Phys.org news

Metal-insulator transitions (MITs), in which a material changes from a metallic state with low resistivity to an insulating state because of a change in an external parameter, such as temperature, pressure or an electric ...

Atlantic herring travel in massive schools that can contain hundreds of millions—and sometimes even billions—of fish. While this abundance is characteristic of one of the most successful vertebrates on Earth, it also creates ...

You may check your phone before deciding what to wear tomorrow. Plants do something similar: they carry an internal gadget called a "Season-Meter" that tracks temperatures over the preceding weeks or months to help determine ...

Sweet, salty, crunchy or creamy—no matter how it's munched, the Virginia peanut has been a cash crop for the commonwealth for much of the past two centuries. But a fungal disease called Sclerotinia blight has decimated peanut ...

Resources such as sea level rise viewers, heat maps and flood prediction services are crucial tools in a changing climate. NASA Earth Observations (NASA EO) datasets provide important information on these and other natural ...

Aerosols have a profound influence on air quality, human health, clouds and climate, but new particle formation in the atmosphere has remained a scientific conundrum. Large fractions of airborne fine particulate matter consist ...

Fermented cocoa occasionally exhibits off-flavors that can compromise the quality of chocolate and other cocoa products. But what causes these undesirable flavors? Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology ...

Whakaari/White Island's sudden eruption in December 2019, which killed 22 people and severely injured 25 others, was New Zealand's deadliest volcanic disaster in recent history.

A new way to imprint complex surfaces on low-cost, sustainable polymers could be used in a wide range of industries, including water-repellent coatings, optical devices and data storage disks. The complex nano- and microscale ...

New research is dismantling the longstanding myth of the "pristine" Amazon. A reconstruction of 10,000 years of Amazonian pyrogeography, based on 1,361 radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates across 303 sites—including soil charcoal and ...

Growth or immune response? Higher organisms must constantly balance these two priorities. As in humans, hormones regulate this balance in plants. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have discovered a mechanism ...

Researchers at the University of Idaho have identified a new species of spider in the mountains of northern Idaho and given it a name that pays tribute to the university itself: Hexura vandal. The spider belongs to a small ...