A ricocheting jet blasting from a giant black hole has been captured by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, as reported in our latest press release. In this composite image of Cygnus A, X-rays from Chandra (red, green, and blue that represent low, medium and high energy X-rays) are … | Continue reading
This month's rare total eclipse will be the last one visible from the United States until 2022. | Continue reading
UC Merced researchers have evidence that California's forests are especially vulnerable to multi-year droughts because their health depends on water stored several feet below ground. | Continue reading
Much of the growing global concern about the plastics polluting our oceans and clogging our landfills has focused on reducing consumption and reusing where we can. But there's a reason manufacturers and consumers struggle to substitute other materials— for many uses, plastics are … | Continue reading
In Germany this week, the legal limbo that defines cyberspace around the world was on full display. | Continue reading
Outbreaks of algae have killed up to a million fish in the Murray Darling Basin over the last two weeks. The phenomena of "algae blooms", when the population of algae in a river rapidly grows and dies, can be devastating to local wildlife, ecosystems and people. But what are alga … | Continue reading
The first ever images taken from the surface of the far side of the moon have been released following the Chinese National Space Administration's (CNSA) successful landing there. The lander Chang'e 4 and rover Yutu 2 follow from Chang'e 3 and the original Yutu rover that were dep … | Continue reading
Face recognition is becoming an increasingly common feature of biometric verification systems. Now, a team from India has used a multi-class support vector machine to extend the way in which such systems work to take into account a person's age. Jayant Jagtap of Symbiosis Interna … | Continue reading
An international team of researchers led by ANU is helping to build a safe data superhighway for the highly anticipated quantum internet, which promises a new era of artificial intelligence and ultra-secure communication. | Continue reading
Scientists often need to make sense of complex systems without knowing the important parameters or even without access to all the information. A collaboration of network theorists has reported a common frame for addressing these problems using only one tool. | Continue reading
Long, heavy limbs such as arms or legs differ fundamentally from short, light limbs such as fingers in their ability to execute fast movements. While the central nervous system has actively controls fast movements of large limbs, passive muscle force can suffice for the movement … | Continue reading
Plant breeders at the University of Göttingen and Agrecol have launched a joint initiative to protect seeds as common property. Agrecol developed an Open Source Seed Licence, which legally protects seeds as commons (i.e., a natural resource accessible to all members of society) a … | Continue reading
A Purdue University alumnus is using clean, solar energy to drastically reduce the electric bill for his northern Indiana hog farm with the help of a company based in the Purdue Research Park. | Continue reading
DNA is a molecular manual that contains instructions for building life. And, like any manual, DNA isn't all that useful if it remains unopened and unread. In order to transcribe DNA, the enzyme RNA polymerase, or RNAP, must pry open its two strands, a process known as "melting" o … | Continue reading
Scientists from Skoltech and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) studied the protein and lipid composition of a mammoth bone found near the Yana River in northeastern Siberia. Their study is one of the few pioneering endeavors in paleolipidomics—a frontier research … | Continue reading
Galaxies come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Some of the most significant differences among galaxies, however, relate to where and how they form new stars. Compelling research to explain these differences has been elusive, but that is about to change. | Continue reading
The first appearance of trilobites in the fossil record dates to 521 million years ago in the oceans of the Cambrian Period, when the continents were still inhospitable to most life forms. Few groups of animals adapted as successfully as trilobites, which were arthropods that liv … | Continue reading
The weight of elephants living in zoos fluctuates over the course of their adult lives in cycles lasting around a hundred months, researchers at the University of Zurich have found. The fluctuation is linked to the particular pattern of tooth change in elephants, which results in … | Continue reading
The analysis of sensor data of machines, plants or buildings makes it possible to detect anomalous states early and thus to avoid further damage. For this purpose, the monitoring data is searched for anomalies. By means of machine learning, anomaly detection can already be partia … | Continue reading
The overabundance of fast fashion—readily available, inexpensively made clothing—has created an environmental and social justice crisis, claims a new paper from an expert on environmental health at Washington University in St. Louis. | Continue reading
Out of the box, crystalline MOFs (metal-organic frameworks) look like ordinary salt crystals. But MOFs are anything but ordinary crystals – deep within each crystalline "grain" lies an intricate network of thin, molecular cages that can pull harmful gas emissions like carbon diox … | Continue reading
A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time, according to a new paper in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal. They did this by aiming high-power pulses of laser li … | Continue reading
Private sponsorship programs for Syrian refugees should require settlement services, such as support finding employment and access to language classes, rather than leaving resources entirely up to private sponsors, according to a University of Alberta study. | Continue reading
If you can't afford a car or Uber, and there's no major public transit route in your neighbourhood, finding a job and keeping it can be an uphill battle. | Continue reading
Vodafone said Thursday it planned to cut up to 1,200 jobs in Spain as it streamlines its organisation to cope with a drop in revenue and profits in a fiercely competitive telecommunications market. | Continue reading
One of Target's biggest competitive advantages, the stores it has sprinkled across the country, accounted for a quarter of all online sales in November and December. Goods ordered online and picked up at stores surged 60 percent in that period. | Continue reading
The nutrient cycles that underpin how carbon is stored and released from two of Greenland's glaciers is significantly affected by subglacial weathering, a new study has found, shedding further light on the geochemistry of meltwaters. | Continue reading
The last component of British-built chameleon satellite, Eutelsat Quantum, is getting ready to leave home for good. | Continue reading
Researchers at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST) have developed nano-catalysts that can reduce the overall cost of clean energy fuel cells, according to a study published in the journal of Applied Catalysis B: Environmental. | Continue reading
The stellar wind from a newborn star in the Orion Nebula prevents more new stars from forming nearby. That is the result of new research conducted by an international research team led by the University of Cologne (Germany) and the University of Leiden (Netherlands) using NASA's … | Continue reading
For the first time, researchers have succeeded in producing what are known as spin wave overtones. The technology paves the way for increasing the data transmission rate of wireless communication. | Continue reading
An EU rule forcing search engines to comply with requests to remove links should be limited to Europe, the senior legal advisor to the bloc's top court said Thursday in a boost for web giant Google. | Continue reading
Almost 640 flights were cancelled in Germany Thursday as security staff went on strike at three airports, meaning disruption for around 100,000 passengers. | Continue reading
Japan may have underpaid billions of yen in unemployment benefits after it emerged that the government has been incorrectly collecting labour market data for as long as 15 years. | Continue reading
Once confined to the realms of science fiction, near real-time translation devices that whisper discretely into your ear during a conversation are finally coming of age thanks to leaps in AI and cloud computing. | Continue reading
Japanese technology giant SoftBank has invested $2 billion in shared-office provider WeWork, considerably less than the US start-up was hoping for to fund its expansion. | Continue reading
A Canadian Atlantic coast town asked for help from the federal fisheries department on Wednesday to help get rid of some 40 stranded seals wreaking havoc, and blocking roads and doors to homes and businesses. | Continue reading
It has GPS, lasers, computer vision, and uses machine learning and sensors to be more efficient. This is the new high-tech farm equipment from John Deere, which made its first Consumer Electronics Show appearance this week to highlight the importance of tech in farming. | Continue reading
Carlos Ghosn's prolonged detention under what critics see as Japan's opaque and draconian legal system has alarmed foreign executives and sparked questions over the country's ability to attract overseas talent. | Continue reading
Rolls-Royce Motor Cars sold a record-high number of its luxury vehicles last year, with purchases soaring worldwide, the German-owned company announced Thursday. | Continue reading