https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. You've gone through their photos, scanned their bio and pored over their personalized description. But just who are you swiping right on when you match with someone on an online dating platform? https://phys.org/news/2026-01-swipe-student-authenticity-online-dating.html Social Sciences Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:36:15 EST news687443762 The basics of photosynthesis are something that every student learns in school: carbon dioxide, water and light in; oxygen and sugar for growth out. In a world where atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising, it is plausible to think that trees and other plant life growth will rise in lockstep. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-pores-longstanding-mystery-uneven-tree.html Environment Mon, 22 Dec 2025 13:20:06 EST news685631722 In early 2025, some of Canada's largest banks—including those with the highest digital emissions and greatest responsibility—withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-major-canadian-banks-digital-emissions.html Economics & Business Mon, 27 Oct 2025 16:40:05 EDT news680794833 A fundamental link between two counterintuitive phenomena in spin glasses—reentrance and temperature chaos—has been mathematically proven for the first time. By extending the Edwards–Anderson model to include correlated disorder, researchers at Science Tokyo and Tohoku University provided the first rigorous proof that reentrance implies temperature chaos. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-mathematical-proof-puzzling-phenomena-glass.html Condensed Matter Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:14:04 EDT news680778841 University of Warwick research demonstrates how to engineer "cell factories" that last longer and produce more chemicals, without needing antibiotics or complex engineering methods, paving the way for sustainable biotech that lasts. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-method-boosts-protein-production-cells.html Biotechnology Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:14:04 EDT news678456841 The seemingly unpredictable, and thereby uncontrollable, dynamics of living organisms have perplexed and fascinated scientists for a long time. While these dynamics can be represented by reaction networks, which can model a variety of biological systems, taming and therefore controlling these dynamics can be challenging. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-secret-survival-strategy-life-revealed.html Mathematics Tue, 30 Sep 2025 09:17:03 EDT news678442621 One of the most fundamental processes in all of biology is the spontaneous organization of cells into clusters that divide and eventually turn into shapes—be they organs, wings or limbs. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-optimizing-cells-framework-genetic.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:36:23 EDT news674991377 Scientists often seek new materials derived from polymers. Rather than starting a polymer search from scratch, they save time and money by blending existing polymers to achieve desired properties. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-automated-platform-discovery-high-polymer.html Polymers Mon, 28 Jul 2025 11:00:13 EDT news672903707 Metal sulfides with seven to eight d electrons show optimal performance as catalysts for water electrolysis, as reported by researchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo. In a comprehensive analysis of various metal sulfides, they identified a volcano-shaped relationship between catalytic activity and the number of d electrons in metal atoms. This newly uncovered principle will form the basis of catalyst design guidelines, accelerating the development of efficient water-splitting catalysts for green hydrogen production. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-revealing-secrets-good-catalytic-metal.html Materials Science Wed, 23 Jul 2025 08:45:53 EDT news672479143 When trying to teach a complex subject, sometimes the best strategy is to wrap it in something familiar. Like a burrito. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-big-problems-burrito-truck.html Mathematics Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:17:03 EDT news669302221 A way to greatly enhance the efficiency of a method for correcting errors in quantum computers has been realized by theoretical physicists at RIKEN. This advance could help to develop larger, more reliable quantum computers based on light. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-boosting-quantum-error-ai.html Quantum Physics Fri, 09 May 2025 11:09:14 EDT news666007743 A quantum computer can solve optimization problems faster than classical supercomputers, a process known as "quantum advantage" and demonstrated by a USC researcher in a paper recently published in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-quantum-outperforms-supercomputers-approximate-optimization.html Quantum Physics Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:40:08 EDT news665246401 In a major step toward more reliable AI-assisted molecular design, researchers from National Taiwan University have demonstrated that incorporating uncertainty quantification (UQ) into graph neural network (GNN) models significantly improves both the efficiency and robustness of molecular optimization. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-ai-molecular-uncertainty-quantification.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 16 Apr 2025 10:25:07 EDT news664017896 Pollinating insects such as bumblebees often repeatedly visit the same type of flower, even when a variety of flowers bloom nearby. This behavior is known as "flower constancy." Darwin speculated that flower constancy was a passive response to avoid the effort involved in remembering the different flower characteristics. However, researchers at University of Tsukuba have revealed that this theory is incomplete, since it focuses too heavily on "memory constraints." https://phys.org/news/2025-04-bees-adjust-choice-based-distance.html Plants & Animals Tue, 01 Apr 2025 16:38:02 EDT news662744281 Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have developed a novel Ising machine that utilizes surface acoustic waves as an effective carrier of dense information flow. This approach enables fast, energy-efficient solutions to complex optimization problems, offering a promising alternative to conventional computing methods based on von-Neumann architecture. The findings are published in the journal Communications Physics. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-acoustic-ising-machine-tackles-hard.html Condensed Matter Mon, 17 Mar 2025 13:09:05 EDT news661435741 What do albatrosses searching for food, stock market fluctuations, and the dispersal patterns of seeds in the wind have in common? https://phys.org/news/2025-03-soccer-teams-person-insights-behavior.html Mathematics Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:21:04 EDT news660921662 Many physicists and engineers have recently been trying to demonstrate the potential of quantum computers for tackling some problems that are particularly demanding and are difficult to solve for classical computers. A task that has been found to be challenging for both quantum and classical computers is finding the ground state (i.e., lowest possible energy state) of systems with multiple interacting quantum particles, called quantum many-body systems. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-quantum-algorithm-excels-local-minima.html Quantum Physics Thu, 06 Mar 2025 06:30:01 EST news660395347 Researchers at Tohoku University and the University of California, Santa Barbara, have developed new computing hardware that utilizes a Gaussian probabilistic bit made from a stochastic spintronics device. This innovation is expected to provide an energy-efficient platform for power-hungry generative AI. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-spintronics-platform-energy-efficient-generative.html Condensed Matter Wed, 11 Dec 2024 14:27:16 EST news653149634 Even some fields that seem fully settled will occasionally have breakthrough ideas that have reverberated impacts on the rest of the fields of science and technology. Mechanics is one of those relatively settled fields—it is primarily understood at the macroscopic level, and relatively few new breakthroughs have occurred in it recently. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-reconfigurable-space-habitats.html Astronomy Mon, 02 Dec 2024 14:59:03 EST news652373941 The war in Ukraine has just edged up another notch. It has not been going well for Ukraine in recent months, and this week Joe Biden's administration made the decision to allow Ukraine to fire US-supplied army tactical missile systems (Atacms) long-range missiles deep into Russia for the first time. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-countries-nuclear-war-wont.html Social Sciences Mon, 25 Nov 2024 12:30:01 EST news651759216 Forest restoration can benefit humans, boost biodiversity and help tackle climate change simultaneously, new research suggests. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-forest-boost-people-nature-climate.html Ecology Mon, 12 Aug 2024 15:00:01 EDT news642671761 Computer-generated holography (CGH) provides an approach to digitally modulate a given wavefront. This technology, partly inherited from optical holography and partly advanced by the progress of computing technology, has become an emerging focus of academia and industry. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-optimization-inverse-problem-generated-holography.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 05 Aug 2024 11:45:09 EDT news642077090 When neuroscientists think about the strategy an animal might use to carry out a task—like finding food, hunting prey, or navigating a maze—they often propose a single model that lays out the best way for the animal to accomplish the job. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-dont-job.html Plants & Animals Mon, 24 Jun 2024 15:54:21 EDT news638463246 Data assimilation is a mathematical discipline that integrates observed data and numerical models to improve the interpretation and prediction of dynamical systems. It is a crucial component of Earth sciences, particularly in numerical weather prediction (NWP). https://phys.org/news/2024-06-quantum-assimilation-approach-weather.html General Physics Thu, 13 Jun 2024 12:10:16 EDT news637499410 Researchers at the University of Liverpool have built an AI-assistant to guide laboratory chemists to find new, cheaper ways to make organic molecules. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-ai-synthetic-chemists.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 11 Jun 2024 10:12:04 EDT news637319522 Global condemnation of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine has prompted the imposition of trade sanctions. Such measures are a form of economic coercion, commonly used for reasons of foreign policy. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-quantitative-aim-imposing-efficient-sanctions.html Economics & Business Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:57:03 EDT news637253821 The classic "secretary problem" involves interviewing job candidates in a random order. Candidates are interviewed one by one, and the interviewer ranks them. After each interview, the interviewer must either accept or reject the candidate. If they accept a candidate, the process stops; otherwise, the next candidate is interviewed and so on. https://phys.org/news/2024-06-decision-analysis-variant-classical-secretary.html Mathematics Tue, 04 Jun 2024 14:53:03 EDT news636731582 Just as sat-nav did away with the need to argue over the best route home, scientists from the University of Surrey have developed a new method to find the optimal routes for future space missions without the need to waste fuel. The paper is published in the journal Astrodynamics. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-tube-planets-moons-theory.html Space Exploration Wed, 17 Apr 2024 13:35:57 EDT news632579754 The traveling salesman problem is considered a prime example of a combinatorial optimization problem. Now a Berlin team led by theoretical physicist Prof. Dr. Jens Eisert of Freie Universität Berlin and HZB has shown that a certain class of such problems can actually be solved better and much faster with quantum computers than with conventional methods. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-quantum-combinatorial-optimization-problems-easily.html Quantum Physics Mon, 18 Mar 2024 14:49:03 EDT news629992141 Anoles are the scuba-diving champions of the lizard world, able to stay underwater for more than 16 minutes. For animals whose body temperature depends on the environment, time spent in a cool running stream can have some tradeoffs. https://phys.org/news/2024-02-explores-cooling-effects-scuba-lizards.html Plants & Animals Thu, 29 Feb 2024 16:29:03 EST news628446541