Permeability is a physical property quantifying the ease with which a substance, typically a fluid or gas, passes through a continuous medium under a driving force such as a pressure, chemical potential, or concentration gradient. In porous media, permeability characterizes the hydraulic conductance of the pore network and enters Darcy’s law as the proportionality factor between volumetric flux and pressure gradient, with units of area. More generally, permeability can describe transport through membranes, polymers, or geological formations, and is influenced by microstructural parameters including pore size distribution, connectivity, tortuosity, and porosity, as well as fluid properties like viscosity and, in some cases, interaction with the solid matrix.
Tuberculosis, caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), is the world's deadliest single-agent infection, responsible for 1.23 million deaths in 2024, according to the World Health Organization. The bacterium's ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jul 6, 2026
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Soils that are exposed to prolonged drought often develop desiccation cracks, which impact soil properties and exacerbate moisture loss through evapotranspiration. Now, a study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 18, 2026
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Experiments by University of Leeds researchers, published in Earth's Future, have shown that thawing of permafrost makes it between 25 and 100 times more permeable, allowing more climate change forcing gases to escape.
Earth Sciences
Mar 30, 2026
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Soil is often perceived simply as "dirt," but in reality, it is a dynamic, living system that acts as Earth's natural sponge. Unfortunately, common agricultural practices—including deep plowing and the use of heavy machinery—can ...
Ecology
Mar 22, 2026
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443
When water and ions move together through channels only a nanometer wide, they behave in unusual ways. In these tight spaces, water molecules line up in single file. This forces ions to shed some of the water molecules that ...
Bio & Medicine
Feb 2, 2026
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21
Pore-forming proteins are found throughout nature. In humans, they play key roles in immune defense, while in bacteria they often act as toxins that punch holes in cell membranes. These biological pores allow ions and molecules ...
Bio & Medicine
Nov 11, 2025
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77
Aquaglyceroporin Aqp10, a protein channel for water and glycerol, selectively permeates urea and boric acid due to its unique structural features—report researchers from Japan. By comparing and modeling molecular pore structures ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Sep 29, 2025
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20
Looking at life today, it is difficult to imagine how complex biological processes and structures could have developed from simple building blocks. All cellular processes and reactions appear to be closely interdependent ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 26, 2025
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41
The COVID-19 pandemic increased public awareness of the importance of mask use for personal protection. However, when the mesh size of mask fabrics is small enough to capture viruses, which are usually around one hundred ...
Bio & Medicine
May 20, 2025
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282
A Vanderbilt-led research team has made a significant breakthrough in developing advanced dialysis membranes using atomically thin materials like graphene. These innovative membranes, called nanoporous atomically thin membranes ...
Bio & Medicine
Feb 14, 2025
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