Phys.org news
Phys.org / Experiments with 1,600 volunteers link social exclusion to higher interest in gossip
Ages ago, when societies were organized around small villages, a person's security and sense of belonging depended partly on how close they were to the village chiefs and elders. If the village was attacked, those closest ...
Phys.org / Cracking the rules of gene regulation with experimental elegance and AI
Gene regulation is far more predictable than previously believed, scientists conclude after developing the deep learning model PARM. This might bring an end to a scientific mystery: how genes know when to switch on or off.
Phys.org / Hadean zircons reveal crust recycling and continent formation more than 4 billion years ago
Parts of ancient Earth may have formed continents and recycled crust through subduction far earlier than previously thought. New research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has uncovered chemical signatures ...
Phys.org / A minimalist bacterial defense strategy: Scientists discover single protein that disrupts viral assembly
University of Toronto researchers have expanded our understanding of bacterial immunity with the discovery of a new protein that can both sense and counteract viral infections. In the study, published in Nature, researchers ...
Phys.org / Reuniting forcibly separated families: How a machine-learning model can help
Around the world, millions of families have suffered forcible separation, through war, trafficking, natural disasters, or socioeconomic crises. In China, family separation is a particularly large-scale and far-reaching problem. ...
Phys.org / Nanobodies: A cure for treatment-resistant depression depression?
A new study led by the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine's Kirill Martemyanov, Ph.D., and international collaborators highlights a new approach to treating depression that bypasses many limitations of traditional ...
Phys.org / TESS observations reveal sustained quasi-periodic oscillations in multiple blazars
Quasi-periodic oscillations (QPOs) are a rare phenomenon in active galactic nuclei. They have been observed to occur at periods ranging from minutes to hours, days, weeks, and even years across the electromagnetic spectrum. ...
Phys.org / Stacking the genetic deck: How some plant hybrids beat the odds by erasing lethal genes
In the plant world, when two different species mate, their offspring often don't survive. The reason lies in their DNA: incompatible genes often mix in their offspring, triggering a fatal breakdown known as hybrid lethality ...
Phys.org / How cities primed spotted lanternflies to thrive in the US
Spotted lanternflies are adapting to the pressures of city life such as heat, pollution, and pesticides, according to genomic analyses of the invasive insects in the US and their native China. The findings, published in the ...
Phys.org / Did we just see a black hole explode? Physicists think so—and it could explain (almost) everything
In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such ...
Phys.org / Physicists achieve near-zero friction on macroscopic scales
For the first time, physicists in China have virtually eliminated the friction felt between two surfaces at scales visible to the naked eye. In demonstrating "structural superlubricity," the team, led by Quanshui Zheng at ...
Phys.org / Ultra-thin metasurface can generate and direct quantum entanglement
Quantum technologies, devices and systems that process, store, detect, or transfer information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, have the potential to outperform classical technologies in a variety of tasks. An ongoing ...