Researchers at the Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India at IISER Kolkata have discovered a new relationship between the sun's magnetic field and its sunspot cycle, that can help predict when the peak in solar activity will occur. Their work indicates that the maximum inte … | Continue reading
Allison Pease grew up fascinated by river fish, spending countless summers in a mask beneath the surface of Texas creeks. Now a fish ecologist in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources at the University of Missouri, Pease studies the common snook—an iconic game fi … | Continue reading
An interdisciplinary collaboration used 600 years' worth of tree rings from the San Joaquin Valley to reconstruct plausible daily records of weather and streamflow scenarios during that period. Modeling based on those scenarios revealed the region has experienced vast variability … | Continue reading
When entering public restrooms, it's hard not to dwell on what germs previous users have left behind in the toilet bowl. Imagine, instead, a self-cleaning system that doesn't require a brightly colored gel. Researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have develope … | Continue reading
An analysis combining the results of 14 studies from around the globe has uncovered some common patterns in how the piglet microbiome, specifically the gut bacteria, changes over time. | Continue reading
Global healthcare has a significant impact on the environment but there are ways it could slash its greenhouse gas emissions without increasing production costs, the international health agency Unitaid said Tuesday. | Continue reading
SpaceX chalked up another Starlink mission from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to mark the Space Coast's 66th launch of the year. | Continue reading
We've all experienced dreams that have left us feeling a little anxious—like writing a test we're not prepared for, losing a loved one, or being chased by something threatening. | Continue reading
Corporate America has heard the warnings: Generation Z is going to turn workplaces upside down with their competitive nature and demand for remote work. While the oldest Gen Zers have been in the workforce for less than a decade, there are dozens of books geared toward helping le … | Continue reading
When new financial auditing regulations went into effect in 2019, there were concerns the rules would affect publicly traded companies and, by extension, investors. A new study finds there was an effect—but it was a small one. | Continue reading
Air quality in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area continues to miss safety levels set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is unlikely to meet EPA goals anytime soon, according to new research from The University of Texas at Arlington. | Continue reading
Unrelenting wildfires in Canada and Hawaii. Catastrophic floods in Libya. Sweltering temperatures across the globe. These climate disasters, which once would have happened every decade or longer, all took place in 2023. As the planet warms, extreme weather events like heat waves, … | Continue reading
I'm sure many readers of Universe Today are, like me, fans of the science fiction genre. From the light sabers of "Star Wars" to the neuralyzer of "Men in Black," science fiction has crazy inventions aplenty and once science fiction writers dream it, scientists and engineers try … | Continue reading
Ripples in a pond can be captivating on a nice sunny day as can ripples in the very fabric of space, although the latter are a little harder to observe. Using the highly tuned Gaia probe, a team of astronomers proposes in a paper posted to arXiv preprint server that it might just … | Continue reading
When spacecraft return to Earth, they don't need to shed all their velocity by firing retro-rockets. Instead, they use the atmosphere as a brake to slow down for a soft landing. Every planet in the solar system except Mercury has enough of an atmosphere to allow aerobraking maneu … | Continue reading
Seychelles is a special place for whales and dolphins. And yet, while its corals, turtles and sharks are relatively well studied, little is known about its cetaceans. Now scientists from the University of Seychelles, Florida International University and Oregon State University ar … | Continue reading
The Earth's magnetic field plays a big role in protecting people from hazardous radiation and geomagnetic activity that could affect satellite communication and the operation of power grids. And it moves. | Continue reading
A geoscience knowledge graph (GKG) is an effective way of organizing various geoscience knowledge into a machine-understandable and computable semantic network. However, existing knowledge graph representation models leverage fixed tuples that are limited in fully representing co … | Continue reading
In Australia we have a long history of taking children outdoors to learn about the natural environment. But thanks to computer games, tablets, and busy lifestyles, children aren't getting as much exposure to nature as they used to. | Continue reading
When Merriam-Webster announced that its word of the year for 2023 was "authentic," it did so with over a month to go in the calendar year. | Continue reading
On a crisp, sunny day high in the Peruvian Andes, two German judges gaze across a mountain lake to the towering white glaciers in the distance. Dark spots are visible on the pristine ice and, in quiet moments, the cold wind carries the sounds of creaking and cracking. | Continue reading
Researchers have concluded that Saudi Arabia is likely no longer home to sustainable populations of Arabian leopards, as detailed in the journal Oryx. | Continue reading
Single-cell multi-omics technologies allow a profound system-level biology understanding of cells and tissues. However, an integrative and possibly systems-based analysis capturing the different modalities is challenging. In response, bioinformatics and machine learning methodolo … | Continue reading
Our park ponds typically hold good numbers of mallards, and urban grassy areas often hold concentrations of geese. In the UK, Canada Geese are an abundant and widespread alien species, well known for fouling parks with their feces. | Continue reading
Diverse ecosystems support the web of life and in the process, provide food, water, medicine and materials for humanity. But the butterfly effect tells us all things are connected. So, when biodiversity loss threatens the foundation upon which we live, what does that mean for the … | Continue reading
Researchers have provided new insights into how ancestral elephants developed their dextrous trunks. | Continue reading
A pair of environmental and life scientists, one with the University of Newcastle, in Australia, the other the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research, has found that one species of mosquito native to Australia targets only the noses of frogs for feeding. In their pap … | Continue reading
Australia should join 65 other nations that have passed laws against corporal punishment of children in all settings to advance its goal of reducing all forms of violence against children, QUT researchers say. | Continue reading
Applying simple, ancient weaving techniques to newly recognized properties of organic crystals, researchers with the Smart Materials Lab (SML) and the Center for Smart Engineering Materials (CSEM) at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) have, for the first time, developed a unique form of woven … | Continue reading
If you run a large polluting facility and can't work out how to actually cut emissions, you might buy carbon credits to offset your emissions from the Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme. These credits are meant to represent carbon taken back out of the atmosphere and stored in … | Continue reading
On 21 March 1960 at 1.40 in the afternoon, apartheid South Africa's police opened fire on a peaceful crowd of about 4,000 residents of Sharpeville, who were protesting against carrying identity documents that restricted black people's movement. The police minimized the number of … | Continue reading
A group of U.S. senators recently called on tech giant Meta—which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger—to hand over documents related to the mental and physical harms its products cause to young people. The demand follows a lawsuit filed by 33 states in Octob … | Continue reading
Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, orbits in the outer solar system, about two billion miles (3.2 billion kilometers) from Earth. It is an enormous world—quadruple the diameter of Earth, with 15 times the mass and 63 times the volume. | Continue reading
According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), more than 80% of the global population are motivated by faith or spirituality. Faced with the triple planetary crises of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change, what role can faith communities play in saving … | Continue reading
We must "bulldoze through" the planning system to "get Britain building again". So said Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour party's last annual conference. He argued it's time to "fight the blockers" and build the 1.5 million homes that he thinks Britain needs. | Continue reading
Elagabalus ruled as Roman emperor for just four years before being murdered in AD 222. He was still a teenager when he died. Despite his short reign, Elagabalus is counted among the most infamous of Roman emperors, often listed alongside Caligula and Nero. | Continue reading
The slash-and-burn agriculture practiced by many Indigenous societies across the world can actually have a positive impact on forests, according to a new study done in Belize. | Continue reading
Asteroid Phaethon, which is five kilometers in diameter, has been puzzling researchers for a long time. A comet-like tail is visible for a few days when the asteroid passes closest to the sun during its orbit. | Continue reading
Individual action may seem like a drop in the bucket when it comes to tackling climate change. The scale of the problem is so immense that a poll reported that more than half of young people in 10 surveyed countries, including the U.S., feel helpless, believing humanity is doomed … | Continue reading
In recent months, rivers overflowing their banks have caused property damage and loss of life in France, Italy, Mexico, and South Africa, underscoring the increasing perils of climate change. | Continue reading
The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—the climate phenomenon comprising the warm El Niño, cool La Niña, and neutral climate phases—occurs on a cycle that lasts 2–7 years. When it forms, ENSO drives irregular weather that can spark wildfires, cause drought or flooding, and disru … | Continue reading
When ChatGPT launched a year ago, headlines flooded the internet about fears of student cheating. A pair of essays in The Atlantic decried "the end of high-school English" and the death of the college essay." NPR informed readers that "everybody is cheating." | Continue reading
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Detroit residents got a break from water shut-offs. | Continue reading
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the world's seventh largest oil producer, will host the 28th UN climate change summit (COP28) in Dubai from November 30 to December 12. Presiding over the conference will be the chief executive of the UAE state-owned oil company Adnoc, Sultan al-Ja … | Continue reading
Vietnam is known worldwide for its high plant species diversity and endemism. However, the evolutionary history of Vietnam's exceptional plant biodiversity remains poorly understood. Due to the paucity of Neogene plant fossils, it remains unclear how the vegetation of northern Vi … | Continue reading
Animal agriculture is responsible for considerable environmental burden, and a key contributor to climate change. Meat alternatives are increasingly understood as potential solutions to decreasing this burden by enabling a shift away from conventional models of production and con … | Continue reading
Graphene, a material which consists of a single layer of carbon atoms, has been celebrated by many as the "next big thing" in material science. But according to Purdue University researchers, its thermal properties may not be as revolutionary as previously thought. | Continue reading
Adaptive optics (AO) is a technique used for real-time correction of phase aberrations by employing feedback to adjust the optical system. Polarization aberrations represent another significant type of distortion that can impact optical systems. Various factors, such as stressed … | Continue reading