Scientific News

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

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  Science

  Suction

  Suction is the day-to-day term for the movement of gases or liquids along a pressure gradient with the implication that the movement occurs because the lower pressure pulls the gas or liquid. However, the forces acting in this case do not originate from just the lower pressure side, but instead from the side of the higher pressure, as a reaction to the pressure difference. When the pressure in one

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  Suffix tree

  In computer science, a suffix tree (also called PAT tree or, in an earlier form, position tree) is a compressed trie containing all the suffixes of the given text as their keys and positions in the text as their values. Suffix trees allow particularly fast implementations of many important string operations. The construction of such a tree for the string S {

  8/25/2026

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  Substituent

  In organic chemistry, a substituent is one or a group of atoms that replaces (one or more) atoms, thereby becoming a moiety in the resultant (new) molecule. The suffix -yl is used when naming organic compounds that contain a single bond replacing one hydrogen; -ylidene and -ylidyne are used with double bonds and triple bonds, respectively. In addition, when naming hydrocarbons that contain a subs

  8/25/2026

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  Suffix array

  In computer science, a suffix array is a sorted array of all suffixes of a string. It is a data structure used in, among others, full-text indices, data-compression algorithms, and the field of bibliometrics. Suffix arrays were introduced by Manber & Myers (1990) as a simple, space efficient alternative to suffix trees. They had independently been discovered by Gaston Gonnet in 1987 under the name

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  Sulfate-reducing microorganism

  Sulfate-reducing microorganisms (SRM) or sulfate-reducing prokaryotes (SRP) are a group composed of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) and sulfate-reducing archaea (SRA), both of which can perform anaerobic respiration utilizing sulfate (SO2−4) as terminal electron acceptor, reducing it to hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Therefore, these sulfidogenic microorganisms "breathe" sulfate rather than molecular oxy

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  Subsolar point

  The subsolar point on a planet or a moon is the point at which its Sun is perceived to be directly overhead (at the zenith); that is, where the Sun's rays strike the planet exactly perpendicular to its surface. The subsolar point occurs at the location on a planet or a moon where the Sun culminates at the location's zenith. This occurs at solar noon. At this point, the Sun's rays will fall exactly

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  Sudarsky's gas giant classification

  Sudarsky's classification of gas giants for the purpose of predicting their appearance based on their temperature was outlined by David Sudarsky and colleagues in the paper Albedo and Reflection Spectra of Extrasolar Giant Planets and expanded on in Theoretical Spectra and Atmospheres of Extrasolar Giant Planets, published before any successful direct or indirect observation of an extrasolar plane

  8/25/2026

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  Sue Tyler Friedman Medal

  The Sue Tyler Friedman Medal is awarded by the Geological Society of London for work on the history of geology. Established in 1987, it is named after the wife of academic journal editor and publisher Gerald M. Friedman, and was funded by a gift to the Geological Society by Friedman's company, Northeastern Science Foundation, of Troy, New York.

  8/25/2026

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  Subsurface ocean current

  A subsurface ocean current is an oceanic current that runs beneath surface currents. Examples include the Equatorial Undercurrents of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, the California Undercurrent, and the Agulhas Undercurrent, the deep thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic, and bottom gravity currents near Antarctica. The forcing mechanisms vary for these different types of subsurface c

  8/25/2026

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  Submersion (coastal management)

  Submersion is the sustainable cyclic portion of coastal erosion where coastal sediments move from the visible portion of a beach to the submerged nearshore region, and later return to the original visible portion of the beach. The recovery portion of the sustainable cycle of sediment behaviour is named accretion.

  8/25/2026

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  Suckers (book)

  Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All is a book about alternative medicine written by author and health journalist Rose Shapiro. It was published by Harvill Secker in 2008. It covers very similar ground to Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst's book Trick or Treatment?, but is written in a more journalistic and polemical style. It provides substantial detail regarding alternative treatme

  8/25/2026

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  Sulfur fluoride

  Sulfur fluoride may refer to any of the following sulfur fluorides: Sulfur hexafluoride, SF6 Disulfur decafluoride, S2F10 Sulfur tetrafluoride, SF4 Disulfur tetrafluoride, S2F4 Sulfur difluoride, SF2 Disulfur difluoride, S2F2 Thiothionyl fluoride, S2F2 (second isomer) 1,3-Difluoro-trisulfane-1,1-difluoride, S3F4

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole

  The Subtropical Indian Ocean Dipole (SIOD) is featured by the oscillation of sea surface temperatures (SST) in which the southwest Indian Ocean i.e. south of Madagascar is warmer and then colder than the eastern part i.e. off Australia. It was first identified in the studies of the relationship between the SST anomaly and the south-central Africa rainfall anomaly; the existence of such a dipole wa

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  Subterranean fauna

  Subterranean fauna refers to animal species that are adapted to live in an underground environment. Troglofauna and stygofauna are the two types of subterranean fauna. Both are associated with hypogeal habitats – troglofauna is associated with terrestrial subterranean environment (caves and underground spaces above the water table), and stygofauna with all kind of subterranean waters (groundwater,

  8/25/2026

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  Sulfidation

  Sulfidation (British spelling also sulphidation) is a process of installing sulfide ions in a material or molecule. The process is widely used to convert oxides to sulfides but is also related to corrosion and surface modification.

  8/25/2026

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  Sulfide intrusion

  In ecology, sulfide intrusion refers to an excess of sulfide molecules (S2-) in the soil that interfere with plant growth, often seagrass. Seagrass bed sediment (soil) is typically anoxic, containing a reduced form of sulfur: hydrogen sulfide (H2S). H2S is a phytotoxin that results from anaerobic digestion, the decomposition of organic matter in the absence of oxygen. However, seagrass can persi

  8/25/2026

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  Science

  String (computer science)

  In computer programming, a string is traditionally a sequence of characters, either as a literal constant or as some kind of variable. The latter may allow its elements to be mutated and the length changed, or it may be fixed (after creation). A string is often implemented as an array data structure of bytes (or words) that stores a sequence of elements, typically characters, using some character

  8/25/2026

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  Strange particle

  A strange particle is an elementary particle with a strangeness quantum number different from zero. Strange particles are members of a large family of elementary particles carrying the quantum number of strangeness, including several cases where the quantum number is hidden in a strange/anti-strange pair, for example in the Φ meson. The classification of particles, as mesons and baryons, follows t

  8/25/2026

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  Stratigraphic unit

  A stratigraphic unit is a volume of rock of identifiable origin and relative age range that is defined by the distinctive and dominant, easily mapped and recognizable petrographic, lithologic or paleontologic features (facies) that characterize it. Units must be mappable and distinct from one another, but the contact need not be particularly distinct. For instance, a unit may be defined by terms s

  8/25/2026

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  String interning

  In computer science, string interning is a method of storing only one copy of each distinct string value, which must be immutable. Interning strings makes some string processing tasks more time-efficient or space-efficient at the cost of using more time when the string is created or interned. The distinct values are stored in a string intern pool. The one copy of each string is called its intern a

  8/25/2026

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  Strict

  In mathematical writing, the term strict refers to the property of excluding equality and equivalence and often occurs in the context of inequality and monotonic functions. It is often attached to a technical term to indicate that the exclusive meaning of the term is to be understood. The opposite is non-strict, which is often understood to be the case but can be put explicitly for clarity. In som

  8/25/2026

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  Striene

  De Striene was a water channel that ran between the Schelde near Tholen and the Maas rivers in Zeeland in the Netherlands. In the St. Elizabeth's Flood of 1421 the watercourses in the Maas and Rhine delta were drastically changed, and the Striene disappeared. However, the current Scheldt-Rhine Canal mostly follows the ancient path of the Striene. The place names Strijen, Cromstrijen, and Strijenha

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  Science

  String art

  String art, pin and thread art, or filography is characterized by an arrangement of colored thread strung between points to form geometric patterns or representational designs such as a ship's sails, sometimes with other artist material comprising the remainder of the work. Thread, wire, or string is wound around a grid of nails hammered into a velvet-covered wooden board. Though straight lines ar

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  Science

  String bog

  A string bog or string mire is a bog consisting of slightly elevated ridges and islands, with woody plants, alternating with flat, wet sedge mat areas. String bogs occur on slightly sloping surfaces, with the ridges at right angles to the direction of water flow. They are an example of patterned vegetation. String bogs are also known as aapa moors or aapa mires (from Finnish aapasuo) or Strangmo

  8/25/2026

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  Stride scheduling

  Stride scheduling is a type of scheduling mechanism that has been introduced as a simple concept to achieve proportional central processing unit (CPU) capacity reservation among concurrent processes. Stride scheduling aims to sequentially allocate a resource for the duration of standard time-slices (quantum) in a fashion, that performs periodic recurrences of allocations. Thus, a process p1 which

  8/25/2026

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  Streaming vibration current

  The streaming vibration current (SVI) and the associated streaming vibration potential is an electric signal that arises when an acoustic wave propagates through a porous body in which the pores are filled with fluid. Streaming vibration current was experimentally observed in 1948 by M. Williams. A theoretical model was developed some 30 years later by Dukhin and coworkers. This effect opens anoth

  8/25/2026

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  Strangelet

  A strangelet (pronounced ) is a hypothetical particle consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter, small enough to be considered a particle. The size of an object composed of strange matter could, theoretically, range from a few femtometers across (with the mass of a light

  8/25/2026

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  Strep-tag

  The Strep-tag system is a method which allows the purification and detection of proteins by affinity chromatography. The Strep-tag II is a synthetic peptide consisting of eight amino acids (Trp-Ser-His-Pro-Gln-Phe-Glu-Lys). This peptide sequence exhibits intrinsic affinity towards Strep-Tactin, a specifically engineered streptavidin, and can be N- or C- terminally fused to recombinant proteins. By

  8/25/2026

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  Streptamer

  Strep Tamer is a technology which allows the reversible isolation and staining of antigen-specific T-cells. This technology combines a current T-cell isolation method with the Strep-Tag technology. In principle, the T-cells are separated by establishing a specific interaction between the T-cell of interest and a molecule, that is conjugated to a marker which enables the isolation. The reversibilit

  8/25/2026

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  String interpolation

  In computer programming, string interpolation (or variable interpolation, variable substitution, or variable expansion) is the process of evaluating a string literal containing one or more placeholders, yielding a result in which the placeholders are replaced with their corresponding values. It is a form of simple template processing or, in formal terms, a form of quasi-quotation (or logic substit

  8/25/2026

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  Streamlet (scientific visualization)

  In scientific visualization a streamlet is used to visualize flows. It is essentially a short streamline segment. Normally the length of a streamlet is proportional to the flow magnitude at its seed point.

  8/25/2026

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  Streamsurface

  In fluid dynamics a stream surface is a surface across which no flow occurs. A stream surface may be one of two types: A boundary-type stream surface coincides with the impermeable boundary of a physical object other than the fluid itself. The object may be rigid or flexible, and it may be mobile or immobile. Examples include the wall of a fluid-filled channel or pipe, the wall of a rigid buoy dr

  8/25/2026

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  Stress in medical students

  Stress in medical students is stress caused by strenuous medical programs, which may have physical and psychological effects on the well-being of medical students. Excessive stress in medical training predisposes students for difficulties in solving interpersonal conflicts as a result of previous stress. A significant percentage of medical students suffer from anxiety disorders because of the long

  8/25/2026

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  Strangler fig pattern

  In programming, the strangler fig pattern or strangler pattern is an architectural pattern that involves wrapping old code, with the intent of redirecting it to newer code or to log uses of the old code. Coined by Martin Fowler, its name derives from the strangler fig plant, which tends to grow on trees and eventually kill them. It has also been called Ship of Theseus pattern, named after a philos

  8/25/2026

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  String theory

  In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings move through space and interact with each other by vibrations. On distance scales larger than the string scale, a string acts like a particle, with its mass, charge, and other properties determin

  8/25/2026

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  String literal

  A string literal or anonymous string is a literal for a string value in source code. Commonly, a programming language includes a string literal code construct that is a series of characters enclosed in bracket delimiters – usually quote marks. In many languages, the text "foo" is a string literal that encodes the text foo but there are many other variations.

  8/25/2026

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  Structural induction

  Structural induction is a proof method that is used in mathematical logic (e.g., in the proof of Łoś' theorem), computer science, graph theory, and some other mathematical fields. It is a generalization of mathematical induction over natural numbers and can be further generalized to arbitrary Noetherian induction. Structural recursion is a recursion method bearing the same relationship to struct

  8/25/2026

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  Strongly correlated material

  Strongly correlated materials are a wide class of compounds that include insulators and electronic materials, and show unusual (often technologically useful) electronic and magnetic properties, such as metal-insulator transitions, heavy fermion behavior, half-metallicity, and spin-charge separation. The essential feature that defines these materials is that the behavior of their electrons or spino

  8/25/2026

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  Structural information theory

  Structural information theory (SIT) is a theory about human perception and in particular about visual perceptual organization, which is a neuro-cognitive process. It has been applied to a wide range of research topics, mostly in visual form perception but also in, for instance, visual ergonomics, data visualization, and music perception. SIT began as a quantitative model of visual pattern classifi

  8/25/2026

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  Strong topology

  In mathematics, a strong topology is a topology which is stronger than some other "default" topology. This term is used to describe different topologies depending on context, and it may refer to: the final topology on the disjoint union the topology arising from a norm the strong operator topology the strong topology (polar topology), which subsumes all topologies above. A topology τ is stronger

  8/25/2026

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  Strong CP problem

  The strong CP problem is a question in particle physics, which brings up the following quandary: why does quantum chromodynamics (QCD) seem to preserve CP-symmetry? In particle physics, CP stands for the combination of C-symmetry (charge conjugation symmetry) and P-symmetry (parity symmetry). According to the current mathematical formulation of quantum chromodynamics, a violation of CP-symmetry in

  8/25/2026

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  Structural theory

  In chemistry, structural theory explains the large variety in chemical compounds in terms of atoms making up molecules, the arrangement of atoms within molecules and the electrons that hold them together. According to structural theory, from the structural formula of a molecule it is possible to derive physical and spectroscopic data and to predict chemical reactivity. Beginning from about 1858,

  8/25/2026

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  Structural unit

  In polymer chemistry, a structural unit is a building block of a polymer chain. It is the result of a monomer which has been polymerized into a long chain. There may be more than one structural unit in the repeat unit. When different monomers are polymerized, a copolymer is formed. It is a routine way of developing new properties for new materials.

  8/25/2026

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  Structured content

  Structured content is information or content that is organized in a predictable way and is usually classified with metadata. XML is a common storage format, but structured content can also be stored in other standard or proprietary formats. When working in structured content, writers need to build the structure of their content as well as add the text, images, etc. They build the structure by add

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  Science

  Strings (Unix)

  strings is a shell command that extracts printable character strings from a file – which is particular useful for analyzing the content of a binary file. By definition, a binary file contains data that is not printable text yet a binary file often does contain some printable character text – often in relatively short sequences distributed throughout the file. These portions of the binary file can

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  Science

  Structuralism (biology)

  Biological or process structuralism is a school of biological thought that objects to an exclusively Darwinian or adaptationist explanation of natural selection such as is described in the 20th century's modern synthesis. It proposes instead that evolution is guided differently, by physical forces which shape the development of an animal's body, and sometimes implies that these forces supersede se

  8/25/2026

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  String operations

  In computer science, in the area of formal language theory, frequent use is made of a variety of string functions; however, the notation used is different from that used for computer programming, and some commonly used functions in the theoretical realm are rarely used when programming. This article defines some of these basic terms.

  8/25/2026

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  Strophanthin

  Strophanthins are cardiac glycosides in plants of the genus Strophanthus. The singular may refer to: g-Strophanthin, also known as ouabain k-Strophanthin

  8/25/2026

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  Structuralism (philosophy of mathematics)

  Structuralism is a theory in the philosophy of mathematics that holds that mathematical theories describe structures of mathematical objects. Mathematical objects are exhaustively defined by their place in such structures. Consequently, structuralism maintains that mathematical objects do not possess any intrinsic properties but are defined by their external relations in a system. For instance,

  8/25/2026

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  Strong gravity

  'Strong gravity' is a non-mainstream theoretical approach to particle confinement having both a cosmological scale and a particle scale gravity. In the 1960s, it was taken up as an alternative to the then young QCD theory by several theorists, including Abdus Salam, who showed that the particle level gravity approach can produce confinement and asymptotic freedom while not requiring a force behavi

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