Phys.org

Female protagonists in animated films have come a long way over the past several decades. Take the 1959 movie "Sleeping Beauty": Soft-spoken and vulnerable, Princess Aurora is cursed as an infant by the evil fairy Maleficent and ultimately saved not by her own wits, but by a prince's kiss.

Researchers at the University of Miami have identified a group of previously unknown viruses that bridge an evolutionary gap between viruses and cellular protein compartments, a discovery with implications for both biotechnology and scientists' understanding of the origins of life.

NASA's Artemis II mission sent four astronauts around the moon and brought them safely back to Earth, laying a foundation for crewed flights to the moon's surface.

Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in North America and establish a deeper understanding of the landscape and environmental conditions at the time humans were present there.

Researchers have created a detailed, animated 3D model of the imperial woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis), a spectacular bird that has not been confirmed in the wild since 1956. The model, built from a museum specimen and the only known film footage of the living bird, is freely available to scientists, educators and the public.

The open ocean is a dynamic environment, where food is patchy, predators are plentiful, and oceanographic conditions change constantly. Life in the pelagic environment—the offshore waters that extend from the sunlit surface through the twilight zone—requires unique adaptations for survival.

The size of a nucleus (nuclear charge radius) is an important physical quantity that reflects the arrangement of protons and neutrons within the nucleus. Particularly in deformed nuclei, such as those of rare-earth elements, examining changes in the charge radius can deepen our understanding of nuclear structure and nuclear deformation.

A new study of young tectonic landforms on the moon offers the most detailed estimate yet of how much the moon has contracted as its interior gradually cooled over time.

A University of Portsmouth scientist has helped lead a major global study, which finds that 44% of the world's reef-building coral species are now threatened with extinction—and warns the true figure is likely to be even higher.

A study led by Nekehia Quashie, an assistant professor of public health in the University of Rhode Island's College of Health Sciences, examined how different African American age groups felt about the responsibility of supporting older adults.

To produce pharmaceuticals, food ingredients, and flavors and fragrances, it is often necessary to oxidize alcohols. In conventional chemistry, this transformation typically relies on harsh oxidants and elevated temperatures and generates toxic waste.

New materials and catalysts have the potential to transform everything from food production and medicine to batteries and stainless steel. Computer simulations help scientists narrow down promising candidates before testing them in a lab, but those simulations can be unreliable, especially for molecules that contain multiple metals.

As governments prepare to gather in Armenia for the U.N. biodiversity summit, researchers are highlighting a conservation approach that recognizes places where nature thrives beyond conventional protected areas.

Humanity's ongoing disruption of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations, temperatures, and global nutrient cycles is starving the oceans of oxygen. Although we can measure ongoing changes to ocean circulation and marine life, we still don't know how far the oxygen loss and the damage to ocean ecosystems could go. One way to foresee the oceans' future is to look back at how our seas and their inhabitants responded to higher CO₂ levels and warmer climates in the past.

Retail research has changed during the last couple of decades, according to an analysis of almost 5,200 papers covering business practices, consumer behavior and technology. The study, published in the International Journal of Electronic Marketing and Retailing, considered papers from the four leading specialist journals in this area.

A steep drop in baby lobsters provided an early warning of the sharp decline in adult lobsters along Maine's midcoast, a new University of Maine study shows.

Silicon spin qubits are a promising platform for building scalable quantum computers as they are compatible with the semiconductor manufacturing technologies used to produce today's computer chips. However, they have an important weakness: silicon spin qubits typically lose accuracy when several qubits are under parallel control. To be useful, quantum computers will need to operate many qubits simultaneously without compromising the accuracy of their operations.

Around the world, many people report distrusting their government. In some places, such as Latin America, North America and Africa, trust in government has declined in recent decades. How can governments rebuild this trust?

Bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacteria, have a fiendishly simple purpose in life: attach to a bacterial cell, inject their DNA and then use the host's genetic machinery to reproduce. In doing so, they may have evolved some of the most efficient gene-editing tools ever seen in nature.

A transistor normally requires several fundamentally different materials—a semiconductor to carry current, an insulating dielectric to control it and metallic contacts through which current enters and leaves. Integrating all of these components becomes increasingly difficult as semiconductor devices approach the atomic scale.