes along that challenges conventional thinking and changes the direction of a field.

27 Oct 2026 1:00 am
Hidden chromosome structures reveal greater complexity in how roundworms organize DNA

Almost every cell in our body contains around two meters (6.6 feet) of DNA, packed into a tiny nucleus. Yet for the cell to function, this enormous amount of genetic material must remain organized and accessible. Researchers at the University of Basel have now discovered three distinct types of large chromosomal domains that help organize DNA in nuclei.

27 Oct 2026 12:50 am
The power of poop: Why conservationists love animal scat

I never thought my shoelaces would get stolen.

27 Oct 2026 12:50 am
Ancestors all around

Halloween kicks off a series of religious and cultural festivals to honor the dead, including All Saints

27 Oct 2026 12:40 am
Two distinct sleep stages emerge in jumping spider, including a REM-like state

Humans and other vertebrates go through various stages of sleep, including REM (rapid eye movement) sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and muscle twitches. Can a similar sleep state be observed in spiders? Researchers from the Institute of Organismic Biology at the University of Bonn investigated this in the Australian jumping spider Portia fimbriata. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

27 Oct 2026 12:30 am
27 Oct 2026 12:30 am
Protecting isn

New Monash University research has revealed how countries could strengthen their conservation networks by looking beyond the boundaries of national parks and protected areas

27 Oct 2026 12:10 am
Victorian spiritualism capitalized on the desire to transcend death to create new ways of making money

Death has never entirely stopped the living from trying to continue a conversation with their loved ones.

27 Oct 2026 12:10 am
How shoes change our bones

We tend to think of our bones as solid, unchanging support structures inside our bodies, but a recent study from the University of Chicago shows just how much they can change depending on how we use them.

26 Oct 2026 11:50 pm
Biodiversity is a priority for European municipalities

As urbanization spreads worldwide, the loss and fragmentation of habitats are driving the global decline in biodiversity. At the same time, urban green spaces like parks, meadows and forests have the potential to contribute significantly to biodiversity conservation at the local and regional levels.

26 Oct 2026 11:50 pm
Climate change exposes gaps in Europe

As the climate changes, protecting wildlife increasingly depends on both the conditions within protected areas and the connections between them. A new study published in Conservation Letters identifies where climatic stability and opportunities for movement coincide in Europe, and where gaps could undermine conservation.

26 Oct 2026 11:30 pm
Fractional calculus helps 1D model mimic correlations seen in 2D phase transitions

Phase transitions are strongly constrained by spatial dimension. In conventional one-dimensional systems with short-range interactions, thermal fluctuations generally prevent continuous degrees of freedom from maintaining order over long distances.

26 Oct 2026 11:00 pm
Clouds on a lava planet challenge what astronomers expected

A rocky lava planet once thought to be too extreme to have an atmosphere appears to be wrapped in one with a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand.

26 Oct 2026 10:50 pm
Emotional content can improve how people process conversations

New in JNeurosci, Pyry Heikkinen and colleagues, from the University of Helsinki, explored how emotional meaning influences the way the human brain prioritizes information during naturally spoken conversations in a cocktail party setting.

26 Oct 2026 10:30 pm
Laser-blasted plasma shows how instabilities could heat the sun

From its visible surface, the sun radiates heat at a relatively cool temperature of 5,800 Kelvin. Yet within the thin outer layer of the sun

26 Oct 2026 10:30 pm
Lizard tail preserved in amber sheds light on a 100-million-year-old defense mechanism

A lizard making a dramatic escape, leaving its tail wriggling behind as it darts to safety, is an image familiar to many. Tail-shedding is one of the most widespread defenses against predators among living lizards, yet tracing the origins of this extraordinary ability has proved to be surprisingly difficult

26 Oct 2026 10:10 pm
Solving an ancient cold case: Roman was brutally murdered

This 2,000-year-old cold case offered a wealth of information, Leiden archaeologists Carol van Driel-Murray and Mark Driessen explain. Few skeletons from the late Iron Age and early Roman era have been preserved, making this largely intact skeleton a valuable research resource. In their new book Victims of Violence from the Early Roman Fort Velsen, Van Driel-Murray and Driessen reconstruct the cause of this man

26 Oct 2026 10:00 pm
Armored amphibian lived entirely at sea 237 million years ago, fossils suggest

Scientists report fossil evidence of the first fully marine amphibian in a study from the University of California, Davis; Peking University; and the Geological Museum of Guizhou. The amphibian is an armored, giant salamander

26 Oct 2026 9:30 pm
Physicists reveal new paradigm for fiber growth in neurodegenerative diseases

Some proteins that are linked to neurodegenerative diseases can form both liquid droplets and amyloid fibers. But how are these two states connected, and where do the fibers grow? Leiden physicists Liru Feng and Louise Jawerth have discovered a counter-intuitive mechanism.

26 Oct 2026 9:10 pm
An American startup wants to sell sunlight after dark. Who gets a say?

A U.S. startup has booked two Indian rocket launches to test a planned service no company has sold before: sunlight at night.

26 Oct 2026 9:10 pm
Mapping the hidden global labor powering AI

Most people know by now that artificial intelligence powers much of the online world, sifting through social media posts, planning driving routes or helping to choose a movie to watch. But what goes largely unseen is the human labor

26 Oct 2026 9:00 pm
Sediment core reveals volcanic eruption preceded ancient cold spell by about 150 years

A new study led by an international research team including scientists at the University of South Carolina challenges the idea that the ancient Laacher See volcanic eruption in western Europe triggered a significant climate-cooling period affecting central Europe and the Arctic nearly 13,000 years ago.

26 Oct 2026 8:50 pm
Protein fibers, a hallmark of Alzheimer

Unexpectedly, a kind of protein that is usually linked with diseases in the brain may play a vital role in semen, helping shepherd genetic material into sperm cells, scientists at Columbia

26 Oct 2026 8:30 pm
Plants may switch between reproductive strategies more easily than thought

When it comes to reproduction, plants have options. Some can fertilize themselves, while others rely on pollen from genetically different plants. Many populations even contain a mixture of both strategies. But scientists have long debated whether this mixed approach is truly stable or simply a temporary stage on the way from one reproductive strategy to another.

26 Oct 2026 8:30 pm
Brain stimulation temporarily changes perception of sexualized images of women

Applying mild electrical stimulation to the brain temporarily removed a perceptual bias linked to the sexual objectification of women, in the first study of its kind. The study is published in the journal Social Neuroscience.

26 Oct 2026 8:10 pm
RNA archiving method reveals what a cell did days ago

Information on what a cell did a few hours or days ago is generally unavailable to researchers, who can only measure the cell

26 Oct 2026 8:10 pm
Diamond defects confirm 80-year-old theory of crystal stress

For the first time, researchers in Japan have directly mapped several components of the stress field surrounding an atomic-scale flaw in the crystal structure of diamond. Led by Tokuyuki Teraji at Japan

26 Oct 2026 8:00 pm
Tiny shifts in iron content tip a potential memory material between competing magnetic states

A team of Yale researchers has figured out what gives a magnetic material its mysterious properties, a discovery that could help boost computing memory and the field of

26 Oct 2026 7:58 pm
Thermal priming enhances heat tolerance and yield in tomatoes after recurrent heat stress

High temperatures can significantly impair the growth and yield of crops, including tomatoes. A new study by an international research team led by Dr. Justyna Olas, of the Leibniz Institute for Horticultural Sciences (IGZ), has shown that tomatoes can respond better to subsequent heat stress following moderate heat exposure. The work is published in The Plant Journal.

26 Oct 2026 7:50 pm