A pivotal study, published in Eco-Environment & Health, has examined the evolution of PM2.5 pollution disparity in China from 2013 to 2020, revealing both progress and persistent challenges in air quality management. | Continue reading
The human population explosion, soaring from 1.6 billion to more than 6 billion during the 20th century, has had a profound impact on global environments and biodiversity. However, large mammalian herbivores, including species such as elephants and deer that are sensitive to habi … | Continue reading
Over the rest of this century due to global warming, coastal populations are likely to face increased risk of flooding. A team of researchers has proposed how the integration of Internet of Things, 5G mobile telephony, big data and machine learning into "smart cities" can be harn … | Continue reading
Engineers at Columbia University and theoretical collaborators at the Max Planck for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter have found that pairing laser light to crystal lattice vibrations can enhance the nonlinear optical properties of a layered 2D material. The research is publi … | Continue reading
A multi-institutional team of biologists and life and environmental scientists has found that Singapore's rate of plant and animal extinction over the past 200 years is approximately 37%. This finding is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have made a groundbreaking discovery regarding the origins of non-meteoric water in natural spa waters located in central Japan. Based on numerical modeling, their results suggest that this water has been confined within the lithosphere fo … | Continue reading
In recent decades, environmental lead (Pb) pollution has posed a significant threat to public health and ecological systems due to its harmful and irreversible effects. It has also been proposed that the distinct Pb pollution signals in geological archives may define the new Anth … | Continue reading
The Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) has developed the world's first Certified Reference Material (CRM) capable of accurate measurement of the nutritional and harmful elements in coffee beans. | Continue reading
On 15 December, the Large-Sized Telescope (LST) Collaboration announced through an Astronomer's Telegram (ATel) the detection of the source OP 313 at very high energies with the LST-1. Although OP 313 was known at lower energies, it had never been detected above 100 GeV, making t … | Continue reading
After Canada and the United States both announced new policy measures to address oil and gas methane at the COP28 climate summit—just weeks after the EU agreed to extend its methane intensity standards to imported natural gas—it is clear that global policy to address the potent c … | Continue reading
Pollinators are in decline globally and regionally. Building pollinator-friendly urban green spaces is an effective way to mitigate the negative impacts of urbanization on pollinator diversity and services. | Continue reading
A research group from Tohoku University and RIKEN has developed a high-speed, high-sensitivity terahertz-wave detector operating at room temperature, paving the way for advancements in the development of next generation 6G/7G technology. | Continue reading
Locals watched in awe as a fireball exploded and hundreds of meteorite fragments rained down on the city of Tatahouine, Tunisia, on June 27, 1931. Fittingly, the city later became a major filming location for the Star Wars movie series. The desert climate and traditional villages … | Continue reading
Quantum objects, such as electrons and photons, behave differently from other objects in ways that enable quantum technology. Therein lies the key to unlocking the mystery of quantum entanglement, in which multiple photons exist in multiple modes or frequencies. | Continue reading
A team led by RIKEN researchers has investigated how special crystals convert light into electricity. Their findings will help inform efforts to improve their efficiency, which could lead to the crystals being used in solar cells. The study is published in the journal Angewandte … | Continue reading
A large international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has found evidence showing that the Small Magellanic Cloud is not a single galaxy—it is actually two, one behind the other. The group has written a paper describing their work and posted it to the arXiv preprint server … | Continue reading
Extreme environmental events are becoming an ever more pressing concern with the continued stresses of climate change, both on land and in the marine realm. While terrestrial heat waves tend to occur over a few days, those in the oceans often have longer timescales of weeks to mo … | Continue reading
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) needs specific types of magnets to tightly control the beams of particles at its collision points. Called final-focusing quadrupoles, these magnets are installed in the LHC's interaction regions around the experiments. For the high-luminosity upgra … | Continue reading
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