Phys.org news

In a dry shrubland, a gecko sprints toward shelter. Its greatest danger is not a predator, although hawks circle overhead and sand cats wait in ambush. Rather, its most pressing concern is dehydration. Its skin is paper-thin; ...

Scientists have recently reconstructed the ancestral karyotype of the banana family, revealing how chromosome numbers decreased stepwise from 17 to 9–11 over evolutionary time.

When a young golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) finally leaves its parents' territory, it leaves behind the only safety net it has ever known. Until now, biologists had assumed that eagles took this step as soon as they could ...

Large language models (LLMs) are making writing styles more similar without changing the overall meaning, according to an analysis of more than 880,000 texts across different writing types published in Nature Human Behaviour. ...

The bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii poses a substantial threat in health care settings, readily forming biofilms on wounds and medical surfaces and contributing to persistent infections and delayed healing. Its growing ...

To what extent can AI improve our financial decisions or steer us in the wrong direction? Researchers at the University of Bayreuth investigated this question in a new study involving 3,700 participants and fictional investment ...

The search for materials that can power future quantum technologies is accelerating, but identifying the most promising candidates remains painfully slow. Evaluating whether a material can efficiently emit quantum light requires ...

Some of the world's brightest colors don't just reflect light; they create it. Scientists and museum conservators are now uncovering why these luminous pigments fade and how to preserve them for future generations. The findings ...

Tide levels can vary by almost a meter across a single bay, according to a new study that uses decades of satellite images to measure tides at the scale of individual beaches.

At the center of our solar system, the sun influences every planet that orbits it. In two recent studies, scientists uncovered how ancient events in the sun's history may have helped create Earth's unique climate and driven ...

For decades, physicists have used a technique called Mössbauer spectroscopy to peer inside solid materials, revealing fine details of their surroundings by studying how their atomic nuclei absorb and re-emit gamma rays.

Plastic might be the last ingredient you would ever add to a cookie recipe. But a team of researchers is looking to change that. They've programmed yeasts to turn plastic and agricultural waste into edible proteins and flavoring ...