Light sail technology is a fascinating concept and a step change in rocket propulsion. It may not be big and impressive like the Saturn V, the Space Shuttle or the new Starship rocket but when it comes to traveling among the stars, light sails could just be the answer. And what b … | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope recently trained its sights on unusual and enigmatic Uranus, an ice giant that spins on its side. Webb captured this dynamic world with rings, moons, storms, and other atmospheric features—including a seasonal polar cap. The image expands upon a two … | Continue reading
A new study conducted by pre-Ph.D. researcher Pablo S. Valera demonstrates the potential of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to explore metabolites secreted by cancer cells in cancer research. | Continue reading
Plants have evolved fiendishly complicated metabolic networks. For years, scientists focused on how plants make secondary metabolites, the compounds that plants produce to enhance their defense and survival mechanisms. | Continue reading
Scientists and engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have completed testing for BurstCube, a shoebox-sized spacecraft designed to study the universe's most powerful explosions. Members of the team have also delivered the satellite to their partne … | Continue reading
A new method could be used by biologists to estimate the prevalence of disease in free-ranging wildlife and help determine how many samples are needed to detect a disease. | Continue reading
The construction of the European Southern Observatory's Extremely Large Telescope (ESO's ELT) has reached an important milestone with the delivery to ESO and shipment to Chile of the first 18 segments of the telescope's main mirror (M1). Once they arrive in Chile, the segments wi … | Continue reading
A new study answers a timely question: What is the hardest part of waiting? Consumers do plenty of it—online, in line, in traffic, or for deliveries. And now we know it's the final phase that's most problematic for them. | Continue reading
About a day later than planned, the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCCC) closed on 13 December 2023. After much contestation, the conference adopted a decision that effectively signals the beginning of the end for fossi … | Continue reading
Researchers led by a University of California, Berkeley, comparative psychologist have found that great apes and chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, can recognize groupmates they haven't seen in over two decades—evidence of what's believed to be the longest-lasting nonhuma … | Continue reading
A collaborative team of experimental and computational physical chemists from South Korea and the United States has made an important discovery in the field of electrochemistry, shedding light on the movement of water molecules near metal electrodes. | Continue reading
As the world heats up, and the climate shifts, life will migrate, adapt or go extinct. For decades, scientists have deployed a specific method to predict how a species will fare during this time of great change. But according to new research, that method might be producing result … | Continue reading
Ancient bricks inscribed with the names of Mesopotamian kings have yielded important insights into a mysterious anomaly in Earth's magnetic field 3,000 years ago, according to a new study involving University College London researchers. | Continue reading
In response to increasing global food demands, improving crop yields through efficient phenotyping is imperative. Optical imaging-based phenotyping has markedly progressed plant breeding and crop management, yet encounters limitations in spatial resolution and accuracy due to its … | Continue reading
Crowdsourcing has become pivotal in scientific research, particularly in data-intensive fields like plant phenotyping, leveraging platforms like Kaggle for data analysis and machine learning challenges. | Continue reading
Leaf color patterns, influenced by factors such as leaf age and environmental stress, serve as indicators of plant health in agriculture. The VIS-NIR-SWIR sensor, though effective in measuring these patterns with high resolution, has been limited to assessing general plant health … | Continue reading
An entrepreneur's challenge is to find a gap in the market, or challenge norms to create a new one. Without broad appeal or specialist knowledge among consumers, this can often become a losing battle even if a new invention or product is highly practical or serves a market need. | Continue reading
The potential role of innovative technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in combating climate change has an understandable popular appeal. | Continue reading
Climate change is pushing farmers in the Global South towards short-term choices that further increase their vulnerability, research involving a Bayes Business School academic suggests. | Continue reading
Olive oil, renowned for its antioxidants like phenolic compounds, plays a pivotal role in the global olive crop. The concentration of oil and phenols in olives, varying seasonally, significantly affects crop profitability and quality, dictating the optimal harvest time. | Continue reading
The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy—examining the wavelengths of light that reach a telescope from a planet's atmosph … | Continue reading
The Saturnian moon Enceladus presents a unique opportunity in our solar system to search for evidence of life, given its habitable ocean and plume that deposits organic-bearing ocean material onto the surface. | Continue reading
In microbiology, microorganisms may be named after well-known scientific personalities to honor them. Such eponyms are common in the natural sciences, such as pasteurization (after the microbiologist Louis Pasteur). | Continue reading
It's a classic tale of apocalyptic fiction. The sun, our precious source of heat and light, collapses into a black hole. Or perhaps a stray black hole comes along and swallows it up. The End is Nigh! If a stellar-mass black hole swallowed our sun, then we'd only have about eight … | Continue reading
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is already making great strides in helping us to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Earlier this year, hundreds of rogue planets were discovered in the Orion Nebula. The real surprise to this discovery was that 9% of the planets were pair … | Continue reading
The technological war waged by the United States against China has the potential to backfire, supercharging China's creation of an independent computer chip industry that would directly compete with American manufacturers. | Continue reading
Ornamental plants, valued for their varied morphological characteristics, are increasingly used in urban greening initiatives such as rooftop greening. But this application presents challenges like limited soil depth and no irrigation, requiring plants such as the Phedimus specie … | Continue reading
The accurate measurement of the green fraction (GF), a critical photosynthetic trait in crops, typically relies on RGB image analysis employing segmentation algorithms to identify green pixels within the crop. Traditional methods have limitations in accuracy due to environmental … | Continue reading
Swift plant disease diagnosis is vital to prevent extensive production losses and uphold food security. Recently, object detection-based methods using deep learning have shown promise in accurately identifying and locating crop diseases. | Continue reading
Technological change is currently driving fundamental changes to the world of work—with significant consequences for social inequality. Against this backdrop, the interdisciplinary research project "Digitalization, Automation and the Future of Work in Post-Industrial Welfare Stat … | Continue reading
Nature Communications published research by an international team from Wits and ICFO- The Institute of Photonic Sciences, which demonstrates the teleportation-like transport of "patterns" of light—this is the first approach that can transport images across a network without physi … | Continue reading
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features NGC 2814, an irregular galaxy that lies about 85 million light-years from Earth. In this image, which was captured using Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, the galaxy appears to be quite isolated: visually, it looks a little like … | Continue reading
This week, representatives from nearly 200 countries reached an agreement at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai to begin reducing global consumption of fossil fuels in efforts to reduce carbon emissions and stave off the worst-case scenarios of climate change. | Continue reading
A new survey of 2,000 European consumers reveals persistent confusion around recycling food packaging, despite sustainability efforts by brands. | Continue reading
Those who learn digitally are quickly distracted. This is because the devices used offer many opportunities to pass the time in other ways. Meanwhile, a large number of software applications have been designed to help you stay focused. But how are these self-control tools used an … | Continue reading
In a first-of-its-kind study of aardvarks, Oregon State University researchers spent months in sub-Saharan Africa collecting poop from the animal and concluded that aridification of the landscape is isolating them, which they say could have implications for their long-term surviv … | Continue reading
A study conducted by QUT researchers has developed a pioneering ecosystem mapping workflow that combines drones, advanced imaging techniques, and machine learning to map and monitor vegetation in Antarctica's protected regions with unprecedented accuracy. | Continue reading
The European Commission launched a proposal in July 2023 to deregulate a large number of plants manufactured using new genetic techniques. | Continue reading
Earlier this fall, a commentary in the journal Communications Earth & Environment argued for a change to the implementation of the Paris Agreement's reporting mechanisms. The authors called for all countries to report carbon emissions and removals taking place across their entire … | Continue reading
Tropical forest landscapes are home to millions of Indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers. Just about every square meter of land is spoken for, even if claims are not formally recognized by governments. | Continue reading
A study from Tel Aviv University has predicted for the first time the groundbreaking results that can be obtained from a lunar-based detection of radio waves. The study's findings show that the measured radio signals can be used for a novel test of the standard cosmological model … | Continue reading
(Names have been changed to protect identities.) | Continue reading
As the federal government attempts a major overhaul of national environment law, all options must be on the table to prevent the fast deterioration of Australia's natural places. And more than ever before, the efforts of private landholders should be front and center. | Continue reading
Researchers report in the journal Geohealth that local rivers and streams were the source of the Salmonella enterica contamination along coastal North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018—not the previously suspected high number of pig farms in the region. | Continue reading
Superconductors have intrigued physicists for decades. But these materials, which allow the perfect, lossless flow of electrons, usually only exhibit this quantum-mechanical peculiarity at temperatures so low—a few degrees above absolute zero—as to render them impractical. | Continue reading
Ecological restoration may save coral atoll islands from the rising seas of climate change, according to an international team of scientists, conservationists, and an indigenous leader. | Continue reading
The Earth is a wonderful blue and green dot covered with oceans and life, while Venus is a yellowish sterile sphere that is not only inhospitable but also sterile. However, the difference between the two is only a few degrees in temperature. A team of astronomers from the Univers … | Continue reading
The development of antibiotics to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria, especially those that infect the airways, has been increasingly tricky, and some scientists have opted to try to weaken the bacteria so that the available therapeutic substances are made more effective. | Continue reading