Hurricane Idalia and the Hawaii firestorm were the most notable weather disasters in the U.S. in 2023, but they were far from the only ones. | Continue reading
Most people want to do something about climate change, but lifestyle trade-offs and a narrowing window to enact broad changes to industrial, transportation, and consumption patterns are daunting enough to make them resist. | Continue reading
The oceans are still the most underexplored part of our planet. Diversity of large organisms in the Arctic Ocean has been investigated in many ways, yet research on the diversity of Arctic microorganisms is lacking. One of the problems, apart from inaccessibility, is obtaining hi … | Continue reading
Global industries focused on carbon neutrality, under the slogan Net-Zero, are gaining increasing attention. In particular, research on the microbial production of polymers, replacing traditional chemical methods with biological approaches, is actively progressing. | Continue reading
Quantum computers have the potential to outperform conventional computers on some tasks, including complex optimization problems. However, quantum computers are also vulnerable to noise, which can lead to computational errors. | Continue reading
Strain-induced crystallization can strengthen, toughen, and facilitate an elastocaloric effect in elastomers. The resulting crystallinity can be induced by mechanical stretching in common elastomers that are typically below 20%, with a stretchability plateau. | Continue reading
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), in collaboration with NCBS and InStem, have uncovered an important mechanism that allows the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium to persist in the human host for decades. They found that a single gene involved in the production of ir … | Continue reading
The UK government said on Wednesday it had dropped its plan to start selling in imperial measures after a consultation revealed 99 percent support for keeping the metric system. | Continue reading
Bacillus anthracis lethal toxin (LT) is a determinant of lethal anthrax. Its function in myeloid cells is required for bacterial dissemination, and LT itself can directly trigger dysfunction of the cardiovascular system. The interplay between LT and the host responses is importan … | Continue reading
As a promising candidate to current lithium-ion batteries, rechargeable magnesium batteries have attracted extensive attention due to the superior properties of magnesium (Mg) metal anodes, such as high volumetric capacity (3,833 mAh/cm3), abundant resources, environmental friend … | Continue reading
An international team of astronomers has employed a set of space telescopes to observe a peculiar nuclear transient known as AT 2019avd. Results of the observational campaign, presented in a paper published December 21 on the pre-print server arXiv, deliver important insights int … | Continue reading
In 2015, the LIGO/Virgo experiment, a large-scale research effort based at two observatories in the United States, led to the first direct observation of gravitational waves. This important milestone has since prompted physicists worldwide to devise new theoretical descriptions f … | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Exeter, U.K., have discovered intricate mechanisms of ligand–receptor complex transport via specialized protrusions transporting signaling components between cells, challenging the conventional understanding of cell responsiveness solely based on … | Continue reading
A group of physicists, three with Harvard University's Department of Physics and Laboratory for Particle Physics and Cosmology, and the fourth with the University of Liverpool, has found evidence suggesting that additional measurements of neutrinos generated in Earth's atmosphere … | Continue reading
Retail activity has been a defining facet of cities since antiquity. The Greek Agora and Roman Forum may be viewed as the original CBDs—central business districts, or what urban planners call activity centers. | Continue reading
One of the hardest things for many people to conceptualize when talking about how fast something is going is that they must ask, "Compared to what?" All motion only makes sense from a frame of reference, and many spacecraft traveling in the depths of the void lack any regular ref … | Continue reading
After a journey spanning almost two decades, Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser reusable spaceplane, named Tenacity, is officially undergoing environmental testing at NASA's Neil Armstrong Test Facility located at NASA's Glenn Research Center in anticipation of its maiden f … | Continue reading
Testing interplanetary landers means putting them in an environment as close to their destination as possible. Mars landers are often tested in the "Mars Yard" at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in South California, and now ESA is looking to build a similar test bed for the moon … | Continue reading
Astronomers from the Western Sydney University in Australia and elsewhere report the detection of a new pulsar wind nebula and a pulsar that powers it. The discovery, presented in a paper published Dec. 12 on the pre-print server arXiv, was made using the Australian Square Kilome … | Continue reading
Non-human primates (NHPs) have a high degree of similarity to humans compared to other animal models. These similarities manifest at the genetic, physiological, socio-behavioral, and central nervous system levels, making NHPs uniquely suitable for research into stem cell therapy … | Continue reading
Barley seedlings grow on average 50% more when their root system is stimulated electrically through a new cultivation substrate. In a study published in the journal PNAS, researchers from Linköping University have developed an electrically conductive "soil" for soilless cultivati … | Continue reading
A team of international scientists, led by Dr. Rebecca Hamilton at the University of Sydney, has found that rather than dry savannah in South East Asia dominating during the Last Glacial Maximum more than 19,000 years ago, there was a mosaic of diverse closed and open forest type … | Continue reading
Antarctica is often imagined as the last untouched wilderness. Unfortunately, avian influenza ("bird flu") is encroaching on the icy continent. The virus has already reached the sub-Antarctic islands between the Antarctic Peninsula and South America. It's only a matter of time be … | Continue reading
Watching someone cry often evokes an emotional response—but according to a new study published Thursday, human tears themselves contain a chemical signal that reduces brain activity linked to aggression. | Continue reading
Much has been made of the increasing presence of the "bank of mum and dad" in the lives of Australians. | Continue reading
Japan's SLIM space probe entered the moon's orbit on Monday in a major step towards the country's first successful lunar landing, expected next month. | Continue reading
The former OSIRIS-REx spacecraft sets off on a journey to study asteroid Apophis and take advantage of the asteroid's 2029 flyby of Earth, the likes of which hasn't happened since the dawn of recorded history. | Continue reading
A quarter century ago, physicist Juan Maldacena proposed the AdS/CFT correspondence, an intriguing holographic connection between gravity in a three-dimensional universe and quantum physics on the universe's two-dimensional boundary. This correspondence is at this stage, even a q … | Continue reading
If we want to understand the future, it's often useful to look at the past. And even more useful if you use octopus DNA to peer into worlds long gone. | Continue reading
They'd been in the collections of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) since the 1870s when they were first discovered. Nestled in among the largest collection of trilobites, the unique fossils rested in drawers until 145 years later when Sarah Losso, Ph.D. candidate i … | Continue reading
New research from the Museums Victoria Research Institute has turned upside down our previous understanding of the evolution of the largest animals ever––baleen whales. | Continue reading
Animals cover astonishing distances when they are looking for food. While caribou, reindeer and wolves clock up impressive mileage on land, seabirds are unrivaled in their traveling distances. Arctic terns travel from the Arctic to Antarctica and back as part of their annual migr … | Continue reading
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub generated look-ahead projections for COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths under specific, policy-relevant scenarios. Those projections were provided to federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control … | Continue reading
A new study from a University of Colorado Boulder researcher, conducted with colleagues in Argentina, sheds new light on how the introduction of horses in South America led to rapid economic and social transformation in the region. | Continue reading
Even during a cost of living crisis, with interest rates and inflation high, the average spending per person for Christmas 2023 in the U.K. is expected to reach as much as £974. Retailers, advertisers and a sense of tradition continue to encourage us towards ever greater levels o … | Continue reading
As object identification and three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction techniques become essential in various reverse engineering, artificial intelligence, medical diagnosis, and industrial production fields, there is an increasing focus on seeking vastly efficient, faster speed, and … | Continue reading
The shift from dense forests to open plains in Africa may have caused our ancient ancestors to change their vocal calls, research involving Durham University anthropologists has found. | Continue reading
How do national policies impact deforestation? Researchers from the University of Bonn have looked into this question at the global scale and have found that, contrary to common assumptions, national strategies have a significant—and visible—influence on efforts to protect forest … | Continue reading
As the semi-arid Pilliga Scrub burns in New South Wales, many of us are thinking about fire once again. It's an El Niño summer in the hottest year on record. And there's a remarkable amount of grass drying out and ready to burn. | Continue reading
Most Canadians agree something should be done about climate change. Yet, even though there is tremendous pressure on politicians to do something, widespread discontent usually follows whatever action they may take. | Continue reading
As a major Earth system component, wildfire plays an important role in the Earth's terrestrial ecosystems and climate system, with significant impacts on the atmosphere, radiation effects, vegetation, surface properties, global biogeochemical cycles and human survival. Understand … | Continue reading
In November 2023, the James Webb Space Telescope observed a massive cluster of galaxies named MACS J0138.0-2155. Through an effect called gravitational lensing, first predicted by Albert Einstein, a distant galaxy named MRG-M0138 appears warped by the powerful gravity of the inte … | Continue reading
A pancake stack of radioactivity-sensitive films carried through the sky by a balloon was able to take the world's most accurate picture of a neutron star's gamma ray beam. To achieve this, Kobe University researchers combined the oldest method of capturing radioactive radiation … | Continue reading
Interspecific hybridization is a key process in plant evolution and breeding that can lead to phenotypic changes and the formation of new species. The merging of different genomes in a hybrid often triggers a so-called "genomic shock." These alterations include variation in gene … | Continue reading
Research groups around the world are developing technologies to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into raw materials for industrial applications. Most experiments under industrially relevant conditions have been carried out with heterogeneous electrocatalysts, i.e., catalysts that are … | Continue reading
A microscopic shock wave has been photographed passing through a single biological cell, thanks to a new photography technique. Nanosecond photography uses ultrafast electronic cameras to take images at the speed of a billionth of a second. However, image quality and exposure tim … | Continue reading
Under field conditions, soil respiration consists of heterotrophic respiration by soil microbes and autotrophic respiration by plants. Temperature sensitivity (Q10) is a common method to describe proportional changes in soil heterotrophic respiration in response to warming. Howev … | Continue reading
A study published in Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering on September 25, 2023, unveils the potential health risks associated with biodegradable microplastics, particularly polylactic acid (PLA). | Continue reading