Phys.org news

A fascination with fish gills has led researchers at Cornell to develop a bio-inspired approach to mixing heat and molecules in fluids—findings that could inform future biomedical devices, heat exchangers and soft robotics.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in driving up global temperatures. But it doesn't linger in the atmosphere for long thanks to molecules called hydroxyl radicals, which are known ...

Almost all living things have an internal 24-hour clock that remains accurate regardless of temperature or other environmental changes. This clock is a highly sophisticated yet simple timekeeping mechanism that is critically ...

Following the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, lateral flow assays (LFAs)—the category of test strips in which the presence or lack of a pink line indicates whether a specific molecule, like a drug or a virus, has been ...

Every plant cell is the product of a biological merger billions of years ago. Chloroplasts are key structures in plants and algae that capture sunlight, but originally they were free-living bacteria that took up residence ...

Penn Engineers have redesigned a key component of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the delivery vehicles behind mRNA vaccines, to steer the particles toward lymph nodes while reducing off-target delivery to the liver. The advance ...

For the last few decades, researchers have been studying what the universe looked like in its first seconds. It is generally accepted that the universe expanded exponentially in the first fraction of a second after the Big ...

The performance of quantum computers could cap out after around 1,000 qubits, according to a new analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Through new calculations, Tim Palmer at the University ...

A new study, led by the University of Nottingham and conducted by a team of 72 economists and psychologists across the world, has identified a potential "private solution trap" in problems requiring international cooperation ...

Quantum computers, computing systems that process information using quantum mechanical effects, could outperform classical computers on some computational tasks. These computers rely on qubits, the basic units of quantum ...

Detergents may begin their journey by cleaning our clothes, but they end up contaminating the environment, flowing into rivers, ponds, and oceans, where they severely disrupt aquatic animal life. Even after wastewater treatment, ...

Rice is a vital crop that feeds more than half of the world's population. In the wild, many rice species are perennials that live for several years, but the varieties we eat today are typically annuals that must be replanted ...