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. So-called "eco-friendly" bamboo and other bio-based dishes, often marketed as natural and safe alternatives to plastic, may release potentially harmful chemicals into food, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague (UCT Prague). https://phys.org/news/2025-11-bamboo-dishes-leach-pesticides-melamine.html Analytical Chemistry Tue, 11 Nov 2025 12:51:00 EST news682087856 In recent years, Chinese tissue paper made from bamboo has emerged as a trendy choice for eco-friendly shoppers. However, new research suggests these bamboo paper products may not offer significant climate benefits over tissue produced in the United States and, in some cases, may be more detrimental to the environment. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-bamboo-tissue-paper-eco-friendly.html Environment Fri, 31 Oct 2025 13:20:03 EDT news681135479 A new method to produce strong, biodegradable plastic from bamboo is reported in Nature Communications this week. The bioplastic resembles oil-based plastics in strength, shapability, and thermal stability but can biodegrade in soil within 50 days, presenting a new pathway toward sustainable plastic alternatives. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-bamboo-based-plastic-biodegrade-quickly.html Polymers Tue, 07 Oct 2025 14:15:02 EDT news679065301 Giant pandas have digestive systems that are typical for carnivores. Yet, bamboo is their main source of food. They have evolved several features; for example, pseudo thumbs to grasp bamboo and flat teeth that are well suited for crushing it, that make it possible for them to live off plants. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-dont-pandas-meat-molecules-bamboo.html Plants & Animals Fri, 28 Feb 2025 00:00:02 EST news659880901 Bamboo vinegar is a concentrated liquid obtained from bamboo under high temperature and anaerobic conditions. It contains more than 200 organic components, including organic acids, phenols, ketones, alcohols, and esters, among which acetic acid is the main component. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-exploring-bamboo-charcoal-properties-anti.html Biochemistry Fri, 23 Aug 2024 14:02:47 EDT news643640563 Professors Yiqiang Wu and Caichao Wan, along with their team from Central South University of Forestry and Technology (CSUFT), have pioneered a transparent material derived from natural bamboo. This material features a three-layered flame-retardant barrier, effectively reducing heat release, slowing flame spread, and restraining the emission of combustible volatiles, toxic smoke, and CO. Their findings have been documented in the journal Research. https://phys.org/news/2024-05-flame-retardant-suppressing-superhydrophobic-transparent.html Materials Science Mon, 13 May 2024 09:49:35 EDT news634812573 As a major driving force of evolution, polyploidy (genome duplication) is ubiquitous across different evolutionary stages of the flowering plant tree of life. However, the interactions between the ancestral genomes in a polyploid nucleus, often involving subgenome dominance, have been poorly understood. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-role-subgenomes-bamboo-evolution.html Evolution Tue, 19 Mar 2024 09:14:03 EDT news630058441 A bundengan wears many hats—and is one too. This portable shelter woven from bamboo has protected Indonesian duck herders from the sun and rain for centuries. Able to comfortably balance on the wearer's head, a bundengan is equipped with a visor that curves around the side to meet at a long back. A more surprising, but no less practical, feature is the collection of strings and bamboo bars added in to produce music. Duck herders fill the hours spent tending to ducks sitting underneath their outfitted shelter, playing their shield as an instrument. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-bundengan.html General Physics Tue, 05 Dec 2023 18:40:01 EST news620989339 RUDN University agronomists have shown that the hormone melatonin and the mineral zeolite mitigate the dangerous effects of heavy metals on plants. The first protects cells from destruction by cadmium, and the second increases nutrient availability and prevents the absorption of hazardous metals into the plant. The results were published in Scientia Horticulturae. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-agronomists-heavy-metals-hormone-therapy.html Biotechnology Tue, 17 Oct 2023 13:47:03 EDT news616769222 Flowering for some plants is a yearly occurrence; for others, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event. A widespread species of bamboo in Japan, Phyllostachys nigra var. henonis, takes this one-time flowering event and pushes it to the extreme: they flower once every 120 years before dying to make way for the next generation. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-rare-bamboo-event-years-ecological.html Ecology Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:18:11 EDT news612778688 Hacking at a bamboo plant with a machete, Avayi Vayayana peels back the shoot's stiff bark as he scans southern Taiwan's mountains, anxious for more of the money-making crop his Indigenous tribe increasingly struggles to find. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-taiwan-tribe-despairs-drought-bamboo.html Ecology Fri, 02 Jun 2023 04:50:01 EDT news604899601 Scientists from the Chinese MARA-CABI Joint Laboratory for Biosafety have created a model which can estimate adult emergence periods and identify migratory populations of the yellow-spined bamboo locust from their ovarian development. https://phys.org/news/2023-03-ovarian-yellow-spined-bamboo-locust-emergence.html Plants & Animals Tue, 14 Mar 2023 15:56:40 EDT news598028198 Bashania fargesii bamboo is an important dominant understory species influencing community structure and regeneration of overstory trees, and it serves as an important food source for giant panda in the Qinling Mountains. B. fargesii invades old fields via clonal rhizome growth. However, the pattern of bamboo invasion into old fields and the role of physiological integration during bamboo expansion and regeneration, especially under giant panda herbivory are unclear. https://phys.org/news/2022-12-clonal-enlightens-bamboo-forest-giant.html Ecology Fri, 02 Dec 2022 11:40:02 EST news589203601 In a study recently published in National Science Review, researchers used multiscale imaging techniques (including optical microscope, X-ray microscope (micro-CT), scanning electron microscope, and atomic force microscope, etc.) to scientifically characterize the fiber-based microstructure of the short bamboo node. Experiment results revealed that the bamboo node can be seen as one spatially heterostructured and hierarchical fiber-reinforced composite. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-elegant-hierarchical-fiber-bamboo-node.html Plants & Animals Thu, 17 Nov 2022 14:28:02 EST news587917681 A research group from Nagoya University in Japan has found that an event that occurs only once every 120 years—the large-scale flowering, seeding, and dying of dwarf bamboo (Sasa borealis)—provides ideal breeding conditions for Japanese field mice. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-once-in-a-century-seeding-dwarf-bamboo-boosts.html Plants & Animals Wed, 07 Sep 2022 14:58:03 EDT news581781481 The discovery of panda fossils in China has helped researchers solve the mystery of how the giant species developed a "false thumb" and became the only dedicated vegetarian in the bear family. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-fossil-discovery-mystery-pandas-vegetarian.html Paleontology & Fossils Sun, 03 Jul 2022 05:26:39 EDT news576044788 When is a thumb not a thumb? When it's an elongated wrist bone of the giant panda used to grasp bamboo. Through its long evolutionary history, the panda's hand has never developed a truly opposable thumb and instead evolved a thumb-like digit from a wrist bone, the radial sesamoid. This unique adaptation helps these bears subsist entirely on bamboo despite being bears (members of the order Carnivora, or meat-eaters). In a new paper published in Scientific Reports, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology Xiaoming Wang and colleagues report on the discovery of the earliest bamboo-eating ancestral panda to have this "thumb." Surprisingly, it's longer than its modern descendants. https://phys.org/news/2022-06-pandas-gave-bamboo-thumbs-million.html Evolution Thu, 30 Jun 2022 11:00:10 EDT news575795358 A celestial event mentioned in an ancient Chinese text turns out to be the oldest known reference to a candidate aurora, predating the next oldest one by some three centuries, according to a recent study by Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs, an independent researcher based in Canada, and Hisashi Hayakawa from Nagoya University. This finding was recently published in the journal Advances in Space Research. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-earliest-candidate-aurora-chinese-annals.html Astronomy Fri, 15 Apr 2022 13:09:47 EDT news569246985 UBC Okanagan researchers have adapted a technique—originally designed to embalm human remains—to strengthen the properties of biocomposites and make them stronger. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-unique-ingredient-bamboo.html Materials Science Fri, 18 Mar 2022 13:31:16 EDT news566829069 Inside a bamboo culm in Thailand, researchers discovered the first case of a genus of tarantula that lives exclusively in bamboo stalks. https://phys.org/news/2022-01-tarantula-bamboo-stalks-thailand.html Plants & Animals Wed, 12 Jan 2022 10:11:00 EST news561204657 Here are some little known facts about bamboo: bamboo grows fast—really fast. It has an amazing regenerative quality. It eats carbon dioxide. And it's incredibly lightweight, strong and flexible. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-bamboo-fibres-strong-green-alternative.html Environment Fri, 17 Dec 2021 11:03:07 EST news558961383 Japanese lizard beetle larvae feed on yeast injected from their mothers' abdomens into the bamboo stems they are growing in. Now, scientists at Nagoya University have made a surprising discovery: the yeast can digest some complex sugars in the bamboo woody tissue, but it doesn't. Instead, it consumes much simpler and more available sugar sources. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-easy-relationship-beetle-yeast-symbiont.html Plants & Animals Fri, 10 Dec 2021 10:39:31 EST news558355165 Although the giant panda is in practice a herbivore, its masticatory system functions differently from the other herbivores. Through the processes of natural selection, the giant panda's dietary preference has strongly impacted the evolution of its teeth and jaws. Researchers from the Institute of Dentistry at the University of Turku and the Biodiversity unit of the University of Turku together with researchers from the China Conservation and Research Center for Giant Panda (CCRCGP) have been the first in the world to solve the mystery of how the giant panda's special stomatognathic system functions. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-evolution-giant-panda-temporomandibular-joint.html Plants & Animals Fri, 09 Jul 2021 11:19:26 EDT news545048362 As part of his Master's degree in civil engineering, an EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) student developed a connector for use in building sustainable structures. His initial project has expanded into an online program for designing bamboo furniture that's stylish, modular and customizable. And now his connector is being looked at for use by astronauts in outer space. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-connector-sustainable-earth-space.html Materials Science Mon, 07 Jun 2021 16:38:35 EDT news542302711 A worryingly high number of Asian bamboo longhorn beetles (Chlorophorus annularis) turn out to have been emerging across Europe for about a century already, finds an international research team, headed by researchers from the Center of Natural History, University of Hamburg, Germany. Curiously, the recent records of the invasive, non-native to the Old Continent species are mostly sourced from citizen scientists and online platforms, which proves the power of involving the public in species monitoring. The study is published in the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal BioRisk. https://phys.org/news/2021-03-citizen-scientists-expose-presence-invasive.html Plants & Animals Tue, 09 Mar 2021 10:30:29 EST news534508165 A pair of pandas on loan from China to a Canadian zoo are facing a food shortage as their supply of fresh bamboo dries up, officials warned. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-canada-pandas-bamboo-dries.html Plants & Animals Tue, 11 Aug 2020 14:43:06 EDT news516375784 A fossilised leafy branch from the early Eocene in Patagonia described in 1941 is still often cited as the oldest bamboo fossil and the main fossil evidence for a Gondwanan origin of bamboos. However, a recent examination by Dr. Peter Wilf from Pennsylvania State University revealed the real nature of Chusquea oxyphylla. The recent findings, published in the paper in the open-access journal Phytokeys, show that it is actually a conifer. https://phys.org/news/2020-02-oldest-bamboo-fossil-eocene-patagonia.html Archaeology Tue, 04 Feb 2020 02:44:33 EST news500006660 Southeast Asia is a riot of colour and biodiversity. Boasting luxuriant rainforest and thousands of insects and mammals, the region is ripe for a biologist in search of inspiration. But when James Croft, then at Edith Cowan University, Australia, went travelling, it wasn't the flora and fauna that caught his eye: it was the villagers carrying massive loads, sometimes more than their own body weight, on a bouncy bamboo pole slung across a shoulder. "I was curious how that evolved,' says Croft, adding, "I wondered if the springiness of the poles allowed them to transport the load more efficiently.' However, he also knew that the benefits of carrying loads on flexible poles was a bone of contention; some studies suggested the poles are beneficial, while others did not. Croft realised that many of the previous investigations had been carried out with pole-carrying novices, whereas the villagers that he had observed were true professionals, sometimes with decades of experience. After discussing the problem with John Bertram from the University of Calgary, Canada, Croft decided to return to Vietnam to find out whether experienced flexible pole carriers adapt the way they walk to help them carry heavy loads. The team publishes their discovery that villagers carrying a heavy load on a flexible pole could use 20% less energy than when using a rigid pole in Journal of Experimental Biology. https://phys.org/news/2019-12-springy-bamboo-poles-villagers-body.html Other Wed, 04 Dec 2019 18:00:01 EST news494685884 Modified natural materials will be an essential component of a sustainable future, but first a detailed understanding of their properties is needed. The way heat flows across bamboo cell walls has been mapped using advanced scanning thermal microscopy, providing a new understanding of how variations in thermal conductivity are linked to the bamboo's elegant structure. The findings, published in the journal Scientific Reports, will guide the development of more energy-efficient and fire-safe buildings, made from natural materials, in the future. https://phys.org/news/2019-11-visualizing-bamboo-energy-efficient-fire-safe.html Materials Science Wed, 13 Nov 2019 05:39:38 EST news492845967 The teeth of mammals experience constant wear. However, the details of these wear processes are largely unknown. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now demonstrated that the various areas of herbivores' teeth differ in how susceptible they are to dental wear, detailing an exact chronology. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-dental-revealed.html Plants & Animals Wed, 09 Oct 2019 07:31:34 EDT news489825083