The latest Living Planet report from the WWF makes for grim reading: a 60% decline in wild animal populations since 1970, collapsing ecosystems, and a distinct possibility that the human species will not be far behind. The report repeatedly stresses that humanity's consumption is … | Continue reading
Solving a complex problem quickly requires careful tradeoffs – and simulating the behavior of materials is no exception. To get answers that predict molecular workings feasibly, scientists must swap in mathematical approximations that speed computation at accuracy's expense. | Continue reading
As if you needed another reason to enjoy cocoa products, a recent study by Tufts researchers found that epicatechin, a flavonoid found in cocoa, certain fruits and beans, and green tea, has protective anti-aging effects in healthy mice. | Continue reading
The presence of uranium in groundwater can lead to severe health problems, from renal failure to cancer. Standard methods to detect uranium involve time-consuming processes and expensive, non-portable equipment. Measurements are therefore rarely performed in-field, which adds tim … | Continue reading
For decades, scientists have viewed the brain as a veritable black box—and now Catherine Dulac and Xiaowei Zhuang are poised to open it. | Continue reading
On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka, "Oumuamua). In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducte … | Continue reading
Google may not know whether you've been bad or good but it knows when you're sleeping and when you're awake. If you use an Android device with the Chrome browser running, the tech giant knows whether you are traveling by foot or car, where you shop, how often you use your Starbuc … | Continue reading
The 2015 UN Paris Climate Accords brought energy regulation's role in climate change to the international forefront. And even though the United States has since withdrawn from the agreement, energy development decisions both here and abroad have consequences felt around the globe … | Continue reading
Russian physicists have developed a method for drastically narrowing the emission spectrum of an ordinary diode laser, like that in a laser pointer. This makes their device a useful replacement for the more complex and expensive single-frequency lasers, enabling the creation of c … | Continue reading
As quantum technology continues to come into its own, investment is happening on a global scale. Soon, we could see improvements in machine learning models, financial risk assessment, efficiency of chemical catalysts and the discovery of new medications. | Continue reading
The question of whether we're alone in the universe has haunted humankind for thousands of years, and it's one astronomer Jill Tarter has tried to answer for much of her life. Tarter, chair emeritus of the Center for SETI Research, worked as a project scientist for NASA's SETI pr … | Continue reading
After two years traveling through space, the NASA OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has started to obtain images of the mission target, primitive asteroid Bennu. As part of the scientific team, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias researchers Javier Licandro and Julia de León have already st … | Continue reading
The northeastern rim region of Hellas impact basin, located in the southern hemisphere of Mars, contained numerous ephemeral lakes throughout Mars' history, a new study reveals. A new paper published in Astrobiology examines a region where depressions may have been hosted ponding … | Continue reading
Many deadly and newly emerging viruses like Ebola and Zika circulate in wild animal and insect communities long before spreading to humans and causing severe disease. However, finding these natural virus hosts – which could help prevent the spread to humans – currently poses an e … | Continue reading
Ageing and a low life expectancy are caused, at least partly, by oxidative stress. A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Ivana Ivanovi-Burmazovi from the Chair of Bioinorganic Chemistry at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), together with researchers from th … | Continue reading
An insect larva found in the caves of Intervales State Park, an Atlantic Rainforest remnant in the municipality of Ribeirão Grande, São Paulo State, Brazil, was initially of no interest to the research group led by biochemist Vadim Viviani, a professor at the Federal University o … | Continue reading
The new Norse World database will make it easier for researchers to study perceptions of the surrounding world in Medieval Scandinavian literature. The new tool is a digital resource aimed at researchers in fields such as language history and philology, comparative literature, ma … | Continue reading
A research group from Kumamoto University, Japan, has discovered a new neurogenic mechanism responsible for brain development. By applying proprietary technology to detect trace proteins in living organisms, they found that a novel protein called Matrin-3 is responsible for deter … | Continue reading
Researchers from the MPSD's Department of Atomically Resolved Dynamics at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, the Centre for Ultrafast Imaging (all in Hamburg), the University of Toronto in Canada and the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, have developed a new method to watch bi … | Continue reading
A top Australian defence firm with major US Navy contracts has admitted its personnel files were breached and that it was the subject of an extortion attempt. | Continue reading
In mid-November, a company called Rocket Lab will try to send six small satellites into orbit around Earth—a fairly banal undertaking, save for the size of the launch rocket. | Continue reading
In a film genre more popular than ever, courageous superheroes wield special powers to protect the public from villains. But despite positive themes these films may offer, new research suggests superhero characters often idolized by young viewers may send a strongly negative mess … | Continue reading
Television has a large impact on children's lives; studies have shown that for every 3 hours children spend in school, 5 hours are spent watching TV. While other studies have looked at how television impacts aspects of childhood, such as diet and exercise, little research has bee … | Continue reading
Using advanced genomic techniques, a team of researchers led by Dr. Hua (Emily) Ying of The Australian National University (ANU) and Prof David Miller of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University (JCU), have found that the group of c … | Continue reading
New research led by Lijun Song, associate professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, and graduate student Phillip Pettis suggests that knowing people in high and diverse positions may be good or bad for your health. The culprit? Economic inequality. | Continue reading
The day after Halloween, something scary may still lurk inside your showerhead. Researchers at CIRES have identified Mycobacterium as the most abundant genus of bacteria growing in the slimy "biofilm" that lines the inside of residential showerheads—and some of those bacteria can … | Continue reading
A new study led by researchers at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science found that a common coral species might have evolved unique immune strategies to cope with environmental change. | Continue reading
A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could change the way scientists look at one of the most essential enzymes in medicine in hopes of designing better and more cost-effective drugs in the future. | Continue reading
Apple on Thursday delivered stronger than expected profits in the recently ended quarter, but shares slid on disappointing iPhone sales and the forecast going into the year-end holiday. | Continue reading
Using environmental DNA (eDNA) to track the presence of fish in waterways is emerging as a powerful tool to detect and understand the abundance of species in aquatic environments. However, relatively few studies have compared the performance of this emerging technology to traditi … | Continue reading
New directed energy propulsion systems may enable the first interstellar missions, with small, robotic spacecraft exploring neighboring solar systems, according to experimental cosmologist Philip Lubin. He will present these and other advances at The Optical Society's (OSA) Laser … | Continue reading
In Burkina Faso, the government is considering the use of genetically modified mosquitoes to eradicate malaria. In Nantucket, Mass., officials are looking at gene editing as a tool in the fight against Lyme disease. And scientists are using gene technology to adapt coral to chang … | Continue reading
Scientists in Australia have for the first time demonstrated the protection of correlated states between paired photons—packets of light energy—using the intriguing physical concept of topology. This experimental breakthrough opens a pathway to build a new type of quantum bit, th … | Continue reading
Researchers have peeked behind the curtain of the ultrafast phase transition of vanadium dioxide and found its atomic theatrics are much more complicated than they thought. It's a material that has fascinated scientists for decades for its ability to shift from being an electrica … | Continue reading
Cancer-causing human papillomaviruses (HPVs) diverged from their most recent common ancestors approximately half a million years ago, roughly coinciding with the timing of the split between archaic Neanderthals and modern Homo sapiens, according to a study published November 1 in … | Continue reading
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has gone silent, ending a historic mission that studied time capsules from the solar system's earliest chapter. | Continue reading
For decades, doctors have been using antibiotics to fight tuberculosis (TB). And consistently, the microbe responsible for the disease, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, has been fighting back. When confronted with current drugs, such as the antibiotic rifamycin, the bacterium often mu … | Continue reading
Mercury is an incredibly stubborn toxin. Once it is emitted from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants, among other sources, the gas can drift through the atmosphere for up to a year before settling into oceans and lakes. It can then accumulate in fish as toxic methylmercury … | Continue reading
Electric cars are increasingly complex and frequently recalled. But does it necessarily have to be that way? A post-market in-vehicle diagnostics system and semiconductor-based technologies developed under the 3Ccar project promise greater integration of car systems, as well as c … | Continue reading
An ultrafast laser that fires pulses of light just 100 millionths of a nanosecond in duration could potentially revolutionize the way that NASA technicians manufacture and ultimately assemble instrument components made of dissimilar materials. | Continue reading
A Purdue University professor has built an innovative handheld sensor that gives plant scientists and farmers a more precise way of measuring the health of crops while gathering up-to-the-minute data that state and federal officials and others will find valuable. | Continue reading
Typhoon Yutu produced heavy rainfall as it passed over the island of Luzon in the northern Philippines. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite provided data on that rainfall. The storm has since weakened to a tropical storm and triggered warnings in Ch … | Continue reading
A Dutch court Thursday slapped down Ryanair's plan to transfer more than a dozen Dutch pilots elsewhere in Europe, saying the no-frills airline "abused its power" in deciding to close its Eindhoven base. | Continue reading
Scientists have used detailed high-resolution satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies' DigitalGlobe, to detect, count and describe four different species of whales. Reported this week in the journal Marine Mammal Science, this study is a big step towards developing a cost … | Continue reading
The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a global effort to sequence the genetic code, or genomes, of all 1.5 million known animal, plant, protozoan and fungal species on Earth, officially launches today (1 November) as key scientific partners and funders from around the globe gather i … | Continue reading
The replacement of diesel bus fleets by electric ones will only become possible when the latter can compete in terms of operation time, comfort, weight and cost. Heliox has found a single solution to all these problems in a new fast-charge technology. | Continue reading
The OSEM-EV project has come up with an entirely new concept of heat management for electric cars. These advances should enable a new generation of EVs with a greater and more predictable driving range. | Continue reading