Imagine if you could look at a small amount of an unidentified chemical element – less than 100 atoms in size – and know what type of material the element would become in large quantities before you actually saw the larger accumulation. | Continue reading
When people are in the early stages of an undiagnosed disease, immediate tests that lead to treatment are the best first steps. But a blood draw—usually performed by a medical professional armed with an uncomfortably large needle—might not be quickest, least painful or most effec … | Continue reading
Two hundred and fifty years ago this year, James Cook's ship the Endeavour arrived off the eastern coast of New Zealand. The following circumnavigation marked the beginning of ongoing European contact with the indigenous population, and eventually mass British immigration from 18 … | Continue reading
The Greenland Ice Sheet emits tons of methane according to a new study, showing that subglacial biological activity impacts the atmosphere far more than previously thought. | Continue reading
Like most of their stout-bodied, flippered kin, Magellanic penguins spend much of their lives in the ocean. From late autumn through winter and into spring in the Southern Hemisphere, these South American penguins swim off the coast of southern Brazil, Uruguay and northern Argent … | Continue reading
Now that the New Year's Eve party is over, it's time to lay off the balloons and glitter – both are scourges to the environment. | Continue reading
Traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) are among the Earth's ionosphere irregularities. They represent wave-like electron density structures propagating in the ionosphere. The motion of TIDs modulates the electron density distribution in space. It leads to a modification of pl … | Continue reading
Apple cut its revenue outlook for the latest quarter Wednesday, citing steeper-than-expected "economic deceleration" in China and emerging markets. | Continue reading
Tesla made about 9,300 more vehicles than it delivered last year, raising concerns among industry analysts that inventory is growing as demand for the company's electric cars may be starting to wane. | Continue reading
A Chinese lunar rover landed on the far side of the moon on Thursday, in a global first that boosts Beijing's ambitions to become a space superpower. | Continue reading
A new treefrog species was discovered during a two-week expedition to a remote tabletop mountain at Cordillera del Cóndor, a largely unexplored range in the eastern Andes. | Continue reading
A team of experimentalists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and theoreticians at University of Alabama Birmingham discovered a remarkably long-lived new state of matter in an iron pnictide superconductor, which reveals a laser-induced formation of collective beh … | Continue reading
A NASA spacecraft traveling 4 billion miles from Earth has sent back its first close-up pictures of the most distant celestial object ever explored, and it looks like a reddish snowman. | Continue reading
Winter snows are accumulating in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, creating the snowpacks that serve as a primary source of water for the western U.S. | Continue reading
One answer to our greenhouse gas challenges may be right under our feet: Soil scientists Oliver Chadwick of UC Santa Barbara and Marc Kramer of Washington State University have found that minerals in soil can hold on to a significant amount of carbon pulled from the atmosphere. I … | Continue reading
The Sahara desert is one of the harshest, most inhospitable places on the planet, covering much of North Africa in some 3.6 million square miles of rock and windswept dunes. But it wasn't always so desolate and parched. Primitive rock paintings and fossils excavated from the regi … | Continue reading
In 2014, plant biologists with the California Department of Agriculture reported an alarming discovery: native wildflowers and herbs, grown in nurseries and then planted in ecological restoration sites around California, were infected with Phytophthora tentaculata, a deadly exoti … | Continue reading
The "magic carpet" featured in tales from "One Thousand and One Nights" to Disney's "Aladdin" captures the imagination not only because it can fly, but because it can also wave, flap, and alter its shape to serve its riders. With that inspiration, and the assistance of catalytic … | Continue reading
As scientific funding becomes increasingly scarce, professors in STEM fields spend more time in their offices writing grant applications: by one estimate, as much as one-fifth of their research time. That takes time and energy away from teaching students, training young researche … | Continue reading
By studying the behavior of a deck of cards, and stacks of other materials, like steel and aluminum, scientists at Drexel University are proving the existence of a buckling phenomenon that happens inside layered materials when they are put under pressure. The discovery could shap … | Continue reading
Last month's eruption of the Anak Krakatau volcano in Indonesia and the deadly tsunami that followed caused two University of Rhode Island scientists to spring to action. | Continue reading
Seagrass beds are so effective in protecting tropical beaches from erosion, that they can reduce the need for regular, expensive beach nourishments that are used now. In a recent article in the journal BioScience, biologists and engineers from The Netherlands and Mexico describe … | Continue reading
The more a company's board is independent from management, the less likely it will become entangled in corporate misconduct, according to new findings, from a meta-analysis of 135 studies, published in The Journal of Management. The site of independence also matters. Independence … | Continue reading
Arguably, one of the world's most famous insects, the monarch butterfly, is currently experiencing dire problems with its migration in eastern North America. Fewer and fewer monarchs are successfully reaching their overwintering destinations, and scientists aren't sure why. Becau … | Continue reading
In the early 1990s, Acton Lake in southwestern Ohio had a muddy problem. Large amounts of sediment from nearby farms were entering the lake's watershed. These sediments traveled through streams draining the landscape and were filling up the lake. | Continue reading
Most hummingbirds have bills and tongues exquisitely designed to slip inside a flower, lap up nectar and squeeze every last drop of precious sugar water from their tongue to fuel their frenetic lifestyle. | Continue reading
Teams that come from behind do not have a greater chance of winning in overtime, according to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers in a study published in the Journal of Economic Psychology, debunking theories of how psychological momentum in sports and in life le … | Continue reading
New developments in antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) with antibiofilm properties are rapidly materializing. ABP works by inhibiting antibiotic resistant bacteria in the biofilm through nucleotide signaling molecules. | Continue reading
When it comes to particle accelerators, magnets are one key to success. Powerful magnetic fields keep particle beams "on track" as they're ramped up to higher energy, crashed into collisions for physics experiments, or delivered to patients to zap tumors. Innovative magnets have … | Continue reading
In a landmark move, a group of MPs recently published a working definition of the term Islamophobia. They defined it as "rooted in racism", and as "a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness". | Continue reading
Alzheimer's disease is caused by aggregates of amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides. This aggregation is accelerated at the cell membrane surface. Using molecular dynamics simulations and NMR experiments, the research group at ExCELLS has revealed the reason for this phenomenon. The findings … | Continue reading
Molecules of triacylglycerol (TAG), formed by attaching three molecules of fatty acid (FA) to a glycerol backbone, are the main constituents of vegetable oil in plants and fats in animals and humans. TAG plays an important role in cellular metabolism as a universal storage form a … | Continue reading
Archaeologists in Iceland have for decades examined the remains of more than 350 graves from the Viking Age. In approximately 150 examples, teeth or bones of horses were found. Geneticists and archaeologists have now examined ancient DNA from 19 horses in such graves, and found t … | Continue reading
A drill originally developed to break through Martian rocks is set to be deployed to Antarctica on a mission which could help us understand the history of Earth's changing climate. | Continue reading
Apparently not all supernovas work. And when they fail, they leave behind a half-chewed remnant, still burning from leftover heat but otherwise lifeless: a zombie star. Astronomers aren't sure how many of these should-be-dead creatures lurk in the interstellar depths, but with re … | Continue reading
The transition from electronic integrated circuits to faster, more energy-efficient and interference-free optical circuits is one of the most important goals in the development of photon technologies. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are already used today for transmitting and … | Continue reading
Today's smart cities rely on networks: squillions of semiconductor devices that constantly pulse electromagnetic waves (light and radio frequencies) through telecommunications satellites. | Continue reading
Pioneering new techniques will enable leading aquarium visitor attractions to breed their own tropical fish, following a new collaboration. | Continue reading
Washington University in St. Louis announced that its X-Calibur instrument, a telescope that measures the polarization of X-rays arriving from distant neutron stars, black holes and other exotic celestial bodies, launched today from McMurdo Station, Antarctica. | Continue reading
In 1961, famed astronomer Frank Drake created a formula for estimating the number of extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) that could exist within our galaxy. Known as the "Drake Equation," this formula demonstrated that even by the most conservative estimates, our galaxy was lik … | Continue reading
Quantum computing and quantum information processing technology have attracted attention in recently emerging fields. Among many important and fundamental issues in science, solving the Schroedinger equation (SE) of atoms and molecules is one of the ultimate goals in chemistry, p … | Continue reading
Using observations from the ALMA radio observatory in Chile, researchers have observed, for the first time, a warped disk around an infant protostar that formed just several tens of thousands of years ago. This implies that the misalignment of planetary orbits in many planetary s … | Continue reading
It's our experience that most people think archaeology mainly means digging in the dirt. | Continue reading
In October this year, the first salmon were farmed in a new fish production prototype in Trøndelag, Norway. With a rigid steel construction and a water current generator, the new Aquatraz fish cage both prevents fish escape and keeps the fish in shape, while researchers from the … | Continue reading
A new imaging technique developed by LMU researchers is garnering lots of attention. Based on a method for making tissues, organs and even whole organisms transparent, it promises to transform studies of the nervous system in particular. | Continue reading