Force stabilizes a bond in bacterial adhesion

National University of Singapore biophysicists have discovered how a special bacterial adhesion complex could be counterintuitively stabilized by mechanical stress at the single-molecule level.

Ethanol helps plants better tolerate heat stress

A dose of ethanol, better known as common alcohol, can enable plants to withstand heat stress that might otherwise kill them, RIKEN biologists have found. This could offer a low-cost way to make crops more resilient to the ...

How tardigrades survive dehydration

Some species of tardigrades, or water bears as the tiny aquatic creatures are also known, can survive in different environments often hostile or even fatal to most forms of life. For the first time, researchers describe a ...

New glass-ceramic emits light when under mechanical stress

Researchers have created a new glass-ceramic that emits light in response to mechanical stress, a property known as mechanoluminescence. With further development, the new material could be used to create a light source that ...

New metrological technique uses stress for nanotomography

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues in Russia and Spain have reported a proof-of-concept demonstration of a new radiation-safe method for mapping the internal structure and stress distribution in samples of materials ...

New method to study cellular behavior using smart materials

Scientists from 4D-BIOMAP, an ERC research project at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), have developed a new experimental method, based on magneto-active polymers, to study cellular behavior. These compounds, which ...

What happens when plants have stress reactions to touch

A 30-year-old genetic mystery has been solved. It has previously been established that touch can trigger stress reactions in plants. However, the molecular models for explaining this process have been quite spartan so far. ...

page 4 from 18