Phys.org news

Researchers have discovered how certain photosynthetic bacteria use a sophisticated quantum mechanism to increase their efficiency when capturing sunlight. The study, published today in the journal Nature Chemistry and led ...

In 1938 and 1944, two major hurricanes struck Long Island, and after the initial winds subsided, the surges came back unexpectedly hours later, leading observers to wonder whether this was a tsunami. In a study appearing ...

A new study conducted by scientists at the University of Sheffield in collaboration with researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center in the U.S. has found a protein that could help guide which cells chemotherapies target. ...

Ice formation can damage biological samples, tissues and materials during freezing and thawing. In nature, specialized molecules known as ice-binding proteins prevent ice crystals from growing too large, helping organisms ...

Bumblebees are only an inch long, but they help power the global food system. Roughly one-third of the food we grow depends on pollinators like bees—and those bees are regularly decimated by pesticides.

Coral reef ecosystems, widely seen as a climate change bellwether, are more complex than previously understood. A new international study by the universities of Bristol, Wuhan in China, and Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany reveals ...

Some insects and microbes develop symbiotic partnerships that become so interdependent they can no longer survive without each other. But how specific are these heritable symbioses? Is it possible for the same species of ...

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) can help scientists determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins in unprecedented detail. Jacques Dubochet, former group leader at EMBL, shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry ...

Researchers from the Biosciences Department at Durham University have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that helps plants control the formation of wood, a finding that could open new directions for research into plant ...

When colleagues and I found microplastics in hedgehog droppings, we wanted to know where they were coming from. One answer was surprisingly close to home: pet food.

When many of us think about how drugs work in the body, we may first think about how a drug gets into the body, such as a pill versus an injection. In the Gellman Group at the UW–Madison Department of Chemistry, researchers ...

Patterns reveal the individual: A novel AI algorithm equips researchers with a powerful new tool to accurately identify individual jaguars, zebras and giraffes in real time based on their unique coat patterns. Biologists ...