Phys.org news

In a dry shrubland, a gecko sprints toward shelter. Its greatest danger is not a predator, although hawks circle overhead and sand cats wait in ambush. Rather, its most pressing concern is dehydration. Its skin is paper-thin; ...

Large language models (LLMs) are making writing styles more similar without changing the overall meaning, according to an analysis of more than 880,000 texts across different writing types published in Nature Human Behaviour. ...

Some of the world's brightest colors don't just reflect light; they create it. Scientists and museum conservators are now uncovering why these luminous pigments fade and how to preserve them for future generations. The findings ...

To what extent can AI improve our financial decisions or steer us in the wrong direction? Researchers at the University of Bayreuth investigated this question in a new study involving 3,700 participants and fictional investment ...

Tide levels can vary by almost a meter across a single bay, according to a new study that uses decades of satellite images to measure tides at the scale of individual beaches.

Plastic might be the last ingredient you would ever add to a cookie recipe. But a team of researchers is looking to change that. They've programmed yeasts to turn plastic and agricultural waste into edible proteins and flavoring ...

At the center of our solar system, the sun influences every planet that orbits it. In two recent studies, scientists uncovered how ancient events in the sun's history may have helped create Earth's unique climate and driven ...

Plants might seem helpless when it comes to insect attacks, but they are known to employ various techniques to deter pests. One of these techniques involves sending out signals to recruit parasitoid wasps, and a new study, ...

For decades, physicists have used a technique called Mössbauer spectroscopy to peer inside solid materials, revealing fine details of their surroundings by studying how their atomic nuclei absorb and re-emit gamma rays.

Astronomers have found a four-star system doing something that has never been confirmed before. The system, TIC 433545934, has two close pairs of stars orbiting each other. While each pair eclipses its own two stars, as usual, ...

Up until two years ago, using large language models was still considered a special skill that everyone was encouraged to learn. Now, it is ubiquitous, especially in writing research papers that eventually become part of the ...

Researchers with the long-running Harvard–Cornell Archaeological Exploration of Sardis have unearthed a larger-than-life statue estimated to be nearly 2,500 years old.