Through joint research with the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Tokyo, NIMS for the first time experimentally demonstrated friction completely independent of sliding velocity—an ideal that had never been realized—by heating mica, a layered oxide also used as a lubricant material, to 200°C (392°F). NIMS also clarified that this is caused by the disappearance of defects within crystals at high temperatures.
When you think of viruses, you probably think of flu-like symptoms and quarantines. Humankind has suffered from viral diseases ranging from smallpox to COVID-19, hantavirus and Ebola since the dawn of recorded history.
At just an inch (2.5 centimeters) long, the sand hoppers skipping across California's Isla Vista Beach at dawn don't exactly look like a force of nature. But a new study reveals that these shrimp-like creatures might be doing more to shape the landscape in which they live than any other animal on Earth.
A 178-year-old mystery surrounding one of the earliest recorded examples of space weather affecting technology has been solved by an international team led by Lancaster University.
Across its basins and thousands of meters down, the Mediterranean Sea is getting warmer and saltier. Now, a new study finds it is also doing so at an increasingly rapid pace. The speedup is largest in the central and eastern Mediterranean and strongest of all in the Adriatic, where it reaches all the way to the sea floor.
Dwarf galaxies—with a mass equal to about a billion suns, but often considerably less—are the most abundant in the universe. However, because of their low luminosity, they are very difficult to detect. They have mostly been discovered in the vicinity of the Milky Way, in what is called the Local Group, but also, and in large quantities, at greater distances, where current instrumentation cannot distinguish individual stars.
The pressure to be the perfect parent can be overwhelming, but social media and perceived world threats are causing some to become overprotective parents, negatively affecting young people.
Over a third of U.S. adults (35%) cannot name all three branches of the government, and under half can name four of the five rights protected by the First Amendment, according to the 2026 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania. Of the five First Amendment rights, only freedom of speech is identified by more than half of survey respondents.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have measured the most powerful gas outflow ever recorded from a "dead" galaxy outside our cosmic neighborhood and found that even outflows this extreme may not be enough to permanently shut down star formation.
Some of the most vulnerable children and young people are failing to access mental health support despite having much higher levels of need, according to new research from the University of Cambridge.
While parents' roles in a child's education are well studied, new research examines the role siblings play in collaborating on educational projects. Researchers found that siblings often develop a few key roles in these working relationships.
Americans are heading into the 2026 midterm elections with widespread uncertainty about the integrity of the vote, according to a new national survey from the University of California San Diego.
"Sediment and fossil records are a major pillar of our understanding of how the climate works—but climate scientists have gotten something wrong about Australia's ice age," says Dr. Alex F. Wall, lead author of a new research paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
It's a common refrain that AI is changing how we work, but new research conducted by the Notre Dame-IBM Tech Ethics Lab, housed in the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good, shows that AI is creating new forms of work and reconfiguring employees' lived experience of work itself.
Humpback whale mothers may experience grief when their calves die, a rare research observation led by Griffith University and Sea World Foundation has found.
Nearly nine in 10 (86%) UK-licensed online gambling websites are operating in breach of the General Data Protection Regulation, according to new research from the Gambling Research, Education and Treatment (GREAT) Center at Swansea University published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior Reports.
The mammalian gut microbiome teems with a delicate balance of bacteria and the viruses that keep them in check, called bacteriophages, or phages. Each bacterial species usually has its own set of phage partners.
Soft materials such as colloidal suspensions, emulsions, foams and gels often display complex and unusual behaviors compared with ordinary solids or liquids. From a mechanical point of view, for instance, they can resist deformation like solids, but they can also start to flow like liquids when a sufficiently strong external drive is applied. This transition from solid-like to liquid-like behavior, known as "yielding," is central to the physics of soft amorphous materials and to many industrial and biological processes.
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