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Category: biological – Page 4

Symmetry breaking in meniscus splitting: Boundary conditions reveal surprising behavior

Everything in nature has a geometric pattern—from the tiger’s stripes and spirals in flowers to the unique fingerprints of each human being. While these patterns are sometimes symmetrical, most of such patterns lack symmetry, which leaves us with one major question: How do such unsymmetrical patterns emerge in nature?

Studies report that drying environments cause water evaporation and can lead to the formation of asymmetric patterns during biological growth through a phenomenon called “ breaking.” Although reported through mathematical studies, these studies lack physical-chemical experiments that replicate this phenomenon.

A recent study at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), led by Associate Professor Kosuke Okeyoshi and doctoral student Thi Kim Loc Nguyen, uncovers the mechanisms behind symmetry breaking during a process called meniscus splitting in evaporating polymer solutions. The findings of the study were published in Advanced Science on June 3, 2025.

Scalable method creates self-healing, stretchable transistors and circuits

Recent technological advances have enabled the development of a wide range of increasingly sophisticated wearable and implantable devices, which can be used to monitor physiological signals or intervene with high precision in therapeutically targeted regions of the body. As these devices, particularly implantable ones, are typically designed to remain in changing biological environments for long periods of time, they should be biocompatible and capable of fixing themselves after they are damaged.

Researchers at Sungkyunkwan University, the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and other institutes in South Korea recently devised a new method to fabricate self-healing and stretchable electronic components that could be integrated into these devices. Their approach, outlined in a paper published in Nature Electronics, enables the scalable and reconfigurable assembly of self-healing and stretchable transistors into highly performing integrated systems.

“Since the mid-2000s, the development of flexible and has significantly revolutionized research fields such as artificial electronic skin and soft implantable bioelectronics,” Donghee Son, senior author of the paper, told Tech Xplore.

Squid study sparks interdisciplinary insight into the physics of growth

Often, physics can be used to make sense of the natural world, whether it’s understanding gravitational effects on ocean tides or using powerful physics tools, like microscopes, to examine the inner workings of the cell. But increasingly, scientists are looking at biological systems to spark new insights in physics. By studying squid skin, researchers have identified the first biological instance of a physical phenomenon called “hyperdisorder,” bringing new understanding into how growth can affect physics.

Published in Physical Review X, an interdisciplinary team from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) studied the effect of growth on pattern development within squid skin cells.

By combining experimental imaging methods with theoretical modeling, they found new insights into the unusual arrangement of these cells, and created a general model of hyperdisorder applicable to a wide variety of growing systems.

Terahertz calorimetry captures thermodynamics of protein and water interactions at picosecond resolution

Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, have developed a new method that allows them to visualize the contribution of the interaction between water and proteins for the first time with extreme temporal resolution. Terahertz (THz) calorimetry makes it possible to quantify changes of fundamental thermodynamic magnitudes, such as solvation entropy and enthalpy in relation to biological processes in real time.

Scientists Create Biodegradable Plastic Alternative That’s Literally Alive

Swiss scientists have created a new plastic-like material that’s flexible, biodegradable, and even edible. The secret? It’s still alive.

The material, which was created by a team from Empa in Switzerland, manages to balance biodegradability with toughness and versatility – a feat that is far from easy in materials science.

The researchers processed fibers from the mycelium (the root-like part) of the split-gill mushroom (Schizophyllum commune) into a liquid mixture, without actually killing them off or destroying their natural biological functions.