Phys.org news

As materials become thinner—now reaching the thickness of single atoms—it has become increasingly difficult to create sufficiently large sheets and transfer them without cracking them into tiny flakes. Recent work by a broad ...

You might not often think about the molars of livestock, but everything from the grass they eat to the water they drink can tell a story about how people lived centuries ago. An international collaboration led by University ...

Scientists have discovered a previously unknown law of geometry that explains why some growing surfaces, whether in nature or in engineered materials, suddenly stop being able to stay smooth and instead form dimples and folds. ...

Over the past few decades, scientists have become increasingly interested in developing materials that do not simply withstand mechanical forces but instead respond to them in useful, detectable ways. For example, it is now ...

For decades, scientists have largely relied on painstaking trial and error to coax proteins into crystalline forms. Crystallization enables scientists to determine the molecular structures of proteins, which can provide a ...

From planning transportation networks to organizing massive datasets, many of society's most important challenges boil down to an optimization problem: finding the best solution among an enormous number of possibilities. ...

Forest trees growing in air containing higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) radically change the way they "cycle" nitrogen, a key plant nutrient, with implications for forests as a nature-based climate solution.

Scientists have discovered a new way to determine how big an earthquake may become just seconds after it begins. In a new study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Cal ...

The chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides (ONs) is central to modern molecular biology, diagnostics and nucleic acid therapeutics. While demand for high-quality ONs is increasing, the conventional synthetic method has long-standing ...

A new study on how rising temperatures will affect rice production in Science Advances compares 214 observations from field-warming experiments with seven crop models, revealing modeled estimates for yield reductions from ...

It is a mystery that has puzzled scientists for years. How can the world's only winged mammals carry viruses that cause severe disease while rarely becoming seriously ill themselves?

Plants need nitrogen fertilizers, which are usually ammonia-based. Ammonia is therefore one of the most important chemical products. However, its production is currently extremely energy-intensive. An international team from ...