The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asserts that limiting global warming to 1.5˚C could avert the most catastrophic effects of climate change. In its recent report, it laid out four means of achieving this —and all of them rely on removing carbon dioxide from the … | Continue reading
It appears that researchers in China have facilitated the birth of the first "designer baby" – actually babies, twin girls who are supposedly genetically resistant to HIV. The scientist who created the embryos, as well as some American scientists like Harvard's George Church, hav … | Continue reading
The gender gap in math and science isn't going away. Women remain less likely to enroll in math-heavy fields of study and pursue math-heavy careers. This pattern persists despite major studies finding no meaningful differences in mathematics performance among girls and boys. | Continue reading
When mass casualty incidents occur—shootings, earthquakes, multiple car pile ups—first responders can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer number of victims. When every second counts, monitoring all the victims in a chaotic situation can be difficult. Researchers at the U.S. Depart … | Continue reading
Deforestation in Brazil has reached such epic proportions that an area equivalent to one million football pitches was lost in just one year, Greenpeace said. | Continue reading
The pulp and paper industry and the wood product industry in Finland together produce three million tonnes of softwood bark as waste every year. Most of this is used in energy production, but useful raw materials can also be extracted from softwood bark to create bio-based produc … | Continue reading
University of Nottingham researchers have developed 100 percent biodegradable and edible food packaging made from plant carbohydrates and proteins to replace polluting plastic materials and improve storage, safety and shelf life. | Continue reading
Jack Dorsey, Twitter's founder and CEO, was recently reported to have questioned how the site "incentivizes people to want (the number of likes on their posts) to go up." He also said that "he was not a fan of the heart-shaped ('like') button and that Twitter would be getting rid … | Continue reading
While it is known that socioeconomic outcomes are correlated across generations, the mechanisms by which this happens are still poorly understood. The EU-supported project UNITRAN adopted a cross-disciplinary perspective to refresh existing theories and empirical evidence. | Continue reading
The amount of renewable, low-carbon, energy the UK produces is increasing, but it is very different to traditional types of power. It can't just be turned on when wanted. As a result, the capacity market scheme – essentially a programme of subsidies – was set up to help provide b … | Continue reading
A team of developers from Skolkovo, ITMO University and MIPT have presented an online service called Knomics-Biota, which allows for a comprehensive study of intestinal microbiome genetic data. Using this service, researchers can figure out what types of bacteria are present in h … | Continue reading
This is an article from Head to Head, a series in which academics from different disciplines chew over current debates. Let us know what else you'd like covered – all questions are welcome. Details of how to contact us are at the end of the article. | Continue reading
A scale model of a flying drone-car mashup has driven and hovered across an Amsterdam exhibition hall, providing a glimpse of what could be the future of urban mobility. | Continue reading
Crescent-shaped dunes called barchans are structures that appear in a wide variety of environments, including beaches and deserts, riverbeds and the seafloor, inside water pipes and oil pipelines, and on the surface of Mars and other sandy planets with an atmosphere. | Continue reading
Deer, bison and pronghorn traverse the plains in large herds…scavengers quickly sniff out carrion, sockeye salmon leap upstream, wolves attack in packs surrounding their prey, geese fly in fixed formations, possums play dead, rodents scamper into tree hollows, grizzly bears bluff … | Continue reading
There is a 75 to 80 percent chance of a moderate El Nino event forming in the next three months, possibly impacting weather patterns in several regions, the UN said Tuesday. | Continue reading
One of the most baffling puzzles of modern astrophysics is the nature of Fast Radio Bursts, which were discovered in 2007. These are seemingly rare, extremely bright flashes of light with radio wavelengths. They last only milliseconds; originate outside our galaxy, the Milky Way; … | Continue reading
An EU-funded project has recycled phosphate from exhausted extinguishing powder to produce fertilisers for agriculture and flame retardants for the wood sector. | Continue reading
Around 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of water scarcity, mostly in developing countries. Traditional reverse osmosis (R/O) desalination systems offer a solution but require sufficient electrical grid capacity. | Continue reading
When you shine a beam of light on your hand, you don't feel much, except for a little bit of heat generated by the beam. When you shine that same light into a world that is measured on the nano- or micro scale, the light becomes a powerful manipulating tool that you can use to mo … | Continue reading
Physicists from ITMO University have developed a model of an optical tractor beam to capture particles based on new artificial materials. Such a beam is capable of moving particles or cells towards the radiation source. The study showed that hyperbolic metasurfaces are promising … | Continue reading
Facebook Inc. crises this year have put immense pressure on Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, undermining her authority and tainting an image that was burnished by the social-media company's meteoric rise. | Continue reading
Using ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's NuSTAR space telescopes, a team of astronomers from Germany has detected a new ultra-luminous pulsar in the galaxy NGC 300. The finding of this pulsar, which received designation NGC 300 ULX1, is detailed in a paper published November 9 on the ar … | Continue reading
A free digital tool allows users to identify drainage patterns from deluges and identify highly vulnerable areas. The tool has been developed by a University of Copenhagen geographer with a flooded basement tale of his own. | Continue reading
Electronics salesman Leszek Jaworowski says he can't discuss Poland's coal mining with his father. They end up at loggerheads, just like many families in the southern mining region of Silesia. | Continue reading
Using data from ESA's Gaia spacecraft, astronomers have discovered a new Milky Way satellite in the constellation Antlia. The newly found dwarf galaxy, named Antlia 2, is several times larger when compared to other systems of similar luminosity. The finding is detailed in a paper … | Continue reading
Images of extreme weather and alarming headlines about climate change have become common. Last month, dire predictions about our warming planet from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were reported as distressing scenes from a devastating tsunami … | Continue reading
Archaeologists of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) found three burials of the ancient inhabitants of South America dated from 6 to 10 thousand years ago. The excavations were carried out in Atahualpa anton, Ecuador. The findings belong to the Las Vegas archeological cult … | Continue reading
The #metoo movement has brought the widespread sexual harassment experienced by women in the workplace to the fore. Women in traditionally male jobs and workplaces are even more likely to experience gender discrimination and sexual harassment. This has been described as "the 'ma … | Continue reading
As disastrous storms, floods, and fires become more common in the US and elsewhere, humans are just beginning to appreciate some of the impacts of global warming. But these impacts would be much worse if the ocean hadn't absorbed roughly 45 percent of the carbon dioxide humans ha … | Continue reading
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have examined the mechanisms behind the resistance at the electrode-electrolyte interface of all-solid-state batteries. Their findings will aid in the development of much better Li-ion batteries with very fast charge/discharge rates. | Continue reading
Recent claims of the world's first gene-edited babies have sparked a strong response, to say the least. In particular, the Southern University of Science and Technology, which employs the researcher involved, He Jiankui, stated in a press release that they were not aware of his w … | Continue reading
We have conducted what we believe to be Australia's first quantitative research on young people's behaviour in nightclubs and the findings present a disturbing picture. | Continue reading
The near future of the global economy looks extremely bleak. This pessimistic forecast comes from advanced statistical analysis of the S&P 500 stock market index, recently published by scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow. B … | Continue reading
As 2018 draws to a close, powerful tropical cyclones continue to make headlines. In August, tropical cyclone Lane wrought huge damage in the US; it was quickly followed by Hurricane Florence. Most tropical cyclones – the word is used interchangeably with "hurricanes" – of this ki … | Continue reading
Russian scientists with colleagues from the U.K., Spain, Brazil, Japan and Austria have fully described the mechanism of fungal luminescence. They report that fungi utilize only four key enzymes to produce light and that transfer of these enzymes into other organisms makes them b … | Continue reading
When working to unlock a cell's secrets, collecting and delivering the samples for analysis was a path of loss. Each transfer resulted in fewer cells to study. Detailed analysis of proteins, a vital part of how cells work, has only been possible with samples of thousands to milli … | Continue reading
Large amounts of black carbon particles from wildfires reach the stratosphere where they can induce strong local heating and thus influence regional climate. | Continue reading
The Big Bang theory and the question of how life on Earth began has fascinated scientists for decades, but now new research from The University of Western Australia suggests the conditions that resulted from the Big Bang are different to what we thought. | Continue reading