Phys.org news

For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the remarkable coordinated movements of flocking birds, swarming insects and schooling fish. Researchers have studied these natural phenomena to understand the rules of interactions ...

Bats are anomalies in the mammalian world—they fly, have long lifespans and rarely get cancer. Scientists now suspect the bat immune system enables them to live longer without disease, according to a new study published today ...

Capuchin monkeys hunt prey when fruits and vegetables become scarce, potentially mirroring the habits of human ancestors, according to a study published in PLOS One by Susana Carvalho (Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique), ...

When a cell gets ready to divide, it shuts down its gene-reading machinery almost entirely. For decades, the mechanism behind that shutdown was only partially understood. A new study co-led by Alarcón and Lilian Kabeche, ...

Artificial intelligence is often discussed with a simple safeguard in mind: Keep a human in the loop. But what happens when AI is already shaping the information, options and recommendations that inform a decision?

As climate change drives more frequent and intense heat waves, plants face growing challenges to survive and remain productive. Researchers at VIB, Ghent University, KU Leuven and their international collaborators have uncovered ...

Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have shown that making extremely small changes to the structure of a material can dramatically improve its ability to respond to electrical signals. Published recently in Science ...

Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants, and approximately 10% of flowering plants are functionally specialized for buzz pollination. Buzz pollination is a mechanism in which pollen can be extracted from ...

A research team led by Professor Sung Beom Cho of the School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), in collaboration with the teams of Professors Jin Sung Park and Hyunsouk Cho of ...

A new study by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers shows that nearly 23% of short-finned pilot whales that stranded over 13 years in the main Hawaiian Islands ingested several pounds of plastic ropes, netting, fishing ...

Scientists have directly observed a fleeting chemical reaction that creates a key ingredient in urban smog. The research offers insight into the earliest stages of pollution formation and could help improve air quality forecasting ...

When you look at someone, you usually look at their face. It serves as one of the most important sources of social information in primates, so the evolution of face perception has attracted considerable scientific attention. ...