Phys.org news

If you were a bee, how would you choose a flower to land on? You might go to the most beautiful one, as pollination biologists have long suggested that flowers with striking colors attract pollinators more easily. Or perhaps, ...

Governments' attempts to achieve climate goals are falling short, in large part because wealthy economies are continuing to pursue economic growth. As these economies ramp up production and consumption, they make climate ...

Urban parks are a vital component of urban ecosystems and provide distinctive habitats for soil microorganisms. Yet scientists have questioned whether—and how—the functional diversity and evolutionary potential of microbial ...

Every animal carries a microscopic community of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes that play a critical role in health. These gut microbes help regulate the immune system, support digestion, and even influence how animals ...

There is a near-infinite number of material candidates out there—and simply not enough time to hunker down in the lab and test them all. Thankfully, researchers have a variety of tools (such as AI) at their disposal to ...

A new Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA) study has found that while regenerative agriculture practices can improve soil health and reduce emissions on sheep farms, farmers often face trade-offs between environmental ...

To survive in areas where it is difficult to photosynthesize, some organisms adopt unique strategies. Osaka Metropolitan University researchers have found that a freshwater alga captures far-red light as an additional energy ...

One of the most widely accepted models for how cells remember their identity may be incorrect. This is shown in a new study by two research groups at Umeå University. In Science Advances, they present results that overturn ...

Ice cores taken from glaciers reveal the air pollution of the past, using atmospheric particles incorporated in snow that fell on the glacier and became ice. Now, scientists have extracted a record of thousands of years' ...

Researchers at the Center for Computational Sciences, University of Tsukuba, have developed an accessible platform to overcome the limitations of conventional static docking simulations, offering new avenues for education, ...

Climate change is lengthening our days because rising sea levels slow Earth's rotation. Researchers from the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich now show that the current increase in day length—1.33 milliseconds per century—is ...

When we think of powerful magnets used in particle accelerators or for NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), we often envision bulky machines, sometimes the size of buildings. But in an extraordinary breakthrough for physics, ...