Many countries have made commitments to restore huge areas of forest as part of the Bonn Challenge, organized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. For example, Costa Rica has promised to preserve 1 million hectares (3,861 square miles) of forest by 2020—about 20 … | Continue reading
Google challenged thousands of teenage girls to design games they wanted to see in the world. And now some of their games are hitting the Google Play store for Android users to play. | Continue reading
Can silica gel desiccant packs, often found in shoe boxes and electronics, be the answer to our energy challenges for buildings? A four-year project proves yes, sort of. | Continue reading
A new anti-thrombosis drug based on magnetite nanoparticles developed at ITMO University has been successfully tested on animals. Preclinical studies showed the drug's high efficacy and lack of side effects. Clot dissolution time of the new drug is 20 times shorter than traditio … | Continue reading
Quantum Hall ferromagnets are among the purest magnets in the world—and one of the most difficult to study. These 2-D magnets can only be made in temperatures less than a degree above absolute zero and in high magnetic fields, about the scale of an MRI. | Continue reading
A pair of researchers has found evidence at the Tulán-52 excavation in Chile that suggests the need for a reinterpretation of how the stone complex was used. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, Lautaro Núñez with Universidad Católica del Norte and Catherine Perlès … | Continue reading
Global demands for food and energy are driving research on sustainably using our planet's fast-depleting natural resources. One creative initiative looked to ancient land-use systems that supported millions of people with no apparent negative effect on biodiversity and ecosystem … | Continue reading
EU research has investigated protein profiles for individual pigs so the producer will be able to determine the cut of meat from the genetics of the pig. With genomic analysis, there has been considerable progress made in determining the variability of genomes in all main livesto … | Continue reading
EU-funded researchers developed a fresh approach to fighting forest fires based on a new instant foam technology. | Continue reading
Portal, Facebook's talking speaker, is not a snooping device—that's a message the social network says has gotten lost in the coverage leading up to the device's launch. | Continue reading
Both sides in the debate over whether Bay Area businesses should pay more taxes to help solve the region's housing, traffic and affordability problems predict that cities will increasingly turn to squeezing Big Tech after voters in three cities approved new levies aimed at tech c … | Continue reading
Mental health and neurological disorders are a growing epidemic. In the U.S., nearly one in every five people has a mental health condition. | Continue reading
Researchers at Umeå university in Sweden have published a new study showing that the gut bacteria can carry information of past experiences of an altered environment from parents to offspring. Eggs and sperm are not the only information carriers from one generation to the next. | Continue reading
In a process known as directed evolution, scientists reengineer biomolecules to find ones that perform beneficial new functions. The field is revolutionizing drug development, chemical engineering and other applications, but to realize its promise involves painstaking and time-co … | Continue reading
Geographers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have found that coastal vegetation such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes may be the most effective habitats to mitigate carbon emissions. | Continue reading
Officials with the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) have announced that at a meeting to be held next week, four of the base units used in the metric system will be redefined. The four units under review are the ampere, kilogram, mole and kelvin. | Continue reading
Could new technology from Purdue University researchers have helped save the Titanic? Engineers from Purdue have developed technology to help prevent catastrophic failures involving nuclear, energy and other materials in extreme environments. | Continue reading
An international team of researchers has found that early exposure by certain art institutions is a major factor in lifelong success as an artist. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of artistic careers over a 40-year span and the majo … | Continue reading
Research that models nearly 60 years of air quality in West Africa could lend insights into better forecasting a hazard that affects more than 350 million people in the region, according to an international team of researchers. | Continue reading
Curling snow drifts are magnified by the terrain around the 1,400 mile Dnieper River, flowing from Russia to the Black Sea. | Continue reading
In order to avoid water conflicts and to stimulate food production in sub-Saharan Africa, large-scale land acquisition should be regulated and focus on food production. These are the conclusions of a new doctoral thesis from Lund University in Sweden. | Continue reading
Parker Solar Probe is alive and well after skimming by the sun at just 15 million miles from our star's surface. This is far closer than any spacecraft has ever gone—the previous record was set by Helios B in 1976 and broken by Parker on Oct. 29—and this maneuver has exposed the … | Continue reading
If you have seen science fiction television series such as Humans or Westworld, you might be imagining a near future where intelligent, humanoid robots play an important role in meeting the needs of people, including caring for children or older relatives. | Continue reading
Mathematical modeling can improve the flu vaccine's effectiveness, according to experts at Rice University—where one such model has existed for more than 15 years—and its Baker Institute for Public Policy. | Continue reading
In 2017, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope played a pivotal role in two important breakthroughs occurring just five weeks apart. But what might seem like extraordinary good luck is really the product of research, analysis, preparation and development extending back more than … | Continue reading
The Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) instrument operates aboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite, which launched in February 2015 and observes Earth from a distance of about one million miles t … | Continue reading
Most physicists believe that the structure of spacetime is formed in an unknown way at the Planck scale, i.e., at a scale close to one trillionth of a trillionth of a metre. However, careful considerations undermine this prediction. There are quite a few arguments in favour of th … | Continue reading
A research project by Surrey's BioProChem group reveals crucial evidence about the way Listeria grows in foods – particularly when novel, milder processing techniques are applied – which could have implications for the food processing industry. | Continue reading
Human impacts are the biggest risk factor in the possible extinction of a quarter of all land-based mammals, according to a University of Queensland study. | Continue reading
Behold the common house plant, the front-yard shrub, the rhododendron around back that's seen better days since the next-door neighbors put their home on the market. | Continue reading
Cancer cells can develop resistance to the treatments designed to eliminate them. Several studies have linked stress granules (SGs), cell organelles that form transiently in response to extracellular stress, to this phenomenon. However, how SGs protect cancer cells remains unclea … | Continue reading
The quality of medical certificates written by students of medicine was better when they were taught by using the flipped classroom approach instead of traditional lecturing. A randomly selected student from the flipped classroom group had an 85 percent probability to receive a b … | Continue reading
The size of a tiny insect brain bears no comparison to the super capacity of its killer instinct and flying skills and speed. | Continue reading
A team of scientists and engineers from the Universities of Birmingham and Bristol have returned from Guatemala where they have been teaching local scientists how to use drones to map the Fuego volcano which violently erupted earlier this year. | Continue reading
The inspiration for a new book by Jeffrey Lane that examines how social media impacts the lives of black teenagers grew out of his involvement with a community initiative to engage teens online as a way of building a safer neighborhood. | Continue reading
Miniature devices for sensing biological molecules could be developed quicker thanks to a rapid prototyping method. | Continue reading
On the sidelines at European Space Weather Week 2018, in Leuven, Belgium, ESA Web TV caught up with two experts working on the fascinating science of how our Sun's raging activity affects Earth and, ultimately, the infrastructure, networks and satellites on which we rely for dail … | Continue reading
This image shows dramatic dark areas in the Sun's corona and was acquired by the SWAP instrument on ESA's Proba-2 mission at midday on Wednesday, 7 November. | Continue reading
Antibiotic resistance is a global threat that leads to more than 23,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Over-exposure to antibiotics has long been blamed, but Assistant Professor Mary Dunlop (BME) is flipping that idea on its h … | Continue reading
Crystalline perovskite cells are the key to cutting-edge thin-film solar cells. Although they already achieve very high levels of efficiency in the laboratory, commercial applications are hampered by the fact that the material is too unstable. Furthermore, there is no reliable in … | Continue reading
The simple transport of drugs directly into cells is one of the primary goals of the pharmaceutical industry. In large part, researchers still don't possess a detailed understanding at the molecular level of the processes responsible for transporting substances into and out of ce … | Continue reading
The bending of a hook into wire to fish for the handle of a basket is surprisingly challenging for young children under eight years of age. Now, cognitive biologists and comparative psychologists led by Isabelle Laumer and Alice Auersperg observed hook tool-making for the first t … | Continue reading
An unusually complex form of one of the most abundant chemical elements on Earth has been revealed in the lab for the first time. | Continue reading
An inexpensive way to make products incorporating nanoparticles—such as high-performance energy devices or sophisticated diagnostic tests—has been developed by researchers. | Continue reading
Burnt toast and dinosaur bones have a common trait, according to a new, Yale-led study. They both contain chemicals that, under the right conditions, transform original proteins into something new. It's a process that may help researchers understand how soft-tissue cells inside d … | Continue reading