Ever since companies began developing self-driving cars, people have asked how designers will address the moral question of who a self-driving car should kill if a fatal crash is unavoidable. Recent research suggests this question may be even more difficult for car makers to answ … | Continue reading
Shaming perpetrators of human-rights abuse and shocking audiences with visceral imagery can be an ineffective—and counterproductive—approach to improving humanitarian conditions, according to new research from Case Western Reserve University. | Continue reading
No animal alive today looks quite like a duckbilled platypus, but about 250 million years ago something very similar swam the shallow seas in what is now China, finding prey by touch with a cartilaginous bill. The newly discovered marine reptile Eretmorhipis carrolldongi from the … | Continue reading
Because of its unique dynamic and thermodynamic forcing, the Tibetan Plateau is an active region for convective systems, with 'popcorn-like' cloud systems frequently occurring and developing over its central and eastern parts. When these cloud systems move eastward out of the Pla … | Continue reading
Scientists have confirmed the presence of an amino acid, BMAA, thought to be associated with a higher incidence of neurodegenerative disease, in eastern Australian freshwater systems, and have identified some of the cyanobacterial species responsible for its production. | Continue reading
China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched five years ago, includes more than 120 countries, linked by six proposed land-based Economic Corridors between core cities and key ports along traditional international transport routes. But, as new evidence reported in the journal … | Continue reading
Single-atom catalysts (SACs) with atomically dispersed active metal centers on supports represent an intermediary between heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. Therefore, understanding the homogeneous catalysis prototype creates a great opportunity for designing SACs and devel … | Continue reading
In recent years, many cities have initiated tree planting campaigns to offset carbon dioxide emissions and improve urban microclimates. | Continue reading
As parents of identical twins will tell you, they are never actually identical, even though they have the same genes. This is also true in the plant world. Now, new research by the University of Cambridge is helping to explain why 'twin' plants, with identical genes, grown in ide … | Continue reading
It has taken researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias almost three years to produce the deepest image of the universe ever taken from space, by recovering a large quantity of "lost" light around the largest galaxies in the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field survey. | Continue reading
China's recent scientific achievements – including its embryo gene-editing research and historic moon landing – appear to be surrounded by secrecy. The global scientific community first learned about its experiments modifying the DNA of human embryos through rumours in 2015. And … | Continue reading
Educators are looking for ways to help young black women move into the growing field of science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM. | Continue reading
Most of the 10,000 ships lost to the bottom of the Great Lakes in wrecks over the past 400 years are still lost – hidden somewhere in 6 quadrillion gallons of water. Finding anything in a lake is a lesson in humility, so life as a freshwater biologist is always humbling. If we ca … | Continue reading
When it comes to understanding the horrors of the Holocaust – one of the key aims of International Holocaust Remembrance Day – most millennials are woefully lacking in knowledge. That much was laid bare in a 2018 study commissioned by the Claims Conference – an organization that … | Continue reading
New Zealand and other islands have experienced invasions of rats, Europe has seen the arrival of the spinycheek crayfish, spreading a deadly disease called crayfish plague: invasive species can put native animal and plant species on the brink of extinction. They often go undetect … | Continue reading
Proactive zebrafish appear to have a much stronger wake-sleep rhythm than reactive fish. In the most reactive fish, rhythmicity appears to be lacking completely. This is shown with research by Leiden biologists, published in December 2018 in the journal BMC Biology. | Continue reading
Modern technology makes it possible to sequence individual cells and to identify which genes are currently being expressed in each cell. These methods are sensitive and consequently error prone. Devices, environment and biology itself can be responsible for failures and differenc … | Continue reading
Microsoft's Bing search engine resumed service to Chinese users on Thursday, after a disruption raised fears among social media users that it was the latest foreign website to be blocked by censors. | Continue reading
We stand amazed by the vitality of printed books, a more than 500-year-old technique, both on and offline. We have observed over the years all of the dialogue which books have created around themselves, through 150 interviews with readers, bookshops, publishers, bloggers, library … | Continue reading
Trying to explain how DNA and RNA evolved to form such neat spirals has been a notorious enigma in science. But a new study suggests the rotation may have occurred with ease billions of years ago when RNA's chemical ancestors casually spun into spiraled strands. | Continue reading
Researchers facing a future with a larger population and more uncertain climate are looking for ways to improve crop yields, and they're looking to photosynthetic bacteria for engineering solutions. | Continue reading
Classrooms in many parts of the world are increasingly diverse. International migration patterns have significantly changed the cultural make-up of many industrialized societies and, by extension, their school-aged populations. | Continue reading
Across the Great Lakes, collections of underwater rocks have been incubators for native fish eggs. | Continue reading
If ship hulls were coated with special high-tech air trapping materials, up to one percent of global CO2 emissions could be avoided. This is the conclusion reached by scientists from the University of Bonn together with colleagues from St. Augustin and Rostock in a recent study. … | Continue reading
Three Northern Arizona University researchers completed the first study ever done that looks at how much people are willing to pay to protect aquifer recharge, as well as the forest ecosystem, culturally significant lands and recreational access as outcomes of forest restoration. | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Exeter have developed an innovative technique that could help create the next generation of everyday flexible electronics. | Continue reading
A team of scientists from I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (MSMU) have discovered that earthworms efficiently process rice straw and enrich the soil with organic matter, increasing its fertility while preventing the burning of the straw, which takes a long time … | Continue reading
Inkjet-printed switches make multiple frequency bands easier and cheaper to manage in wireless devices. | Continue reading
Although many people are aware that chromosomal damage and shortening contribute to the aging process, understanding how chromosomal defects occur is about more than just finding a way to turn back the clock. Large changes in the structure of chromosomes, known as gross chromosom … | Continue reading
Researchers have developed a new approach to multicolor holography that could be used to make 3-D color displays for augmented reality glasses, smartphones or heads-up displays without any bulky optical components. | Continue reading
An astonishing discovery is made by a research team including Brad Rosenheim, Ph.D., associate professor of geological oceanography in the USF College of Marine Science. He just returned from a six-week expedition to Antarctica where he lived in a tent under constant sunlight in … | Continue reading
In an ordinary house tucked away on a quiet street in Oakland, Josiah Zayner stands over a container filled with green tree frogs with a syringe in hand. | Continue reading
Public universities across Canada are committed to addressing the calls to action included in the final report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). There is a general expectation that academic institutions and faculty members across the country will contrib … | Continue reading
Wow. Sunday night's total lunar eclipse offered an amazing view, and for a few astute observers, a little surprise. | Continue reading
Medical isotopes are used daily around the world to visualize and diagnose cancer, heart disease and other serious ailments. However, the production of these lifesaving medical isotopes can emit gases that, while posing no danger to the public, have features that look similar to … | Continue reading
New SFI research challenges a popular conception of how machine learning algorithms "think" about certain tasks. | Continue reading
The world is "losing the race" against climate change, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned Thursday at the elite Davos forum, demanding bolder action from governments to arrest catastrophic warming. | Continue reading
Elon Musk indicates that the SpaceX Starhopper has been damaged after being toppled in 50 mile-per-hour winds. This will take a few weeks to repair. | Continue reading
Much like our fight-or-flight response, our cells also have a stress autopilot mode. An oxygen dropoff, overheating, or an invading toxin can trigger the cellular stress response – a cascade of molecular changes that are the cell's last-ditch effort to survive. | Continue reading
Japanese whalers discussed plans Thursday to resume their commercial hunting along the northeastern coast on July 1, for the first time in three decades. | Continue reading
After the Second World War of 1939-1945, Western democracies had attempted to reconcile their criminal law in democratic, "republican" terms aimed at the citizen. However, in the last two decades, new criminal law has been written that pertains not to the citizen, but to the fore … | Continue reading