Phys.org news

Phys.org / Protected areas that help wildlife often do little for the soil fungi on which plants depend

Governments around the world conserve plants and animals in part by setting aside land. Whether as wilderness reserves or as resource management zones that allow industrial activities such as logging, 17.4% of the planet's ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / New chip offers way to make use of quantum system 'imperfections'

Quantum technologies promise powerful new kinds of computers, giving scientists new tools to mimic and explore nature at its tiniest scales. At those levels, everything in nature—from atoms and electrons to light itself—follows ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / Field-ready tool identifies rare and zoonotic parasitic worms missed by standard tests

Parasitic nematodes (commonly known as roundworms) are a large, diverse and poorly studied group of disease-causing organisms that severely impact the health of humans and animals. They infect almost one-quarter of the global ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / Migrating charges unlock hard-to-reach C-H bond edits in organic molecules

A team at the University of Vienna, led by chemist Nuno Maulide, has developed a new method for controlling chemical reactions in a more targeted and efficient manner. At the heart of this is the concept of "cation sampling": ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / This German dialect leaves AI baffled, exposing a digital language blind spot

How well do language models understand Meenzerisch, the dialect spoken in the German city of Mainz? A research team led by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has now investigated this question for the first time. Meenzerisch ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / New form of NAND flash data storage for deep space missions can survive 1 million rads

As space missions travel farther from Earth, spacecraft must increasingly be able to process and store their own data. Soon, artificial intelligence (AI) could be the primary tool for handling this growing volume of information.

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / Quantum-centric supercomputing simulates 12,635-atom protein

The scale of chemistry simulations with quantum computing has increased dramatically in just the last few months. In the latest milestone for the field, researchers from Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN, and IBM used a quantum-centric ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / TriPcides target MRSA, suppress infection and kill dormant bacteria to open a new front against antibiotic resistance

In a new study, researchers show how so‑called TriPcides can target the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus, including antibiotic‑resistant strains such as MRSA. The compounds disrupt the bacteria's ability to cause infection ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / New shell helps gold nanoparticles keep shape under laser heat longer

Gold nanoparticles, which are about one-thousandth the width of a human hair, can convert light they receive from a laser into heat. This capacity, known in medicine as photothermal therapy, is effective at destroying cancer ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / Silver vine or catnip? When cats can choose, silver vine wins

What plant do cats love most? In Europe and North America, many people would probably answer "catnip." In Japan, the answer would more likely be silver vine (matatabi in Japanese). Both plants are famous for triggering the ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / Overlooked 'history force' may skew particle motion by up to 60% in shaken fluids

Physicists at the University of Bayreuth have investigated the so-called Basset–Boussinesq history force acting on particles in fluids. Due to the difficulty of calculating it, this force is often neglected—a fact that Bayreuth ...

May 19, 2026
Phys.org / Imperfect polymer sequences still control protein function, revealing new design rules

What happens when a scientific problem seems too complex to solve precisely, yet understanding it could reshape how researchers design new materials and medicines? For decades, much of the polymer science community has relied ...

May 19, 2026