The prairies of North America once covered vast stretches of land, with towering grasses creating ideal nesting and forage habitat for grassland birds. But the deep, rich soil and treeless expanse also represented the ideal conditions for farming—both row crops and cattle grazing … | Continue reading
Researchers from the Higher School of Economics and KU Leuven have developed a method of measuring growth in students' proficiency in digital learning environments. It helps to see the progress of online course participants in dynamics, i.e., to understand how students study and … | Continue reading
Air pollution in the U.S. has decreased since about 1990, and a new study conducted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now shows that this air quality improvement has brought substantial public health benefits. The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Chemi … | Continue reading
British former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, a leading anti-Brexit advocate, said on Friday he would be starting a job at Facebook, as the US giant faces up to regulatory pressures. | Continue reading
The body of a shark was found washed ashore in Florida with the remains of an old hat wrapped around its body. | Continue reading
A trio of economists is suggesting that it is time to add a well-being index to national economic measures. Carol Graham with the Brookings Institution, Kate Laffan with the London School of Economics and Sergio Pinto with the University of Maryland have published a Perspective p … | Continue reading
A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital has revealed a connection between mTORC1 and Src, two proteins known to be hyperactive in cancer. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that Src is necessary and sufficien … | Continue reading
Virtually everything most people on earth do these days involves, either directly or indirectly, the combustion of oil, gas and coal. Burning these fossil fuels is generating carbon emissions, which accumulate in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. | Continue reading
Facebook wants to you to spend $199 to $349 to install its version of a connected, talking video speaker—such as Amazon's Echo—into your home. It has a camera that follows you as you move for video calls and the ability to track what you're doing. | Continue reading
Months of drought have left water levels on Germany's Rhine river at a record low, exposing a World War II bomb and forcing ship operators to halt services to prevent vessels from running aground. | Continue reading
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court stop a novel and sweeping lawsuit pressed by children and teenagers seeking to force the federal government to take steps against climate change. | Continue reading
A coalition of environmental groups has sued to stop the Trump administration from speeding construction of the first phase of southern border wall construction by waiving dozens of landmark environmental laws meant to protect air and water quality, public lands and wildlife. | Continue reading
Most of us would acknowledge that family members often resemble one another, particularly in the face. Indeed, humans are good at picking out pairs of close relatives amongst the faces of unfamiliar adults. We are also more likely to trust and help hypothetical partners whose fac … | Continue reading
For the first time, researchers have measured what is known as the ground effect of flying animals—and it turns out that they save a lot more energy by flying close to the ground than previously believed. The study from Lund University in Sweden supports one of the theories on ho … | Continue reading
China is planning to launch its own 'artificial moon' by 2020 to replace streetlamps and lower electricity costs in urban areas, state media reported Friday. | Continue reading
One Saturday night in August, Deurick van Blerk, 26, climbed into his small boat off the coast of Cape Town on another of his illegal fishing expeditions. He never returned. | Continue reading
Calls to breach four hydroelectric dams in Washington state have grown louder in recent months as the plight of critically endangered Northwest orcas has captured global attention. | Continue reading
Lights. Camera. Science. | Continue reading
Final preparations were underway Friday for the launch of a joint mission by European and Japanese space agencies to send twin probes to Mercury, the closest planet to the sun. | Continue reading
A Louisiana university is giving the Smithsonian Institution a huge collection of crustaceans that has, among other things, been used to identify seafood mislabeled as coming from the Gulf of Mexico. | Continue reading
The latest crime figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) offer a grim outlook on the state of criminal justice in England and Wales. Almost as if to head off criticism, the bulletin starts: "Over recent decades, we've seen continued falls in overall levels of crime … | Continue reading
Using corkscrew-shaped laser pulses, scientists at DESY have devised a sophisticated optical centrifuge that can make molecules rotate rapidly about a desired molecular axis. The innovative method opens up new ways to control and study super fast spinning molecules, called superr … | Continue reading
In a paper published in leading academic journal, Human Resource Management Journal, Cranfield School of Management expert, Professor Clare Kelliher, argues that there is a need to review how we think about work-life balance. | Continue reading
Bear bile farms, which exist in some Asian countries like Vietnam and China, are a terrible reality for Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus). | Continue reading
A group of chemists at Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania, together with the physicists from Vilnius University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), have uncovered one of the possible reasons behind the short lifespan of perovskite solar c … | Continue reading
In the Canadian Arctic, a mystery has troubled scientists and local communities for decades: Why do marine animals in the western Arctic have higher mercury levels than those in the east? | Continue reading
The Galapagos archipelago is one of the most famous groups of islands in the world. Many of the animal and plant species are unique because of the islands' isolated location in the Pacific, 1,000 kilometers off of the coast of Ecuador. Thanks to a recently-signed special cooperat … | Continue reading
Just as fire produces ash, the combining of light elements in fusion reactions can produce material that eventually interferes with those same reactions. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found evidence sugges … | Continue reading
Researchers from The University of Western Australia have found that an enzyme in plants, ATP Synthase, plays a critical role in how plants respond to the cold. | Continue reading
A large majority of Americans strongly support the goal of preventing the extinction of endangered wildlife and plants. Today, over 1,600 U.S. species are listed under the Endangered Species Act, and more are added every year. The list includes well-known species like the manatee … | Continue reading
Almost all galaxy clusters experience mergers. While a merger takes place, a specific spiral pattern can often be observed in X-ray images. Such a spiral feature is due to the motion of the sloshing gas induced by a merger. Observing a phenomenon similar to sloshing gas in the da … | Continue reading
A new study by researchers at The Australian National University (ANU) could help us understand how our planet was formed. | Continue reading
Women are twice as likely as men to receive harsher sentences for assault offences when alcohol is a contributory factor, according to new research from the University of Liverpool. | Continue reading
Researchers from the University of Luxembourg, Technische Universität Berlin, and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society have combined machine learning and quantum mechanics to predict the dynamics and atomic interactions in molecules. The new approach allows for a … | Continue reading
A chemist from RUDN has developed a method to obtain high-porosity silicium dioxide, a base for nanocatalysts used in different types of organic reactions, from rice husks. The results of the study were published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. | Continue reading
Bacteria are everywhere, including in and on our bodies. There are estimated to be as many bacteria in a human body as there are human cells. | Continue reading
For an atmospheric system, there exists a limit to how far ahead one can make predictions. This is referred to as atmospheric predictability. Within this limit, however, the weather forecast will still contain some uncertainty. Given that numerical models are "perfect," the predi … | Continue reading
A research group at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), has published an article in Science describing a new method to convert inexpensive polycrystalline metal foils to single crystals with superior properties. These ma … | Continue reading
A new approach to tackle conservation decisions in 3-D marine environments could lead to better conservation outcomes. | Continue reading
A pair of researchers, one with the University of Bonn, the other the University of California, has found evidence that shows gender preferences differ more in countries that are more affluent and gender equal than in countries that are not. In their paper published in the journa … | Continue reading
Prince William recently spoke at one of the largest illegal wildlife summits ever held in London. He said, "Poaching is an economic crime against ordinary people and their futures." | Continue reading
Climate change is in full swing and will continue unabated as long as CO2 emissions continue. One possible solution is to return CO2 to the energy cycle: CO2 could be processed with water into methanol, a fuel that can be easily transported and stored. However, the reaction, whic … | Continue reading
Space Shuttle Atlantis deployed the Galileo spacecraft six hours, 30 minutes into the flight on Oct. 18, 1989. In this image, Galileo, mounted atop the inertial upper stage, is tilted to a 58-degree deployment position in Atlantis's payload bay with the Earth's limb appearing in … | Continue reading
Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine in collaboration with researchers at Oregon Health & Science University have resolved the three-dimensional molecular structure of the protein that's defective in people with cystic fibrosis in the protein's active and inactive state. The … | Continue reading
Scientists believe Thylacoleo carnifex was probably a victim of the drying out of Australia, which began about 350,000 years ago, rather than from the impact of humans. | Continue reading
Chlorophyll is the pigment used by all plants for photosynthesis. There are two versions, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. These are structurally very similar to one another but have different colors, blue-green and yellowish green, respectively. Both pigments fulfill different j … | Continue reading