Next-generation devices based on molecular materials have the potential to efficiently use sunlight to produce electricity or to drive chemical reactions. In contrast to commercial solar cells, where absorption of light directly generates charge that can be extracted as electrici … | Continue reading
Students learn in high school that molecules must be in contact to react chemically. But what if that's not always true? It's that idea, which challenges textbook "laws," a team of theorists explored. They showed that even though it is in a completely different container from rea … | Continue reading
Dog lovers agree: Round and fluffy, wrinkled and snub-nosed, or skinny and sleek, dogs are cute. | Continue reading
Explorers have dreamt for centuries of a Fountain of Youth, with healing waters that rejuvenate the old and extend life indefinitely. | Continue reading
Spoiler alert: It is not possible to clone a wooly mammoth | Continue reading
As schools focus on building students' capacity to learn and solve problems outside the formal classroom, many educators have embraced "design-thinking" strategies as a promising approach. | Continue reading
Incoming asteroids have been scarring our home planet for billions of years. This month humankind left our own mark on an asteroid for the first time: Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped a copper projectile at very high speed in an attempt to form a crater on asteroid Ryugu. A m … | Continue reading
There have been five mass extinctions in the history of the Earth. But in the 21st century, scientists now estimate that society must urgently come to grips this coming decade to stop the very first human-made biodiversity catastrophe. | Continue reading
Under a leaden sky, six rangers walk silently in single file through Vohibola, one of the last primary forests in eastern Madagascar. | Continue reading
Knee-deep in water on a picture-postcard Lesbos island beach, a team of Greek university students gently deposits a wall-sized PVC frame on the surface before divers moor it at sea. | Continue reading
US electric auto maker Tesla said Monday it had launched an investigation after a video circulating in China showed one of its cars suddenly burst into flames in a garage in Shanghai. | Continue reading
In nature, group decisions are often a matter of life or death. At first glance, the way certain groups of animals like minnows branch off into smaller sub-groups might seem counterproductive to their survival. After all, information about, say, where to find some tasty fish roe … | Continue reading
Flooding in eastern Canada forced the evacuation of 1,200 people while more than 600 troops have been deployed in response, authorities said Sunday. | Continue reading
A mysterious but apparently serious incident occurred Saturday in Cape Canaveral, Florida involving the SpaceX capsule intended to carry American astronauts into space late this year, the private company and NASA announced. | Continue reading
Forget how many carats—how ethical is your gold? As high-end consumers demand to know the origin of their treasures, some jewellers are ensuring they use responsibly sourced, eco-friendly or recycled gold. | Continue reading
Australia on Sunday ordered a urgent review into the management of dingoes on a popular tourist island after a spate of attacks by the wild dogs this year. | Continue reading
Nationwide physician-staffing company EmCare says a breach exposed personal data for about 31,000 patients, including in some cases their Social Security numbers and clinical information. | Continue reading
Tesla plans to cut its board of directors from 11 to seven in a move the electric-car maker says will allow the board to act more nimbly and efficiently. | Continue reading
Eric Orlich and his wife Gioconda Rojas own two electric vehicles, which they charge at home in the garage thanks to solar panels on their roof. | Continue reading
A global team of experts next week will begin reviewing how the Boeing 737 Max's flight control system was approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. | Continue reading
A British computer security researcher once hailed as a "hero" for helping stem a ransomware outbreak and later accused of creating malware to attack the banking system said Friday he pleaded guilty to US criminal charges. | Continue reading
Federal regulators are reportedly considering seeking some kind of oversight of Mark Zuckerberg's leadership of Facebook over the social network giant's mishandling of users' personal information. | Continue reading
Honda is slowing production of Accord and Civic cars as U.S. buyers continue to favor SUVs and trucks. | Continue reading
As genome sequencing becomes cheaper and faster, resulting in an exponential increase in data, the need for efficiency in predicting gene function is growing, as is the need to train the next generation of scientists in bioinformatics. Researchers in the lab of Lukas Mueller, a f … | Continue reading
Nine years ago tomorrow—April 20, 2010—crude oil began leaking from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig into the Gulf of Mexico in what turned out to be the largest marine oil spill in history. A long-term study suggests the oil is still affecting the salt marshes of the Gulf Coas … | Continue reading
Physicists at the University of Zurich have developed an amazingly simple device that allows heat to flow temporarily from a cold to a warm object without an external power supply. Intriguingly, the process initially appears to contradict the fundamental laws of physics. | Continue reading
For six decades, NASA has used the vantage point of space to better understand our home planet and improve lives. A new interactive website called Space for U.S. highlights some of the many ways that NASA's Earth observations help people strengthen communities across the United S … | Continue reading
Solid-state sodium-ion batteries are far safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries, which pose a risk of fire and explosions, but their performance has been too weak to offset the safety advantages. Researchers Friday reported developing an organic cathode that dramatically i … | Continue reading
Hurricane Michael, which devastated the Florida Panhandle last fall, was actually stronger than initially measured, prompting forecasters to posthumously upgrade it from a Category 4 storm to a Category 5, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday. | Continue reading
Since the CRISPR genome editing technology was invented in 2012, it has shown great promise to treat a number of intractable diseases. However, scientists have struggled to identify potential off-target effects in therapeutically relevant cell types, which remains the main barrie … | Continue reading
What will a three-degree-warmer world look like? How will plants fare in more extreme weather conditions? When experiencing stress or damage from various sources, plants use chloroplast-to-nucleus communication to regulate gene expression and help them cope. | Continue reading
In "Misogynistic Men Online: How the Red Pill Helped Elect Trump," published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Pierce Alexander Dignam and Deana A. Rohlinger examine the transformation of online alt-right forums from marginal spaces of misogynistic collective ide … | Continue reading
In "A New Historical Inscription of Sargon II from Karkemish," published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Gianni Marchesi translates a recently discovered inscription of the Assyrian King Sargon II found at the ruins of the ancient city of Karkemish. The inscription, which … | Continue reading
When a drop of sea spray lands on a rock and heats under the midday sun, the salt crystalizes and falls out of the evaporating water as a crystal—helping to power the Earth's atmosphere and leaving a delicious kernel of spice for dinner. | Continue reading
Delivering modern electricity is a numbers game. From power plant output to consumer usage patterns, grid operators juggle a complex set of variables to keep the lights on. Cloud-based tools can help manage all of these data, but utility owners and system operators are concerned … | Continue reading
Lithium-ion batteries are expected to have a global market value of $47 billion by 2023. They are used in numerous applications, because they offer relatively high energy density (storage capacity), high operating voltage, long shelf life and little "memory effect"—a reduction in … | Continue reading
Many if not most Americans have never crossed the U.S. border with Mexico by land or spent any time in that region. | Continue reading
Want to try your hand at negotiating during a crisis? Think you have a plan that could get the U.S. out of Afghanistan? Confident you could keep a nation secure when multi-party international diplomacy is more important than warfare? Strategy-based board games let you test your p … | Continue reading
Mass shootings happen with numbing frequency in the United States. Despite the extraordinary tragedy of these events, such as the shooting at Columbine High School twenty years ago this week, little progress has been made in policy and law to prevent them from happening again. | Continue reading
Like a metal python, the huge pipe snaking through a CERN high-tech hall is actually a new electrical transmission line. This superconducting line is the first of its kind and allows vast quantities of electrical current to be transported within a pipe of a relatively small diame … | Continue reading
Tom Breukel analysed some 250 stone axes from the Caribbean and reconstructed their biographies, thus increasing our knowledge of production and trade in the period around the arrival of Columbus. His Ph.D. defence is on 18 April. | Continue reading
A team of researchers from China, the U.S. and Australia has found that adding the rare-earth element samarium to piezoelectric crystals can dramatically improve their performance. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their work and how well the al … | Continue reading
Researchers in Korea have designed an ultrathin display that can project dynamic, multi-colored, 3-D holographic images, according to a study published in Nature Communications. | Continue reading
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) scientists have developed a sustainable way to demonstrate a new genetic modification that can increase the yield of natural oil in seeds by up to 15 per cent in laboratory conditions. | Continue reading
A KAIST research team developed a microfluidic-based drug screening chip that identifies synergistic interactions between two antibiotics in eight hours. This chip can be a cell-based drug screening platform for exploring critical pharmacological patterns of antibiotic interactio … | Continue reading
The exchange of nitrogen between the atmosphere and organic matter is crucial for life on Earth because nitrogen is a major component of essential molecules such as proteins and DNA. One major route for this exchange, discovered only in the 1990s, is the anammox pathway found in … | Continue reading
A trip to the Outer Banks is a tradition for some North Carolina families and a bucket-list destination for other tourists. A new study from North Carolina State University asked visitors for their reactions to having travel plans disrupted by coastal hazards like washed-out road … | Continue reading
Lifestyle transition is a fundamental mechanism that fungi have evolved to survive and proliferate in different environments. As a typical nematode-trapping fungus, Arthrobotrys oligospora switches from saprophytes to predators on induction of nematode prey. During its induced li … | Continue reading