Phys.org news

Natural muscle fibers are made up of spring-like proteins that can contract and stretch without losing their original form, dissipate mechanical energy as heat and maintain incredible tensile strength for all sorts of physical ...

New observations of Ganymede reveal a striking similarity between the auroras on the largest moon in the solar system and those on Earth. The international team of astrophysicists, led by researchers from the University of ...

Plant owners with a so-called green thumb often seem to have a more finely tuned sense of what their plants need than the rest of us. A new "smart lighting" system for indoor vertical farms grants this ability on a facility-wide ...

At Rice University, a research lab's signature keepsake has helped perfect a method for growing patterned diamond surfaces that could help decrease operating temperatures in electronics by 23 degrees Celsius. The paper is ...

Around 250 million years ago, what is today scorching desert in remote northwestern Australia was the shore of a shallow bay bordering a vast prehistoric ocean. Fossils recovered from this region over 60 years ago, and almost ...

The deep, murky pigment known as Prussian blue put the "blue" in traditional blueprints, colored Hokusai's "Great Wave off Kanagawa" and today is used for industrial purposes, from laundry to battery components to poison ...

What makes one bat take risks and venture far from its roost in search of food, while another stays close to familiar, safer areas? A new study from Tel Aviv University's School of Zoology reveals that the environment in ...

Drugs made of mRNA have the potential to transform medicine—if only they could get into cells in one piece. Now, University of Connecticut researchers have shown that packaging mRNA like a virus could smuggle it into cells ...

Imagine trying to design a key for a lock that is constantly changing its shape. That is the exact challenge we face in modern drug discovery when dealing with intrinsically disordered proteins.

For many animals, siblings are a key component of their social environment during early life. Previous research has shown that the early social environment is important, but it has not yet been clear whether the number of ...

CU Boulder researchers have built high-performing optical microresonators, opening the door for new sensor technologies. At its simplest form, a microresonator is a tiny device that can trap light and build up its intensity. ...

When the federal government brings its toughest environmental enforcement actions against polluters, they tend to be in communities of greater wealth, not the most polluted places. That's the takeaway from a new paper co-authored ...