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News
Extinction gets synchronized Jul 7
Populations of a single species of animal will become extinct at the same time if a common external factor, or "forcing", is applied, according to a new statistical analysis by physicists in India. Such a forcing could be anything from an ice age, global warming or a volcanic eruption to meteorites hitting the Earth, predators and even large-scale hunting by humans. The model, if correct, implies that isolating an endangered species will not necessarily mean it survives – a strategy often proposed by conservationists and wildlife groups (Phys. Rev. Lett. 96 258102).
Are you reading the news? Jul 7
If you think you're reading the news, be warned that this story -- and any other on the web -- will be barely read by anyone 36 hours after it was first posted. That's the message from a team of statistical physicists who have analysed how people access information online. Albert-László Barabási of the University of Notre Dame in the US and colleagues in Hungary have calculated that the number of people who read news stories on the web decays with time in a power law, and not exponentially as commonly thought. Most news becomes old hat within a day and a half of being posted -- a finding that could help website designers or people trying to understand how information gets transferred in biological cells and social networks (Phys. Rev. E 73 066132).
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