Phys.org news

Researchers have discovered how certain photosynthetic bacteria use a sophisticated quantum mechanism to increase their efficiency when capturing sunlight. The study, published today in the journal Nature Chemistry and led ...

When many of us think about how drugs work in the body, we may first think about how a drug gets into the body, such as a pill versus an injection. In the Gellman Group at the UW–Madison Department of Chemistry, researchers ...

In 1938 and 1944, two major hurricanes struck Long Island, and after the initial winds subsided, the surges came back unexpectedly hours later, leading observers to wonder whether this was a tsunami. In a study appearing ...

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) can help scientists determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins in unprecedented detail. Jacques Dubochet, former group leader at EMBL, shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry ...

When a physics student asked baristas at the Warsaw Coffee Conference what their biggest question for scientists was, the baristas said they wanted to know how to stop channeling during brewing.

Ice formation can damage biological samples, tissues and materials during freezing and thawing. In nature, specialized molecules known as ice-binding proteins prevent ice crystals from growing too large, helping organisms ...

Some insects and microbes develop symbiotic partnerships that become so interdependent they can no longer survive without each other. But how specific are these heritable symbioses? Is it possible for the same species of ...

Dark matter is often portrayed as a cosmic loner, interacting with itself and the rest of the universe only through gravity. But what if dark matter particles also exert a hidden force on one another?

A study of funded AI startups provides a glimpse of which jobs may be most affected by AI. As AI tools are embraced by industry after industry, the impacts of these tools on jobs remain unclear. Previous analyses have focused ...

Researchers from the Biosciences Department at Durham University have discovered a previously unknown mechanism that helps plants control the formation of wood, a finding that could open new directions for research into plant ...

Bumblebees are only an inch long, but they help power the global food system. Roughly one-third of the food we grow depends on pollinators like bees—and those bees are regularly decimated by pesticides.

A lot of things need to go right on a molecular level for immune cells to launch an adaptive response to an infection. B cells can produce different classes of antibodies tailored for specific infections through controlled ...