Phys.org news

Imagine ordering a truffle dish in a fancy restaurant, and you might picture pricey gourmet mushrooms from France or Italy. But recent decades have seen an upstart on the truffle scene. Today, one of the world's largest producers ...

Enzymes called proteases act like molecular scissors for proteins in the body and play a role in therapies to stop viruses from replicating and to kill cancer cells. The development of these medicines, however, has been slowed ...

Georges Cuvier, the 19th-century French anatomist who first recognized pterodactyls as flying reptiles, wrote that "of all the beings whose ancient existence has been revealed to us, [they are] the most extraordinary."

The possibility of life on other planets is one of the biggest mysteries in science. But what would happen if we actually found it? Our scientists are preparing for this possibility by helping to develop a new system that ...

A team of international researchers, including an Aston University researcher, has cracked the code on how "breather" laser pulses work, creating a single mathematical model that explains two completely different laser behaviors ...

This shimmering region of star-formation, a close-up of the Trifid Nebula about 5,000 light-years from Earth, was captured in intricate detail by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The colors in Hubble's visible light image, ...

Heat is a ubiquitous form of energy that, unlike others, is notoriously difficult to store due to its natural tendency to dissipate. While this property is essential for phenomena like solar energy reaching Earth, it also ...

USC researchers are developing a computational model that combines satellite data and physics-based simulations to forecast a wildfire's path, intensity, and growth rate. If you've ever been evacuated from your home during ...

University of California San Diego researchers have developed a new tool for understanding and modifying any microbiome, including the human microbiome. The approach, called Microbial Interaction and Niche Determination (MIND), ...

Canadian researchers studying 450-million-year-old fossils near Quebec City have identified a new species of basal-medusozoan: Paleocanna tentaculum, a soft-bodied, tube-shaped polyp with a ring of tentacles. Closely related ...

Scientific models have predicted that climate change will drive oceans in the Northern Hemisphere to warm faster than oceans in the Southern Hemisphere. However, observational data over the last 70 years show the opposite—that ...

Imaging is a critical technique in biology—from identifying cancerous cells in biopsies to observing how immune cells like macrophages hunt down and destroy pathogens. Traditionally, distinguishing and labeling individual ...