Phys.org news

Phys.org / Red-tailed hawks maintain flight performance despite missing feathers

Red-tailed hawks can compensate for feather loss during molt by subtly changing their wing and tail movements, according to a new study by University of California, Davis, researchers in the College of Engineering and the ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Analyzing avalanches on asteroid Vesta offers new method for understanding regolith processes

A study conducted at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris uses images from NASA's Dawn mission and a Bayesian inversion of the Hapke photometric model to analyze avalanches and ejecta deposits on the asteroid Vesta. ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Urban growth may slow by 2100, leaving big cities smaller than expected

The world is urbanizing fast. In 1975, about 11% of the global population lived in cities with more than 1 million inhabitants. "Today, we estimate that share to be about 24%," says Andrea Musso, junior fellow at the Complexity ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / A goat's tooth may have solved a 100‑year debate about ancient Greek farming

The agricultural economy was the backbone of wealth in ancient Greece. Food brought people together, whether in smaller groups at a wine-drinking symposium or the entire community in a sacrificial feast of epic proportions. ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Table sugar could hold a cheaper, quicker key to making vital drugs

Pioneering research has developed a new way of creating carbohydrate-based medicines that could ultimately replace costly drugs for common health conditions, using two cheap basic ingredients—table sugar and vinegar.

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / New cellular model for rare and deadly melanomas enables study of immunotherapy resistance

A research team at the University of Turku in Finland has developed a reliable laboratory model to study BAP1-deficient melanomas, which are a rare type of melanoma that evade the immune system once they have metastasized ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / There may be 3 times more insect species than previously thought

A new estimate of insect species globally finds that there may be 8 million to 14 million more species than people thought, with few of them discovered.

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Cyclic sealing and drainage on the Gofar Oceanic Transform Fault revealed

Oceanic transform faults are strike-slip boundaries—faults that move horizontally rather than up and down and connect offset mid-ocean ridge segments. They have long been regarded as simple "conservative" plate boundaries ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Deep-sea extremophile yields protein that forms super stable biofilm

Scientists discovered a protein secreted by a deep-sea extremophile—an organism adapted to extreme environmental conditions—that self-assembles into a biofilm and is highly stable, boosting its potential for biomedical applications.

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / When mitochondria grow abnormally long, leaked RNA may activate anti-tumor immune responses

Researchers from the University of Osaka have demonstrated that mitochondrial hyperfusion, when induced by low levels of DRP1 or cellular stress, activates an immune response through the RIG-I–MAVS pathway. Dependent on the ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Childbirth is not uniquely difficult to humans

The tight fit of a baby's head through a mother's birth canal, which causes great difficulty in childbirth, is not unique to humans, as previously understood. Instead, some small-bodied primate babies have heads almost twice ...

Jun 29, 2026
Phys.org / Understudied enzyme helps S. aureus pathogen prosper, study finds

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has offered insight into how Staphylococcus aureus, a major human pathogen, fine-tunes its internal machinery to survive stress and potentially ...

Jun 29, 2026