Phys.org news

Whether in the human body or on surfaces, bacteria protect themselves from outside attackers using biofilms. Physicist Eleonora Secchi is researching how these slime-like protective films are formed, with the aim of making ...

Men assess potential rivals that have a larger penis as more of a threat, both physically and sexually, according to a study by Upama Aich at the University of Western Australia and colleagues, published in PLOS Biology.

In inertial confinement fusion, a capsule of fuel begins at temperatures near zero and pressures close to vacuum. When lasers compress that fuel to trigger fusion, the material heats up to millions of degrees and reaches ...

During pregnancy, maternal and fetal cells migrate back and forth across the placenta, with fetal cells entering the mother's bloodstream and tissues. They can settle in maternal organs such as the thyroid, liver, lungs, ...

Inserting, removing or swapping individual atoms from the core of a molecule is a long-standing challenge in chemistry. This process, called skeletal editing, can dramatically speed up drug discovery or be applied for upcycling ...

Despite being one of the most cooperative species on the planet, humans routinely fail to manage shared resources sustainably. We overfish from the oceans, burn fossil fuels, and over-prescribe antibiotics; behaviors that ...

Important everyday products—from plastics to detergents—are made through chemical reactions that mostly use precious metals such as platinum as catalysts. Scientists have been searching for more sustainable, low-cost ...

An international research team led by scientists at Waseda University and Tohoku University has discovered an extraordinary quasar in the early universe that hosts one of the fastest-growing supermassive black holes known ...

People have long said that "bread is life." Now, researchers at Tufts University are using the bubbling mixtures of flour and water known as sourdough starters to explore what shapes life at the microscopic level. Their findings, ...

Physicists have used a new optical centrifuge to control the rotation of molecules suspended in liquid helium nano-droplets, bringing them a step closer to demystifying the behavior of exotic, frictionless superfluids.

New University of Hawaiʻi research confirms that "Sharktober" is real, revealing a statistically significant spike in shark bite incidents in Hawaiian waters every October. The study, which analyzed 30 years of data (1995–2024), ...

Researchers have reported new experimental results addressing the origin of rare proton-rich isotopes heavier than iron, called p-nuclei. Led by Artemis Tsantiri, then-graduate student at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams ...