Scientific News

Articles across mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and astronomy.

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  Science

  Lilienfeld radiation

  Lilienfeld radiation, named after Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, is electromagnetic radiation produced when electrons hit a metal surface. The Smith–Purcell effect is believed to be a variant of Lilienfeld radiation. Lilienfeld radiation is shown as Transition radiation by Vitaly Ginzburg and Ilya Frank in 1945

  8/24/2026

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  Lichenology

  Lichenology is the branch of mycology that studies the lichens, symbiotic organisms made up of an intimate symbiotic association of a microscopic alga (or a cyanobacterium) with a filamentous fungus. Lichens are chiefly characterized by this symbiosis. Study of lichens draws knowledge from several disciplines: mycology, phycology, microbiology and botany. Scholars of lichenology are known as liche

  8/24/2026

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  Lime kiln

  A lime kiln is a kiln used for the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate) to produce the form of lime called quicklime (calcium oxide). The chemical equation for this reaction is: CaCO3 + heat → CaO + CO2 This reaction can take place at anywhere above 840 °C (1,540 °F), but is generally considered to occur at 900 °C (1,650 °F) (at which temperature the partial pressure of CO2 is 1 atmosphere

  8/24/2026

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  Life on Mars

  The possibility of life on Mars is a subject of interest in astrobiology due to the planet's proximity and similarities to Earth. To date, no conclusive evidence of past or present life has been found on Mars. Cumulative evidence suggests that during the ancient Noachian time period, the surface environment of Mars had liquid water and may have been habitable for microorganisms, but habitable cond

  8/24/2026

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  Library of Congress Living Legend

  Library of Congress Living Legend was a designation bestowed by the United States Library of Congress to recognize creative contributions to American life. People were honored in specific categories that included "leaders and statesmen", "activists and reformers", "scientists and inventors", "writers and artists", "musicians and composers", "industrialists and entrepreneurs", and "athletes and ent

  8/24/2026

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  Lie theory

  In mathematics, the mathematician Sophus Lie ( LEE) initiated lines of study involving integration of differential equations, automorphism groups and contact of spheres that have come to be called Lie theory. For instance, the latter subject is Lie sphere geometry. This article addresses his approach to transformation groups, which is one of the areas of mathematics, and was worked out by Wilhelm

  8/24/2026

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  Science

  Liesegang rings

  Liesegang rings () are a phenomenon seen in many, if not most, chemical systems undergoing a precipitation reaction under certain conditions of concentration and in the absence of convection. Rings are formed when weakly soluble salts are produced from reaction of two soluble substances, one of which is dissolved in a gel medium. The phenomenon is most commonly seen as rings in a Petri dish or ban

  8/24/2026

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  Limitation of size

  In the philosophy of mathematics, specifically the philosophical foundations of set theory, limitation of size is a concept developed by Philip Jourdain and/or Georg Cantor to avoid Cantor's paradox. It identifies certain "inconsistent multiplicities", in Cantor's terminology, that cannot be sets because they are "too large". In modern terminology these are called proper classes.

  8/24/2026

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  Light echo

  A light echo is a physical phenomenon caused by light reflected off surfaces distant from the source, and arriving at the observer with a delay relative to this distance. The phenomenon is analogous to an echo of sound, but due to the much faster speed of light, it mostly manifests itself only over astronomical distances. For example, a light echo is produced when a sudden flash from a nova is ref

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  Lillian Rosanoff Lieber

  Lillian Rosanoff Lieber (July 26, 1886 in Nicolaiev, Russian Empire – July 11, 1986 in Queens, New York) was a Russian-American mathematician and popular author. She often teamed up with her illustrator husband, Hugh Gray Lieber, to produce works.

  8/24/2026

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  Lightweight Presentation Protocol

  Lightweight Presentation Protocol (LPP) is a protocol used to provide ISO presentation services on top of TCP/IP based protocol stacks. It is defined in RFC 1085. The Lightweight Presentation Protocol describes an approach for providing "streamlined" support of OSI model-conforming application services on top of TCP/IP-based network for some constrained environments. It was initially derived from

  8/24/2026

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  Science

  Lieb's square ice constant

  Lieb's square ice constant is a mathematical constant used in the field of combinatorics to approximately count Eulerian orientations of grid graphs. It was introduced by Elliott H. Lieb in 1967. It is called the square ice constant because the orientations that it counts arise in statistical mechanics of crystalline structures as the states of an ice-type model on a square grid. The value of Lieb

  8/24/2026

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  Science

  Lifestyle medicine

  Lifestyle medicine (LM) is a branch of medicine focused on preventive healthcare and self-care dealing with prevention, research, education, and treatment of disorders caused by lifestyle factors and preventable causes of death such as nutrition, physical inactivity, chronic stress, and self-destructive behaviors including the consumption of tobacco products and drug or alcohol abuse. The goal of

  8/24/2026

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  Like terms

  In mathematics, like terms are summands in a sum that differ only by a numerical factor. Like terms can be regrouped by adding their coefficients. Typically, in a polynomial expression, like terms are those that contain the same variables to the same powers, possibly with different coefficients. More generally, when some variable are considered as parameters, like terms are defined similarly, bu

  8/24/2026

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  Light-year

  A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly or lyr), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly 9460730472580.8 km, which is approximately 9.46 trillion kilometres or 5.88 trillion miles. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days). Despite its inc

  8/24/2026

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  Light valve

  A light valve (LV) is a device for varying the quantity of light, from a source, which reaches a target. Examples of targets are computer screen surfaces, or a wall screen in the case of a light projector. There are two basic principles of achieving this. One is by deflecting the light on its way to the target (a reflective LV). The other method is to block the light (a transmissive LV). The block

  8/24/2026

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  Limiting case (mathematics)

  In mathematics, a limiting case of a mathematical object is a special case that arises when one or more components of the object take on their most extreme possible values. For example: In statistics, the limiting case of the binomial distribution is the Poisson distribution. As the number of events tends to infinity in the binomial distribution, the random variable changes from the binomial to t

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  Lighthouse Labs

  Lighthouse Labs was a tech education company that offered 12-week boot camps for web development and data science, as well as part-time up-skilling courses, with locations across Canada. In previous years, they organized an annual free learn-to-code event, The HTML500, in partnership with Telus. The company trained over 40,000 learners since its inception. In January 2025, Uvaro, a Certified B Co

  8/24/2026

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  Librem

  Librem is a line of computers manufactured by Purism, SPC featuring free (libre) software. The laptop line is designed to protect privacy and freedom by omitting non-free (proprietary) software in their operating system and kernel, avoiding the Intel Active Management Technology, and gradually freeing and securing firmware. Librem laptops feature hardware kill switches for the microphone, webcam,

  8/24/2026

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  Limepit

  A limepit is either a place where limestone is quarried, or a man-made pit used to burn lime stones in the same way that modern-day kilns and furnaces constructed of brick are now used above ground for the calcination of limestone (calcium carbonate, CaCO3) and by which quicklime (calcium oxide, CaO) is produced, an essential component in waterproofing and in wall plastering (plaster skim).

  8/24/2026

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  Legendre's constant

  Legendre's constant is a mathematical constant occurring in a formula constructed by Adrien-Marie Legendre to approximate the behavior of the prime-counting function π ( x ) {\displaystyle \pi (x)} . The value that corresponds precisely to its asymptotic behavior is now known to be 1. Examination of available numerical data for kno

  8/24/2026

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  Learning Resource Server Medicine

  The Learning Resource Server Medicine (LRSMed) is a free-to-access catalog of electronic learning and teaching software modules for education in medicine and dentistry available in English and German.

  8/24/2026

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  League of Entropy

  The League of Entropy (LoE) is a voluntary consortium of organizations working together to implement an unpredictable, bias-resistant, fully decentralized, and publicly-verifiable threshold cryptosystem designed to deliver distributed Randomness as a Service, (RaaS) among other use cases. The open-source software that powers the League of Entropy's network is called drand, (short for decentralized

  8/24/2026

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  Lead acetate

  Lead acetate can refer to: Lead subacetate (Basic lead acetate), Pb3(OH)4(CH3COO)2 Lead(IV) acetate (plumbic acetate), Pb(CH3COO)4 Lead(II) acetate (lead diacetate), Pb(CH3COO)2 and the trihydrate Pb(CH3COO)2.3H2O

  8/24/2026

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  Learn to Code

  "Learn to Code" was a slogan and a series of public influence campaigns during the 2010s that encouraged the development of computer programming skills in an economy increasingly centered on information technology. The campaigns led to endorsements from politicians, the inclusion of programming in state school curricula, and the proliferation of coding bootcamps. Learning to code has a long histor

  8/24/2026

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  Lead oxide

  Lead oxides are a group of inorganic compounds with formulas including lead (Pb) and oxygen (O). Common lead oxides include: Lead(II) oxide, PbO, litharge (α-PbO, tetragonal, red), massicot (β-PbO, orthorhombic, yellow) Lead tetroxide or red lead, Pb3O4, minium, which is a lead (II,IV) oxide and may be thought of as lead(II) orthoplumbate(IV) [Pb2+]2[PbO4−4], vivid orange crystals Lead dioxide (l

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  Lazzaro Spallanzani

  Lazzaro Spallanzani (Italian pronunciation: [ˈladdzaro spallanˈtsaːni]; 12 January 1729 – 11 February 1799) was an Italian Catholic priest (for which he was nicknamed Abbé Spallanzani), biologist and physiologist who made important contributions to the experimental study of bodily functions, animal reproduction, and animal echolocation. His research on biogenesis paved the way for the downfall of

  8/24/2026

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  Law of mass action

  In chemistry, the law of mass action is the proposition that the rate of a chemical reaction is directly proportional to the product of the activities or concentrations of the reactants. It explains and predicts behaviors of solutions in dynamic equilibrium. Specifically, it implies that for a chemical reaction mixture that is in equilibrium, the ratio between the concentration of reactants and pr

  8/24/2026

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  Law of superposition

  The law of superposition is a principle that forms one of the bases of the sciences of geology, paleontology, and other fields pertaining to geological stratigraphy. In its plainest form, it states that in undeformed stratigraphic sequences, the oldest strata will lie at the bottom of the sequence, while newer material stacks upon the surface to form new deposits over time. This is paramount to st

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  Lazarus taxon

  In paleontology, a Lazarus taxon (plural taxa) is a taxon that disappears for one or more periods from the fossil record, only to appear again either in later fossil records, or as actual living organisms, and often in isolated, obscure, or otherwise very specialized habitats. Likewise in conservation biology and ecology, it can refer to species or populations that were mistakenly thought to be ex

  8/24/2026

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  Lead chloride

  Lead chloride may refer to: Lead(II) chloride (plumbous chloride), mineral name: cotunnite. Lead(IV) chloride (plumbic chloride) Hexachloroplumbate(IV) (dianion)

  8/24/2026

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  Leaky gut syndrome

  Leaky gut syndrome is a hypothetical and medically unrecognized condition that is distinct from the scientific phenomenon of increased intestinal permeability commonly known as "leaky gut". Claims for the existence of "leaky gut syndrome" as a distinct medical condition come mostly from nutritionists and practitioners of alternative medicine. Proponents claim that a "leaky gut" causes chronic infl

  8/24/2026

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  Lead sulfide

  Lead sulfide refers to two compounds containing lead and sulfur: Lead(II) sulfide, PbS, containing lead in the +2 oxidation state, naturally occurring as the mineral galena Lead(IV) sulfide, PbS2, containing lead in the +4 oxidation state

  8/24/2026

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  Lazarus syndrome

  Lazarus phenomenon is the spontaneous return of a normal cardiac activity after a person has been pronounced dead. It was named by Jack G. Bray in 1993 referring to Lazarus of Bethany who, according to the New Testament, was raised from the dead by Jesus. It is also used to refer to the spontaneous return of cardiac rhythm after failed attempts at resuscitation; as such it is called autoresuscita

  8/24/2026

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  Lead fluoride

  Lead fluoride may refer to: Lead(II) fluoride (lead difluoride, plumbous fluoride, PbF2), a white powder Lead(IV) fluoride (lead tetrafluoride, tetrafluoroplumbane, PbF4), white to beige crystals

  8/24/2026

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  Leaf routine

  A leaf routine, leaf subroutine, leaf function, or leaf procedure is a function that does not in turn call another function. Some compilers can apply special program optimizations to leaf routines to make them more efficient, such as the use of link registers to avoid having to push the return address on the stack, or not allocating a register window on CPU architectures descended from Berkeley RI

  8/24/2026

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  Lead halide

  Lead halide refers to any of a group of chemical compounds in which lead is joined to an element from the halide group. Compounds within this group include: Lead(II) fluoride Lead(II) chloride Lead(II) bromide Lead(II) iodide

  8/24/2026

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  Learned sparse retrieval

  Learned sparse retrieval (LSR) or sparse neural search is an approach to Information Retrieval which uses a sparse vector representation of queries and documents. It borrows techniques both from lexical bag-of-words and vector embedding algorithms, and is claimed to perform better than either alone. The best-known sparse neural search systems are SPLADE and its successor SPLADE v2. Others include

  8/24/2026

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  Lawvere's fixed-point theorem

  In mathematics, Lawvere's fixed-point theorem is an important result in category theory. It is a broad abstract generalization of many diagonal arguments in mathematics and logic, such as Cantor's diagonal argument, Cantor's theorem, Russell's paradox, Gödel's first incompleteness theorem, Turing's solution to the Entscheidungsproblem, and Tarski's undefinability theorem. It was first proven by Wi

  8/24/2026

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  Lemma (mathematics)

  In mathematics and other fields, a lemma (pl.: lemmas or lemmata) is a, generally minor, proven proposition used to prove a larger statement. For that reason, it is also known as a "helping theorem" or an "auxiliary theorem". In many cases, a lemma derives its importance from the theorem it aims to prove; however, a lemma can also turn out to be more important than originally thought.

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  Science

  Leidenfrost effect

  The Leidenfrost effect or film boiling is a physical phenomenon in which a liquid, close to a solid surface of another body that is significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer that keeps the liquid from boiling rapidly. Because of this repulsive force, a droplet hovers over the surface, rather than making physical contact with it. The effect is named af

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  Science

  Lego Mindstorms

  Lego Mindstorms (sometimes stylized as LEGO MINDSTORMS) is a discontinued line of educational kits for building programmable robots based on Lego bricks. It was introduced on 1 September 1998 and discontinued on 31 December 2022. Mindstorms kits allow users to build creations that interact with the physical world. All Mindstorms kits consist of a selection of Lego Elements, a "Smart Brick" (intern

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  Legendre transformation

  In mathematics, the Legendre transformation (or Legendre transform), first introduced by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1787 when studying the minimal surface problem, is an involutive transformation on real-valued functions that are convex on a real variable. Specifically, if a real-valued multivariable function is convex on one of its independent real variables, then the Legendre transform with respec

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  Leibniz's notation

  In calculus, Leibniz's notation, named in honor of the 17th-century German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, uses the symbols dx and dy to represent infinitely small (or infinitesimal) increments of x and y, respectively, just as Δx and Δy represent finite increments of x and y, respectively. Consider y as a function of a variable x, or y = f(x). If this is the case, then th

  8/24/2026

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  Leaverite

  Leaverite is a slang term used by geologists, mineralogists, archaeologists, and amateur rock collectors to identify a specimen in the field that may look interesting or valuable but not worth removing. Rocks identified as such are generally left where they were found, as there is not sufficient reason to attempt to remove them. The term leaverite derives from the phrase "leave 'er right there". T

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  Lemniscate constant

  In mathematics, the lemniscate constant ϖ is a transcendental mathematical constant that is the ratio of the perimeter of Bernoulli's lemniscate to its diameter, analogous to the definition of π for the circle. Equivalently, the perimeter of the lemniscate ( x 2 + y

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  Lemniscate

  In algebraic geometry, a lemniscate ( or ) is any of several figure-eight or ∞-shaped curves. The word comes from the Latin lēmniscātus, meaning "decorated with ribbons", from the Greek λημνίσκος (lēmnískos), meaning "ribbon", or which alternatively may refer to the wool from which the ribbons were made. Curves that have been called a lemniscate include three quartic plane curves: the hippopede or

  8/24/2026

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  Left corner

  In formal language theory, the left corner of a production rule in a context-free grammar is the left-most symbol on the right side of the rule. For example, in the rule A→Xα, X is the left corner. The left corner table associates to a symbol all possible left corners for that symbol, and the left corners of those symbols, etc. Given the grammar S → VP S → NP VP VP → V NP NP → DET N the left corn

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  Least-squares spectral analysis

  Least-squares spectral analysis (LSSA) is a class of methods for estimating a frequency spectrum by fitting sinusoids to data using a least-squares fit. Unlike Fourier analysis, the most widely used spectral method in science, data need not be equally spaced to use LSSA. Furthermore, while Fourier analysis generally amplifies long-period noise in long or gapped records, LSSA mitigates such problem

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  Leiden Classical

  Leiden Classical was a volunteer computing project run by the Theoretical Chemistry Department of the Leiden Institute of Chemistry at Leiden University. Leiden Classical used the BOINC system, and enabled scientists or science students to submit their own test simulations of various molecules and atoms in a classical mechanics environment. ClassicalDynamics is a program (and with it a library) c

  8/24/2026