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. Is the universe as stable as we think it is? That's one of the big questions that particle physicists worldwide are preparing to answer with the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC—the world's most powerful particle accelerator—when its upgrade is completed in about four years. In the meantime, researchers, including a cohort at the University of Michigan, are working to sharpen their analytical tools and techniques to make the most of the LHC's current and future data. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-boosts-sensitivity-higgs-signatures.html General Physics Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:10:01 EDT news706463461 While humans are inherently social beings, they can interact and connect with others in very different ways. For instance, while some people tend to be more altruistic, others are less prone to helping their friends, acquaintances or even complete strangers, particularly when it comes at a personal cost. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-early-hardship-oxytocin-altruism.html Social Sciences Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:01 EDT news705663792 Humans trust dogs to help find missing people, and bees to pollinate their crops. But scientists still don't fully understand how these animals use their extraordinary sense of smell to locate the source of an odor. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-decoding-reveals-odor.html Ecology Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:20:05 EDT news705657481 Fluorescent dyes have long been used in biological research to identify and visualize structures within living cells. Although effective, they have several drawbacks, including altering the cells under study, limiting the number of structures that can be examined at once and reducing measurement accuracy. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ai-ramanomics-major-obstacle-cells.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 06 Aug 2026 15:40:01 EDT news705240841 Ants make up one of the most diverse groups of animals on the planet, with many species boasting remarkable physical abilities and social behaviors, and an overall species richness that far exceeds that of mammals. Various types of ants can carry up to one hundred times their weight or forage hundreds of meters from their nest, the equivalent of a human carrying thousands of kilograms and walking hundreds of kilometers. These feats have inspired researchers to study not only the anatomy that makes them possible but also how ants use these capabilities to forage and explore. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-random-physics-individual-ant-motion.html Plants & Animals Thu, 06 Aug 2026 14:00:07 EDT news705155701 Typhoons pose significant threats, with sudden, dangerous waves that endanger ships, offshore platforms and coastal infrastructure in the northwest Pacific Ocean. Current typhoon forecasting methods sometimes underestimate the largest waves during typhoons, but researchers in China have designed a new model that may offer improvements. Their new study, published in Ocean Engineering, describes how the model combines physics guidance with data-driven learning to improve typhoon forecasting. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-coupled-ai-physics-typhoon-height.html Earth Sciences Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:40:08 EDT news705148156 Songbirds, birds belonging to the Passeriformes order, are best known for their ability to produce complex musical sounds. Yet some songbird species also have another remarkable skill: They can easily remove the tough layer covering seeds (i.e., the husk) before swallowing their nutritious interiors. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-songbirds-sharper-de-husk-seeds.html Plants & Animals Thu, 06 Aug 2026 08:00:04 EDT news705148144 Ants live in highly organized colonies and cooperate daily to tackle a wide range of problems. Their striking group behaviors have fascinated biologists for centuries and even inspired the development of various artificial intelligence (AI) systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-ant-teams-gravity-based-puzzle.html Plants & Animals Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:20:10 EDT news704987373 How does the brain learn? Does it acquire new knowledge by creating new neural pathways or by strengthening existing connections? A new study from Bar-Ilan University offers evidence in favor of the latter, suggesting that learning is driven primarily by changes in the strength of existing neural connections rather than by expanding the brain's underlying architecture. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-stronger-neural-networks.html General Physics Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:20:02 EDT news704633900 Seoul National University (SNU) College of Engineering announced that a research team led by Professor Jeong Woo Han of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has developed a new nanostructured catalyst with up to 14.4 times the greenhouse gas decomposition performance of conventional commercial catalysts. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nanomace-catalyst-boosts-greenhouse-gas.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:40:04 EDT news704458089 Complex simulations—the most intricate of their kind to date—carried out by an international research team led by scientists at Heidelberg University's Institute for Physical Chemistry, have revealed how water governs the way protons move through it. Using their modeling, researchers from Cambridge (U.K.), Bochum, Dijon (France) and Heidelberg were able to trace, in full quantum detail, the movements of a proton shared among six water molecules. At its core, the work addresses how a proton moves through water: not as a single particle drifting along, but by "hopping" from one molecule to the next. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-local-asymmetry-proton-molecules-simulations.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:40:04 EDT news704385621 Quasars, distant cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, are among the most luminous objects in the universe. While not uncommon, their brightness can make it difficult to accurately measure the galaxies they reside in. This means scientists must use gravitational lensing to assist in analyzing these bright objects, a method that relies on studying how an object's strong gravity bends light around its host galaxy. Yet despite their own powerful gravity, quasars that can act as lenses are rare. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quasar-lenses-emerge-ai-scan.html Astronomy Mon, 27 Jul 2026 15:20:07 EDT news704377501 Neural networks have transformed how machines find patterns in data, from recognizing faces in photos to predicting the shapes of proteins. So far, all of this progress has been made on ordinary classical computers, but with quantum computers now edging into practical use, there is a real possibility that neural networks could tap into distinctly quantum effects and operate in ways that classical machines never could. So far, however, neural networks have proven far more difficult to run on quantum hardware. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-neural-networks-hardware.html Quantum Physics Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:50:01 EDT news704365485 Why can zebrafish regenerate damaged gut nerves while humans largely cannot? Michigan State University researchers have developed a new research tool that allows them to remove gut neurons in zebrafish and watch them regenerate in real time, helping scientists investigate one of regenerative biology's biggest questions. The work is published in the journal Stem Cell Reports. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-zebrafish-rebuild-brain-networks-days.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:30:01 EDT news704038503 In recent years, research using artificial intelligence to predict material properties has advanced rapidly. Neural network quantum Monte Carlo methods have attracted attention as highly accurate simulation techniques. However, their extremely high computational cost has limited their application to small molecular systems. This study introduces a new computational method that overcomes this limitation. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-neural-networks-larger-quantum-simulations.html Quantum Physics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:40:07 EDT news703946701 Some researchers are leaning into biology for inspiration in computing. In particular, neuromorphic computing offers a brain-inspired approach to hardware that replaces traditional binary processing with systems that function more like neurons and synapses. Now, a new study, published in Nature Communications, describes an innovative design for a fluidic memristor that uses its own self-heating mechanism to induce a history-dependent memory effect. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-brain-nanopore-device-current-memory.html Nanophysics Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:40:03 EDT news703417766 Researchers have demonstrated a novel AI model that can predict which DNA molecules bind with other DNA molecules. A more thorough understanding of these hypercomplex binding relationships has utility in applications ranging from biomedical diagnostic tools to DNA computing. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-scientists-dna-sequences.html Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:50:02 EDT news703250253 Clarkson University researchers have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can uncover the mathematical equations governing complex and chaotic systems directly from data. The technology, called KANDy—short for Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks for Dynamics—is designed to help scientists understand systems that are difficult to describe using traditional methods because they are noisy, nonlinear or highly unpredictable. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-tool-equations-complex.html Mathematics Tue, 07 Jul 2026 12:00:05 EDT news702638959 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 unique outer cell membrane is notoriously hard to penetrate, making few drugs, including antibiotics, effective in treating the disease. However, a research team led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a pair of techniques that can vastly speed the search for better tuberculosis drugs. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-world-deadliest-infection-pac-ai.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 06 Jul 2026 16:20:04 EDT news702571476 Past psychology studies have consistently highlighted the importance of social bonds for survival, showing that enduring relationships are linked with a longer life expectancy, a more resilient immune system, better cardiovascular health and a lower risk of psychiatric conditions. In addition, they showed that being raised by two parents plays an important role in development, as it is often associated with better emotional regulation, cognitive performance and social competence in adulthood. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-early-parenting-brain-socio-sexual.html Plants & Animals Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:00:02 EDT news702543651 Water is the most abundant liquid on Earth's surface, and it is highly anomalous compared with other liquids because it expands upon freezing. The anomalies in water have been linked to how its microscopic structure changes with temperature and pressure. However, there is no systematic scheme for characterizing these structural changes. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-ai-systematic-framework-molecular-liquid.html Analytical Chemistry Mon, 06 Jul 2026 05:00:07 EDT news702287022 The transmission of optical information through random scattering media is a major challenge in optics, biomedical imaging, telecommunications and remote sensing. When light passes through a turbid or diffusive medium, such as biological tissue or a randomly structured optical material, the original image information can be severely distorted, making reliable recovery difficult. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-diffractive-networks-enable-optical-random.html Optics & Photonics Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:20:01 EDT news702222722 Accurate RNA splicing is essential for gene expression and human health, yet predicting how DNA sequence variations affect splicing remains a major challenge. Although recent artificial intelligence (AI) models have improved splice-site prediction, many struggle to capture regulatory signals located thousands of DNA bases away from the sites they influence. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-ai-deciphers-range-dna-rna.html Biotechnology Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:20:08 EDT news702037742 Sialic acid is a natural sugar building block found on the surfaces of our cells. It acts as a protective and recognition molecule and plays a central role in the development of the nervous system. Following the modular principle, individual components can be swapped for new building blocks, thereby altering the properties of the sugar. Researchers at Hannover Medical School (MHH) have investigated how these building blocks reach their target. These fundamental findings are also significant because certain influenza and coronavirus strains specifically use modified sialic acids as receptors to enter host cells. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-sugar-block-viral.html Biochemistry Tue, 30 Jun 2026 14:20:05 EDT news702036482 Over 70 million people in the U.S. are impacted by hearing loss, and age-related hearing loss is the second most common health problem in older adults, according to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. However, scientists still do not fully understand how the cochlea—a delicate, spiral-shaped cavity in the inner ear lined with thousands of specialized sensory cells—performs the signal processing needed to separate meaningful sounds from background noise. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-cochlea-network-reveals-ear-noise.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 29 Jun 2026 19:10:01 EDT news701969401 Howdy, pards, here's a quick roundup of the week's science news: Moose, previously thought to be a transplanted species, are actually native to Colorado. A digital twin of a two-year-old child's brain revealed neural signatures linked to autism. And a new gel treatment for severed spinal cords restored mobility in lab animals. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-saturday-citations-earthquakes-event-horizons.html Other Sat, 27 Jun 2026 09:10:01 EDT news701696929 McGill University researchers have developed a light-detecting nanoscale structure that mimics how a neuron processes information. The neuron-like behavior emerges from the materials themselves, reducing the energy demand associated with similar devices that rely on circuits or software. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-inorganic-nanoscale-device-neuron-doors.html Bio & Medicine Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:00:07 EDT news701617881 A study published in Nature Physics provides new molecular-level evidence from simulations that liquid water is not a single uniform substance, but a constantly shifting mixture of two distinct microscopic structures. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-molecular-evidence-liquid.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:20:03 EDT news701609342 Living cells constantly exchange ions (i.e., charged particles) via the thin barrier that surrounds their interior, known as the outer membrane. Neuroscientists and medical researchers have long been trying to devise effective methods to measure this exchange of ions, which is known to be associated with communication between neurons and various other crucial physiological processes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-artificial-dna-tiles-drugs-neurons.html Bio & Medicine Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:00:01 EDT news701516330 Researchers have demonstrated a new way to make spatially separated lasers synchronize and act as a single coherent light source—without extreme conditions or complex materials. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-room-temperature-device-synchronizes-distant.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:10:01 EDT news701363941