Phys.org news

A good adhesive is unequivocally sticky. A great adhesive is sticky until you don't want it to be sticky anymore—a label on cardboard until it's time to recycle it. Medical tape on a cut until the wound heals. A GWAR poster ...

Copper roofs lose their reddish color over time because a pale green layer of copper oxide forms on their surface, protecting the roof from further corrosion for many years. But what exactly happens during the first steps ...

We often think of microbes as organisms that live around us, like the Salmonella bacteria and flu viruses that cause illness. But some of our most intimate relationships are with the microbes living inside us.

As proteins are made in a cell, they are folded into the 3D structure that allows them to work, but sometimes this process can go wrong. When it does, the misfolded proteins lose some or all of their function and usually ...

Imagine a construction site where the bricks are individual molecules and the "cranes" are microscopic needles so sharp they can feel a single atom. For decades, building at this scale was a laborious, time-consuming task ...

Astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of exocomets—comets in other solar systems—orbiting a young star similar to our sun. The observations point to a possible mechanism for how water might be transported ...

Is a kiss just a kiss? Or is it a sign of love, affection, a biological urge, a contract or even an assault? Law, history, evolution and anthropology show that it can be all those things.

High above Earth, thin veils of metallic haze drift through the edge of space. Known as sporadic E layers, these high-altitude "clouds" form from the vaporized dust of burned-up meteors, earning their name from the unpredictable ...

The United Nations considers well-developed and safe roads an important part of infrastructure in its Sustainable Development Goals. Until now, however, there has been no benchmark for the condition and state of road networks ...

The plot of "Finding Nemo," a film that features an overprotective single father fish taking on dangers at sea to care for his son, may be more reflective of actual fish dad behavior than was previously known. A new study ...

Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years, pushing climate risks and impacts to increasingly dangerous heights. But it is still possible to bring temperatures down and achieve the global ...

One of the major challenges in the quest to beat cancer is developing treatments that can selectively destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. With this in mind, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology ...