Phys.org news

Phys.org / Pigment found in beets linked to plants' adaptation to harsh environments

The pigments that give beets their red color may have helped a major group of flowering plants repeatedly adapt to dry environments, setting the stage for the evolution of traits that allowed plants to adapt to some of the ...

19 hours ago
Phys.org / Rising species numbers on Europe's mountaintops may mask increasing losses of high-elevation plant specialists

Decades of warming have relaxed cold-temperature constraints on mountain plant distribution and increased species numbers on mountaintops. An international research team led by scientists from the University of Vienna, together ...

19 hours ago
Phys.org / Heat has a memory—and a new theoretical framework can track it

Heat, it turns out, has a memory. A cooling cup of coffee may not seem particularly thoughtful. At the scale of a kitchen, heat appears to follow a straightforward rule: it moves from warmer places to cooler ones. Leave the ...

23 hours ago
Phys.org / How stressed cells put the brakes on protein 'shipping'

Cells synthesize proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), and these proteins are transported to the Golgi apparatus for distribution to their ultimate destinations inside and outside the cell. The structures that transport ...

21 hours ago
Phys.org / Metabolic networks provide clues about the earliest stages of enzyme evolution

The enzymes found in modern organisms are complex proteins, often with multiple folded substructures and specialized catalytic sites. Proteins are encoded by genes. Tracing the history of enzymes across all living organisms ...

19 hours ago
Phys.org / Surf's up: How the seafloor shapes breaking waves

A new study led by surfing scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego revealed the physical relationships underlying a pattern familiar to generations of surfers.

20 hours ago
Phys.org / Microbial 'dark matter' yields 173 potential carbon dioxide-fixing strains

There are millions of species of bacteria and archaea on Earth, remarkably little is known about most of them. Now, researchers have mined the genomes of thousands of microorganisms preserved at the RIKEN BioResource Research ...

21 hours ago
Phys.org / First switchable graphene nanoribbon that twists on demand

Researchers at Nagoya University have built a graphene nanoribbon that can switch the direction of its twist using a natural solvent. Graphene nanoribbons are thin, ribbon-shaped structures made of fused carbon rings. Twisted ...

20 hours ago
Phys.org / Ancient DNA suggests western farming reached Gansu without mass migration

A multidisciplinary study has answered key questions about how agricultural practices diffused into ancient Gansu from Eurasia, as well as described population movements and burial practices in the Gansu region thousands ...

22 hours ago
Phys.org / Scientists solve years-long mystery of 'beating' signal in a quantum material

A team of Korean researchers has become the first in the world to identify the origin of the "beating" signal that has long been a major obstacle to interpreting quantum signals in topological insulator (TI) nanowires. Their ...

21 hours ago
Phys.org / Dual-purpose qubit design could speed operations while cutting quantum errors

Researchers from MIT have designed a new qubit architecture that enables qubits to interact with each other much more quickly while remaining very stable. This advance could someday help scientists build practical quantum ...

22 hours ago
Phys.org / Bacterial nanoplatform reprograms spleen immune cells to help prevent cancer recurrence

A research team led by Professor Yong Taik Lim at the SKKU Advanced Institute of Nanotechnology (SAINT), Sungkyunkwan University, have developed an engineered nanoplatform named t-SMC (trained immunity-mediated splenic myelopoiesis ...

21 hours ago