Phys.org news

For humans, death is surrounded by culture, emotion, ritual and language. But the question can be framed in a much more basic way: What would an animal have to understand in order to recognize that someone has died?

Female chickadees living in monogamous mating systems will proactively seek out males that have better cognitive skills than their nest mate, according to new findings.

A study carried out by scientists from Ifremer, IRD, the universities of Western Brittany (UBO) and Bordeaux, CNRS, and the University of Tartu (Estonia) reveals the impact of nickel mining on the coastal ecosystems of New ...

Our food and our bodies are full of tiny protein fragments called peptides. These small chains of amino acids act as biological messengers, influencing processes ranging from sensory perception to physiological functions.

A new study demonstrates that honeybees can evaluate the reliability of their own communication, actively adjusting the vigor of their "waggle dance" based on the truthfulness of the information they provide. By manipulating ...

An interdisciplinary team of Rice University researchers has uncovered previously unknown relationships between bacteriophages—viruses that infect bacteria—and their bacterial hosts, offering a powerful new tool for next-generation ...

A research team from Tohoku University and Kyocera Corp. has developed a new magneto-optical material—a nanocomposite magnetic garnet film—that can be deposited directly onto silicon substrates while delivering a magneto-optical ...

Snowfall deep inside East Antarctica has increased in recent decades, and distant ocean temperature changes may be partly responsible. Using long-term climate data and observations from Dome Fuji station, researchers found ...

Using an innovative combination of biochemical experiments and ultra-high-resolution microscopy, a research team at Kiel University has solved the long-standing mystery of how the bacterium B. subtilis regulates its cell ...

A research team has developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that proposes suitable molecular structures from the raw data of spectroscopic measurements and assesses their plausibility. The system is openly accessible ...

Certain substances can become magnetic when exposed to an external magnetic field. Magnetic susceptibility measures how easily a material can be magnetized. Materials known as organic radicals have been noted to possess anomalously ...

An international team of astronomers led by Camille Poitras, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Laval University, has produced the most detailed X-ray view ever obtained of the jet launched by the ...