Phys.org news

From the rice paddies of South Asia to the wheat fields of northern China, summer monsoon rains sustain the livelihoods of billions. Yet these vital rains fluctuate dramatically from decade to decade—a variability that ...

Analysis of a volcanic ash tuff layer, only a few millimeters thick and discovered during excavations in 2024, revealed that the fossil-bearing Bromacker rocks are 294 million years old—four million years older than previously ...

Plants are constantly on guard. Their roots are equipped with molecular alarm systems that detect invading microbes and trigger immune responses. Yet beneficial soil fungi routinely enter living root cells and establish close ...

Swallowing is a fundamental human function that supports nutrition and communication. Damage to swallowing muscles can reduce quality of life and even lead to aspiration pneumonia or malnutrition. Many patients suffer from ...

Drug delivery researchers have vastly improved the potential of genetic therapies by overcoming the challenge of consistently getting genes and gene-editing tools where they need to be within cells. Findings of the study ...

Humans perceive emotional expressions displayed by non-human primates and spontaneously mimic these expressions, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by Ursula Hess from Humboldt University of ...

Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists say they have developed a simplified version of biodegradable nanoparticles that can "educate" the immune system to find and destroy disease-causing cells throughout the body. The study, ...

By 2050, up to half the world's urban population will face water scarcity. A new model of water supply, demand, and policies in a drought-prone city of 7 million in India shows how policies could prevent the poor from bearing ...

In April 2019, a marine heat wave struck a coral reef on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia, killing much of the coral and the beneficial algae that colonized it. This "bleaching" event reduced live coral populations ...

In a new analysis, racial and ethnic disparities in fatal shootings of U.S. residents by police varied widely between states. Roland Neil of the RAND Corporation in California, U.S., and colleagues present these findings ...

The news media is shaping reproductive narratives and stigma around childlessness, presenting it as a threat to national interests, a deviation from moral or cultural norms, as a risk and, sometimes, as a legitimate life ...

For the first time, scientists have used DNA preserved in ancient sediments to examine how a major natural disaster affected animal populations. A new study of a catastrophic volcanic eruption during the Ice Age has found ...