Phys.org news

Japanese red elder plants safeguard their own survival when they drop fruits infested by Heterhelus beetle larvae, as well as the survival of these larvae. A Kobe University study changes the narrative on how a plant and ...

From brightly colored textile dyes to persistent pesticides and antibiotics, many modern pollutants dissolved in water—such as Bisphenol A—resist traditional treatment methods. A promising approach uses electricity to ...

Biology textbooks explain that cells follow a universal rule when processing gene transcripts to make proteins. Non-coding snippets of RNA are bracketed by a guanine-thymine (GT) nucleotide sequence on one end and an adenine-guanine ...

Genes that play a key role in the formation of an infectious organ used by parasitic plants have been identified by plant scientists at RIKEN. This discovery fills a gap in our understanding of how parasitic plants infect ...

Catalysts are essential to modern industry, accelerating reactions used to produce everything from fertilizers and fuels to medicines and hydrogen energy. But until now, scientists could not directly observe how reactions ...

Crystals have repeatedly been found at archaeological sites alongside Homo remains. Evidence shows that hominins have been collecting these stones for as long as 780,000 years. Yet, we know that our ancestors did not use ...

Walking on two legs has long been considered a milestone in human evolution and one of our most defining characteristics. Until now, researchers assumed that the first humans originated in Africa and that bipedalism developed ...

Astronomers have reported observations of a rare star system consisting of one star orbiting a system of three more tightly bound stars. This quadruple star system is described in a new study, published in Nature Communications, ...

Using the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher for the Northern Hemisphere (HARPS-N), an international team of astronomers has discovered a hot sub-Neptune exoplanet ...

Scientists have discovered that, far from being solitary insects, some cockroaches appear to form an exclusive bond with a partner. And how do they get this relationship off the ground? By eating each other's wings.

A team at ETH Zurich developed a new peptide-based organocatalyst that handles macrocycle formation from start to finish. Macrocyclic compounds are ubiquitous both in nature and in the chemical industrial setup. They are ...

For the first time, researchers in France and Israel have observed how an emulsified liquid droplet can transform from a hexagon into a six-pointed star shape in response to rising temperature. Publishing their results in ...