Smelling like an oil refinery, the vast expanse of Lake Maracaibo has become polluted by its own reserves of crude as Venezuela's economic collapse has left wells and pipelines in ruin. | Continue reading
Back when the Mississippi River flowed wild, its ever-shifting waters acted as a continent-sized earth mover, picking up sand and dirt from the North, depositing it in the Delta region and eventually creating the land that is now south Louisiana. | Continue reading
One of the world's deadliest fungi has been discovered in Australia's far north for the first time—thousands of miles from its native habitat in the mountains of Japan and Korea. | Continue reading
Dengue-resistant mosquitoes breed in a Rio de Janeiro laboratory, producing offspring infected with bacteria packing a punch in the fight against the deadly virus, which is exploding across Brazil this year. | Continue reading
An Emirati who made history as the first Arab to reach the International Space Station is set to return to Earth on Thursday following an eight-day mission that sparked euphoria in his homeland. | Continue reading
At least six people were killed and several others missing after Typhoon Mitag lashed South Korea with heavy rain and strong winds, authorities said Thursday. | Continue reading
The Trump administration ratcheted up its feud with California on Wednesday as the Environmental Protection Agency issued a notice accusing San Francisco of violating the federal Clean Water Act. | Continue reading
A newly redeveloped guide is setting out to help researchers across academia tackle the online harassment some face as they share their findings with the public on some of the world's most controversial, and vital, topics. | Continue reading
As climate change accelerates, recording shifts in plant flowering times is critical to understanding how changes in climate will impact ecosystem interactions. Currently, when researchers reconstruct historical flowering times using dried herbarium specimens, they estimate first … | Continue reading
A comparative analysis of "smart cities" worldwide reveals four distinct types, according to an international team of researchers. The categories may help city planners to identify and emulate models that are close to their own socio-economic circumstances and policy aspirations. | Continue reading
Their initial discovery had seemed like a contradiction because most other polymer fibres embrittle in the cold. But after many years of working on the problem, the group of researchers have discovered that silk's cryogenic toughness is based on its nano-scale fibrills. Sub-micro … | Continue reading
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is pursuing an ambitious project to phase out single-use plastics by 2022 in the vast South Asian nation, which has a population of 1.3 billion. | Continue reading
A team of scientists has made the strongest silver ever—42 percent stronger than the previous world record. But that's not the important point. | Continue reading
Many potential pharmaceuticals end up failing during clinical trials, but thanks to new research from the University of Illinois, biological molecules once considered for cancer treatment are now being repurposed as organic semiconductors for use in chemical sensors and transisto … | Continue reading
The images will be stunningly beautiful yet also hint of dire future consequences. Filmed with a camera mounted between his majestic wings, they'll show how a white-tailed eagle named Victor sees the world as he flies over the Alps and capture its once-magnificent glaciers now cr … | Continue reading
Rampant and unsustainable extraction of groundwater reserves crucial for food production will "critically impact" rivers, lakes and wetlands in half of Earth's drainage basins by mid-century, researchers warned Wednesday. | Continue reading
In April 2019, an international team of more than 300 scientists unveiled the first recorded images of a black hole, its dark shadow and vivid orange disk peering back across 55 million light years of space. Capturing images from so far away required the combined power of eight r … | Continue reading
As coral reefs deteriorate in the face of climate change, an interdisciplinary Northwestern Engineering research team has developed an innovative method to image coral nanoscale structures and quantify pigment absorption in live corals, an indicator of coral health. The imaging p … | Continue reading
Seagrass meadows put down deep roots, persisting in the same spot for hundreds and possibly thousands of years, a new study shows. | Continue reading
Tropical Storm Mitag was dropping heavy rainfall along coastal areas of South Korea and lighter rainfall over the entire country. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM satellite provided a look at the rainfall occurring from the system. | Continue reading
Researchers at Cornell University have uncovered a key step in how the human body metabolizes sugar, which could lead to better treatment and prevention of heart disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes. | Continue reading
A Florida State University research team has developed methods to manipulate polymers in a way that changes their fundamental structure, paving the way for potential applications in cargo delivery and release, recyclable materials, shape-shifting soft robots, antimicrobials and m … | Continue reading
A new 3-D structure for growing cell cultures could enable doctors to test medications on model tumors grown from a patient's own cells, according to results from a team of engineers and cancer researchers at the University of Michigan. | Continue reading
A new way to calculate the interaction between a metal and its alloying material could speed the hunt for a new material that combines the hardness of ceramic with the resilience of metal. | Continue reading
An international team of researchers including limnologists from the University of Konstanz shows that rapid genomic changes during antagonistic species interactions are shaped by the reciprocal effects of ecology and evolution. | Continue reading
As the Earth's temperature warms, its hydrological cycle kicks into overdrive—wet years get wetter, and dry years get drier. According to a new University of Arizona-led study, these increased rainfall extremes could have dire consequences for the semi-arid forests of the western … | Continue reading
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, over the span of less than a week, kill 50-125 million people—more than the death toll during all six years of World War II, according to new research. | Continue reading
Corals create potions that fight bacterial attackers, but warming appears to tip the scales against the potions as they battle a bacterium common in coral bleaching, according to a new study. Reef conservation may offer hope: A particular potion, gathered from reefs protected aga … | Continue reading
Two reforms in the finance sector have the potential to accelerate action towards a sustainable seafood industry, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. Compiling data on 160 publicly listed seafood companies and 3000 shareholders, the researchers co … | Continue reading
Microliths—small stone tools—are often interpreted as being part of composite tools, including projectile weapons, and essential to efficient hunting strategies of Homo sapiens. In Europe and Africa, the earliest appearance of these lithic toolkits are linked to hunting medium an … | Continue reading
Sierra Nevada forests are losing plant diversity due to high-severity fires, according to a study from the University of California, Davis. These fires are turning patches of forest into shrub fields—indefinitely, in some cases. | Continue reading
Most of the current clinical anti-tumor drugs used in chemotherapy move around in the patient's blood after intake and are unable to pinpoint the targeted tumor. As a result, while killing the tumor cells, the healthy cells may also be killed as "collateral damage," leading to un … | Continue reading
New kinds of organic compounds, the ingredients of amino acids, have been detected in the plumes bursting from Saturn's moon Enceladus. The findings are the result of the ongoing deep dive into data from NASA's Cassini mission. | Continue reading
Wandering through the exhibits of the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco in spring 2018, visitors had the chance to dance with microbes. The boogie appeared to take place on a projection screen where visitors were represented as bright blue silhouettes amidst a crowd o … | Continue reading
The fruit flies in Noah Whiteman's lab may be hazardous to your health. | Continue reading
Astronomers have pieced together the cannibalistic past of our neighbouring large galaxy Andromeda, which has now set its sights on the Milky Way as its next main course. | Continue reading
Lorenzo is still at hurricane force in the eastern North Atlantic has now transitioned to an extra-tropical cyclone and has grown in size. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite provided a look at the rainfall occurring within this strong system. The P … | Continue reading
A freakish heat wave is making early autumn feel like the dog days of summer in much of the southern and eastern US, with forecasters predicting Wednesday that temperatures could get close to triple digits. | Continue reading
Driving is not just an air pollution and climate change problem—turns out, it just might be the largest contributor of microplastics in California coastal waters. | Continue reading
Researchers have created a silicon carbide (SiC) photonic integrated chip that can be thermally tuned by applying an electric signal. The approach could one day be used to create a large range of reconfigurable devices such as phase-shifters and tunable optical couplers needed fo … | Continue reading
A researcher at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) is examining how the flight routes people take to get to tourist destinations impact the amount of pollution in the air in a newly published study he coauthored in the Annals of Tourism Research. | Continue reading
Virgin Galactic says it has been contracted by the Italian air force for a suborbital research flight aboard its winged rocket ship. | Continue reading
Someday soon, analysts will determine that a city or county, or maybe a school district or utility, is so vulnerable to sea level rise, flooding, drought or wildfire that it is an investment risk. | Continue reading
Understanding the causes and consequences of Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions is increasingly important in a world of growing human populations and climate change. A new review, led by scholars at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum and the Max Planck Institute for the Science … | Continue reading
Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), is the macromolecule that holds all hereditary and genetic information. Continuously under assault, alterations and damage to DNA can lead to many different health issues, including cancer. DNA is highly regulated within cells, where multiple mechanis … | Continue reading
A new material with antifungal and antitumor properties has been developed by researchers at the Center for Development of Functional Materials (CDMF), one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP. CDMF is hos … | Continue reading
An international research team led by Giuseppe Marramà from the Institute of Paleontology at the University of Vienna discovered a new and well-preserved fossil stingray with an exceptional anatomy, which greatly differs from living species. The find provides new insights into th … | Continue reading
Enticed by the brilliant green hues of copper acetate and copper resinate, some painters in the Renaissance period incorporated these pigments into their masterpieces. However, by the 18th century, most artists had abandoned the colors because of their tendency to darken with tim … | Continue reading