Phys.org news
Phys.org / Flying gurnard grunts and flares fins to communicate, camera study confirms
Researchers have just published a study demonstrating that the flying gurnard (Dactylopterus volitans) emits sounds while simultaneously performing movements to communicate—a discovery that enriches our knowledge about ...
Phys.org / King's Trough: How a shifting plate boundary and hot mantle material shaped an Atlantic mega-canyon
The King's Trough Complex is a several-hundred-kilometer-long, canyon-like system of trenches on the North Atlantic seafloor. Its formation was long thought to be the result of simple stretching of the oceanic crust. An international ...
Phys.org / Crosstalk inside cells helps pathogens evade drugs, study finds
Biologists have uncovered a new mode of communication inside cells that helps bacterial pathogens learn how to evade drugs. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, describe how these mechanisms drive ...
Phys.org / How plants respond to changing environments for better reproductive success
Once a seed germinates, it is committed to one location. Plants are sessile—stuck where they started out—forced to cope with whatever conditions arrive next. The only way out of trouble is to rebuild themselves in place.
Phys.org / Photocatalysis enables direct coupling of native sugars and N-heteroarenes
Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a "capping-and-coupling" strategy to transform naturally occurring (native) sugars directly into compounds known as C-heteroaryl glycosides. This ...
Phys.org / Collective intelligence: How to incentivize problem solving in groups
When a crowd gets something right, like guessing how many beans are in a jar, forecasting an election, or solving a difficult scientific problem, it's tempting to credit the sharpest individual in the room. But new research ...
Phys.org / Self-powered composite material detects its own cracks
A new multifunctional composite made of carbon fiber-reinforced polymers (CFRP) and piezoelectric materials can use vibrations to self-detect tiny cracks. This material could be used in the aerospace, automotive, and construction ...
Phys.org / One single protein, one big decision: How brown algae know when to reproduce
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biology have discovered a remarkably streamlined strategy for developmental control in brown algae. They have shown that a single ARGONAUTE (AGO) protein orchestrates the transition ...
Phys.org / Refractive-index microscope measures a sample's optical properties with pinpoint accuracy
By combining two fundamentally different microscopy techniques, researchers can now measure the optical properties of a sample with pinpoint accuracy. The original goal was to investigate biological samples on a molecular ...
Phys.org / Biodegradable bark–plastic composite lets engineers predict product lifetime from tensile tests
Old trees are learning new tricks with the advent of composite materials. A "green composite" made from biodegradable polymers and the waste bark of the Yakushima Jisugi tree was developed by a research team at Tohoku University. ...
Phys.org / Superfluids are supposed to flow indefinitely. Physicists just watched one stop moving
Ordinary matter, when cooled, transitions from a gas into a liquid. Cool it further still, and it freezes into a solid. Quantum matter, however, can behave very differently. In the early 20th century, researchers discovered ...
Phys.org / The infant universe's 'primordial soup' was actually soupy, study finds
In its first moments, the infant universe was a trillion-degree-hot soup of quarks and gluons. These elementary particles zinged around at light speed, creating a "quark-gluon plasma" that lasted for only a few millionths ...
