Phys.org news

The ocean's aphotic zone—the dark, high-pressure region below the surface, where sunlight cannot reach—is home to a vast wealth of microbial life. Yet scientists know relatively little about the genetic makeup, growth and ...

Archaeologists have analyzed insect remains preserved in the 7th to 9th centuries AD funerary cave of Cruz de la Esquina, Gran Canaria, and found that it was used by the island's Indigenous people for food storage before ...

Sexual reproduction usually reshuffles genetic information, creating offspring that differ from their parents. But one small plant takes an unexpected route. In a new study published in Nature, an international team led by ...

Bipedalism, or walking on two legs, is one of the key features that distinguishes humans from other apes. But when and why our ancestors transitioned from a life often spent in trees to a life spent almost exclusively on ...

Seasonal changes redistribute enough water around Earth to shift the planet's center of mass back and forth by fractions of an inch relative to its geometric center. NASA scientists are on the case, tracking the oscillations ...

The development of cooking was a major milestone in the evolution of human civilization because it made food easier to digest and more energy-efficient. Heating food can also kill harmful pathogens and make certain foods ...

Much of organic chemistry, including the type used to create and alter medicinal drugs, relies on modifying carbon bonds. Rice University's Julian West has been developing a less expensive, faster and more environmentally ...

Chimpanzee and bonobo mothers sometimes continue to carry their infants after they have died, a behavior known as infant corpse carrying (ICC). It is widely documented, and many explanations have been proposed, but few have ...

A square peg doesn't fit a round hole. But what if the peg could change the shape of the hole? A newly developed drug molecule can do something surprisingly similar when binding to its target protein, according to a University ...

Eastern oyster larvae are only 100–300 micrometers long, but their dense calcium carbonate shells make them substantially heavier than the surrounding seawater. A new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ...

Astronomers have confirmed a world less than a million years old as the youngest known planet, using data from archives. Called Elias 2-24 b, the baby planet is still whirling in its natal disk of dust and gas.

In recent years, numerous attempts have been made to use artificial intelligence to decipher the communication of bats, whales, birds and other animals. However, a new study led by a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University ...