Phys.org news
Phys.org / From flower to fruit: A tug-of-war between growing tissues
Unlike an animal cell, a plant cell can't crawl or migrate. It's locked inside a rigid wall, cemented to its neighbors for life. A cell born at the center of a young fruit will still be there when that fruit ripens.
Phys.org / Himalayan glacial lakes are growing—and so is the downstream flood risk
Dozens of glacial lakes have formed across northern India in the last three decades, while existing lakes have expanded rapidly, highlighting the need to monitor a landscape reshaped by climate change.
Phys.org / Tightly guided atoms could enable low-power quantum navigation when GPS fails
Within tiny halos of light clinging to a vanishingly thin wisp of optical fiber, scientist Jongmin Lee guides atoms like marbles through a narrow pipe. Rock the fiber and the atoms shift side by side; they just don't fall ...
Phys.org / Kids' brains are built for distraction. Sometimes that's a good thing.
Parents often learn the hard way that to make it anywhere on time, they should calculate how much time they think they need to get ready—and double it.
Phys.org / 'CRISPR-Combo' system speeds regeneration of hard-to-breed perennial crops
Editing a plant's genes is only half the battle. Before a new, improved trait can ever reach a farmer's field, scientists must be able to grow a whole plant from just a few edited cells—a process that can be slow, unreliable ...
Phys.org / First PLP-dependent enzyme that influences bacterial protein production discovered
Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology's (SMART) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research group, alongside collaborators from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nanyang ...
Phys.org / How atmospheric events at the top of the world could have triggered two devastating California floods
In early 2017 and 2023, California experienced two catastrophic and record-breaking floods that caused billions of dollars in damage, triggered mudslides and forced thousands of people to evacuate. Why this happened left ...
Phys.org / A cellular threshold can determine whether herpesvirus becomes active or lies dormant
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we wore masks and kept 2 meters (6.6 feet) apart in an effort to reduce the spread of the tiny droplets we release into the air with every breath, conversation or cough. The main goal was to ...
Phys.org / Gondwana really was a supercontinent—and it may have helped kickstart life on Earth
Some 550 million years ago, Earth looked very different than it does today. The Southern Hemisphere was dominated by an enormous single continent known as Gondwana.
Phys.org / Ultrathin silicon structures can tune mid-IR light in billionths of a second
Light in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum plays a key role in modern sensing. Because molecules interact with this kind of light in specific ways, researchers use technologies like mid-IR ...
Phys.org / Spinons may help electrons pair along stripes in some superconductors
Superconductors are materials that carry electricity with zero resistance below specific temperatures. Many of these materials become superconducting at very low temperatures, yet some enter superconducting phases at higher ...
Phys.org / A galaxy with almost no stars? New Cloud-9 observations strengthen the case
Astronomers have taken one of the deepest looks yet at Cloud-9, a candidate "dark galaxy," and found no trace of stars. The paper outlining this discovery was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Aug. 21.
