Phys.org news

Existing algorithms can partially reconstruct the shape of a single tree from a clean point-cloud dataset acquired by laser-scanning technologies. Doing the same with forest data has proven far more difficult. But now a team ...

Imagine computer hardware that is blazing fast and stores more data in less space. That's the promise of antiferromagnets, magnetic materials that do not interfere with each other and can switch states at high speed, opening ...

Nearly three decades ago, scientists found that a pair of molecules in rye pollen exhibited an unusual ability to slow tumor growth in animal models of cancer. But progress stalled for one seemingly simple reason: No one ...

Here's a novel pathway to a more sustainable planet: carbo-loading for the public good. In a new study published in Nature Synthesis, chemists at Yale and the University of California-Berkeley have developed a two-step process ...

A research group has achieved a new plasma confinement regime using small 3D magnetic perturbations that simultaneously suppress edge instabilities and enhance core plasma confinement in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting ...

In the Kenyan savanna, lions and livestock essentially live in shifts: Cattle graze during the day and are enclosed at night when lions are active.

Starchy residue preserved in ancient stone tools may rewrite the story of crop domestication in the American Southwest, according to research led by the University of Utah.

A nanostructure made of silver and an atomically thin semiconductor layer can be turned into an ultrafast switching mirror device that may function as an optical transistor—with a switching speed around 10,000 times faster ...

In a new study, an international group of researchers has found that chiral phonons can create orbital current without needing magnetic elements—in part because chiral phonons have their own magnetic moments. Additionally, ...

A new type of catalyst that uses five times less platinum than usual could help make hydrogen production more affordable in the future.

Human activity continues to expand ever further into wild areas, throwing ecology out of balance. But what begins as an environmental issue often evolves into a human problem.

Through sand extraction and the disposal of dredged harbor silt, about 200 million tons of sediment are relocated every year in the coastal waters of the North Sea. The Wadden Sea is particularly strongly affected. This is ...