Phys.org news

Phys.org / Newfound third cell type enables fully functional hair follicles in the lab

Hair regrowth treatment may soon take a major leap forward, as researchers in a recent study have successfully grown complete, fully functional hair follicles outside of the living body, in a dish. This was made possible ...

4 hours ago in Biology
Phys.org / How invasive house sparrows are helping scientists detect dangerous contaminants

The house sparrow is a highly invasive pest in North Carolina, and bluebird enthusiasts frequently throw their eggs out and remove their nests to keep them from overtaking the nestboxes that bluebirds call home. A new study ...

2 hours ago in Biology
Phys.org / Self-propelling microbes switch up swimming strategy to optimize light intake

Researchers in Hong Kong and the UK have revealed how one species of self-propelling microbes can actively change the path of their swimming motions, depending on how much light they receive. Reporting in Physical Review ...

4 hours ago in Biology
Phys.org / Wildfire smoke silences grassland birds in New York state

On a hazy day in June 2023, doctoral students Trifosa Simamora and Timothy Boycott noticed that the birds at their field site had gone quiet. Now in a study published in Biological Conservation, they show that the culprit ...

3 hours ago in Biology
Phys.org / 'Old Mother Goose' challenges a 14-million-year lineage story in New Zealand

The discovery of a rare fossil goose in an ancient Central Otago lake shows the evolutionary history of Aotearoa New Zealand birds is much more dynamic than once thought, a University of Otago–Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka researcher ...

5 hours ago in Biology
Phys.org / El Nino may return in 2026 and make planet even hotter

The warming El Niño weather phenomenon could form later this year, potentially pushing global temperatures to record heights.

12 hours ago in Earth
Phys.org / MeerKAT discovers record-breaking cosmic laser halfway across the universe

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have discovered the most distant hydroxyl megamaser ever detected. It is located in a violently merging galaxy more than 8 billion light-years away, opening a ...

5 hours ago in Astronomy & Space
Phys.org / Past climate change: First indicators show resilience in tropical life—up to 1.5°C

New geological data indicate that marine life is somewhat resilient to warming in the tropics. Chris Fokkema, Earth scientist at Utrecht University, discovered that tropical algae were largely unaffected by a number of periods ...

22 hours ago in Earth
Phys.org / Simulations show a path to 'ideal glass' with crystal-like entropy

The types of glass that we encounter in everyday life, such as window glass or smartphone screens, are disordered solids. This means that they consist of particles locked in place, like those in solids, but arranged randomly, ...

Mar 1, 2026 in Physics
Phys.org / AI cracks Roman-era board game

A smooth, white stone dating from the Roman era and unearthed in the Netherlands has long baffled researchers.

Mar 1, 2026 in Other Sciences
Phys.org / Leopards adapted to South Africa's Cape so successfully that they're genetically unique

Animals of the same species don't always look the same. From birds with different beak shapes to mammals that vary in size or color, populations living in different places can often look very different.

Mar 1, 2026 in Biology
Phys.org / High-performance cell atlas workflow driven by manifold fitting

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed CellScope, a high-performance single-cell analysis framework that uses manifold fitting to analyze single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. This ...

Mar 1, 2026 in Biology