Proteases are naturally occurring enzymes that break down proteins into peptides and even single amino acids. They are useful in medicine and industrial processes, where they clean tissue, digest waste and help in the manufacture of everyday products. Now scientists have used artificial intelligence to design new versions from scratch.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled what he described as a "flying" car, equipped with thrusters, during a livestreamed event at his SpaceX rocket company's facility on Thursday.
Wastewater reclamation is increasingly regarded as an alternative water source to mitigate water scarcity in China. However, expanding wastewater treatment capacity alone may not be enough to ease this scarcity, since wastewater supply, treatment facilities and reuse demand are not always geographically aligned.
Penicillin has cured syphilis cases since 1943, but symptoms of the sexually transmitted infection, known as "the great imitator," mimic many other diseases and can come and go without treatment while the infection keeps causing harm. If it remains undetected, it can spread to partners and to babies during pregnancy, causing lifelong effects.
The year 2026 has been an expensive one for social media platforms. Since March, YouTube and Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, have settled or paid out in multiple lawsuits totaling more than $17 billion for allegedly acting negligently, deliberately designing their platforms to hook kids and misleading the public about safety and privacy. If these suits are any indication of how states and the public are starting to view social media platforms, more may follow.
To build faster and more energy-efficient computers, researchers need to understand nanoscale magnetic materials. But looking inside these tiny magnets is surprisingly difficult: Modern microscopes only measure the magnetic field outside the material, not the magnetic pattern inside. Because many different internal patterns can produce the exact same field, working backwards has long been a challenge.
A study led by the Centre for Global Wood Security formally defines the concept of global wood security and identifies the 20 greatest challenges to wood security in the 21st century.
As an embryo develops from a small cluster of stem cells, those once "blank slate" cells begin to take on more specialized roles like brain, liver or muscle cells and organize themselves into three-dimensional structures such as tissues and organs.
Young people who experience bullying because of their weight feel that their schools do not take the problem seriously enough. In some cases, they change their own behavior to avoid harassment, according to a new study from Lund University.
From the clear covering on your microwave meal to the flimsy bread bag lying on the kitchen counter, plastic film is notoriously tricky to recycle. But what if those annoying bits of plastic waste could be put to better use?
In a study of fingertip regeneration, a team led by JAX senior research scientist James Godwin found that some immune cells in mice can attack and kill cells needed to rebuild bone, while a subset of those same immune cells can protect the bone-making cells and allow regeneration to continue.
FIU researchers have developed a faster, more efficient method to detect forever chemicals in the water system, cutting the testing time from over six hours to just 30 minutes. These findings, which could enhance how water safety is monitored, were published in the Journal of Chromatography A.
Mainland Spain sizzled in its warmest September since records began in 1961, with exceptional heat effectively making it another summer month, national weather agency AEMET said on Friday.
On May 10, 2025, a spacecraft built in the Soviet Union to land on Venus came home. Launched in 1972, Cosmos-482 was stranded by a failed upper stage of its rocket and circled Earth for 53 years. In its last days, several space agencies and research groups forecasted when it would fall, and therefore where. Roscosmos later reported that it came down in the Indian Ocean, west of Jakarta.
Developing stronger and tougher structural metals such as steel requires exploring an enormous range of processing conditions. Even for the same alloy composition, heat treatment can dramatically change the material's microstructure and mechanical properties. If there were a way to automate the process, we could pinpoint ideal conditions much more efficiently. However, experiments on bulk metallic materials are difficult to automate because they require handling solid specimens and integrating large, specialized equipment.
The researchers in the Quantum Detection Microscopy group at CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with chemists at CiQUS of the University of Santiago de Compostela, have demonstrated that adding or removing a single molecule from a quantum chain can fundamentally change its interaction with a superconductor.
In Philadelphia and many urban areas across the U.S. with sewer systems dating back to the 1800s, more frequent flooding is posing a threat not only to people and property but also to surrounding ecosystems. In these areas, stormwater and sewage drain into the same pipes, which are designed to spill into nearby waterways when flooding occurs rather than inundating streets.
The likely manipulation of citation numbers by research paper mills in high-impact cancer journals has been uncovered by an international team of academic researchers. Their findings point to an organized campaign to inflate citations on paper mill–produced journal articles published in established molecular oncology journals.
Last week, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Krissy Barrett warned artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are not a sufficient replacement for human support for children. The comment was in response to a recent Adelaide University study that found more than one in three Australian children turn to AI chatbots for support when they are sexually victimized online or otherwise tell nobody at all.
Checked
10 minutes 14 seconds ago
Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine.