Phys.org news

Phys.org / How evolution can make cells smaller without slowing down their growth

A new study led by Marco Fumasoni, principal investigator at Fundação GIMM, shows that evolution can substantially reduce cell size without significantly compromising cells' ability to grow. The work, carried out in yeast ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Hidden mitochondrial genes emerge as mealybugs encode two genes on one DNA stretch

What if a single sentence could carry two completely different meanings, one when read forward and another when read backward? In a new study, researchers at Arizona State University have discovered a biological version of ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Thawing permafrost may trigger overlooked carbon sink in rivers

A new study published in Nature shows that rock weathering increasingly counteracts river CO2 emissions as permafrost degrades. The study was carried out by a collaborative team of researchers from Umeå University in Sweden ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Oddball exoplanet challenges what it means to be a hot Jupiter

New research led by a scientist at IPAC—a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech—studying the hot Jupiter CoRoT-2 b has settled on one of the three leading hypotheses explaining why its ...

Jun 17, 2026
Dialog / 'Contaminated' cultures: Can conservation protect nature while excluding Indigenous peoples?

At an international heritage symposium in Japan, I heard a word that stayed with me: "contaminated." The discussion concerned whether Indigenous peoples needed to be named explicitly in a new World Heritage framework. One ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Tracing a neutrino ghost to a distant 'shadow blaster' galaxy

Neutrinos are one of the fundamental particles of the universe. They live a ghostly existence with no electric charge, very little mass and extremely few interactions with matter. They are also the most abundant particles ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Bees avoid too much of a good thing by balancing nutrients in pollen, study reveals

New Oxford University-led research reveals that bees can regulate their feeding to avoid overconsuming certain essential nutrients, and that honey bees make a specialist "baby food" that gives their larvae a better-balanced ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / LOFAR reveals spike-like repeating radio burst pairs in the solar corona

The solar atmosphere is a turbulent and magnetized environment, with the release of magnetic energy readily manifesting as emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Solar radio emission dominates the radio sky, with the ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Comb jelly embryos reveal embryonic signaling center shared across early animal evolution

In order for vertebrate embryos to develop their body axes, they require what is known as an embryonic signaling center. This group of cells provides the instructions that determine where up and down, left and right, and ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Superconducting TES array X-ray spectrometer goes into operation at BESSY II

Europe's first and only TES spectrometer at a synchrotron source is now in operation at BESSY II, developed within a collaboration between the HZB, the MPI-CEC (Mühlheim-an-der-Ruhr, Germany) and the NIST (Boulder, Colorado, ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / New heat-regulating fabric feels fluffy like cotton—but doesn't get wet

Once cotton gets wet, it pulls heat from your body. This is helpful when you're exercising or outside on a hot day, but dangerous in the bitter cold. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Energy Letters have created an ultralight ...

Jun 17, 2026
Phys.org / Fungi help lock carbon into Arctic fjord sediments

Arctic fjords are among the most efficient natural systems for absorbing and storing carbon long term. However, as the Arctic is warming about four times faster than the global average, fjord ecosystems are changing rapidly. ...

Jun 17, 2026