Phys.org news

Is a kiss just a kiss? Or is it a sign of love, affection, a biological urge, a contract or even an assault? Law, history, evolution and anthropology show that it can be all those things.

Copper roofs lose their reddish color over time because a pale green layer of copper oxide forms on their surface, protecting the roof from further corrosion for many years. But what exactly happens during the first steps ...

We often think of microbes as organisms that live around us, like the Salmonella bacteria and flu viruses that cause illness. But some of our most intimate relationships are with the microbes living inside us.

In the ocean, plastic waste collects to form large garbage patches that endanger marine life. This is partly because the synthetic plastic polymers used today can only be broken down biologically—that is, by microorganisms—at ...

One of the major challenges in the quest to beat cancer is developing treatments that can selectively destroy cancer cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed. With this in mind, researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology ...

The United Nations considers well-developed and safe roads an important part of infrastructure in its Sustainable Development Goals. Until now, however, there has been no benchmark for the condition and state of road networks ...

Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C, likely within the next few years, pushing climate risks and impacts to increasingly dangerous heights. But it is still possible to bring temperatures down and achieve the global ...

For decades, scientists have understood that each of the roughly 20,000 genes in the human body carries instructions for a single kind of protein. Now, researchers at Harvard Medical School have discovered that instructions ...

A new study led by Francesca Storici, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and faculty member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, has uncovered an unexpected feature of human DNA ...

Imagine a construction site where the bricks are individual molecules and the "cranes" are microscopic needles so sharp they can feel a single atom. For decades, building at this scale was a laborious, time-consuming task ...

Common global narratives about political polarization are skewed because of an overreliance on literature about the U.S., leaving governments unprepared to tackle the problem at home. In new research led by King's College ...

High above Earth, thin veils of metallic haze drift through the edge of space. Known as sporadic E layers, these high-altitude "clouds" form from the vaporized dust of burned-up meteors, earning their name from the unpredictable ...