We've all known a friend who came back from holiday with a French lilt in their accent. Or noticed an American twang creeping into our voice during dinner with a friend visiting from Texas. | Continue reading
Hostility to immigrants isn't new to the United States. In 1896, Henry Cabot Lodge warned on the Senate floor that the "mental and moral qualities" of Americans would be endangered by the "wholesale infusion of races whose traditions … are wholly alien to ours." In recent years, … | Continue reading
Using the Very Large Telescope (VLT), an international team of astronomers has conducted a spectroscopic study of a young open cluster NGC 3293. Results of the research, published July 26 on the arXiv pre-print repository, shed more light into the properties and chemical composit … | Continue reading
The COVID-19 pandemic has wrought tragedy, social and economic decline. However, humanity is finding ways to adapt to the so-called "new normal" in terms of health care, society, business, and finance. Writing in the International Journal of Electronic Finance, a team from India … | Continue reading
In 1972, the report Limits to Growth showed that business as usual on a planet with limited resources and a rapidly expanding human population can only end up in unsustainable growth and collapse. The report was inspired by systems science, a precursor to today's complexity scien … | Continue reading
With the U.K. reaching record temperatures this summer along with the driest conditions since 1976, ongoing concerns about food security, wildlife habitats and biodiversity, having a healthy soil system is more vital and challenging than ever before. But what does the term "soil … | Continue reading
Lakes and other freshwater systems emit large quantities of methane, which is the second most important greenhouse gas worldwide after CO2. Dredging and the use of Phoslock (a phosphate-binding clay particle) can reduce these lake emissions by over 50%. This is the conclusion of … | Continue reading
New Zealand may seem to be under meteor bombardment at the moment. After a huge meteor exploded above the sea near Wellington on July 7, creating a sonic boom that could be heard across the bottom of the South Island, a smaller fireball was captured two weeks later above Canterbu … | Continue reading
Sustainable fuel and chemicals production is closer to becoming a practical reality after KAUST researchers analyzed a precious metal-free electrochemical hydride transfer catalyst and discovered molybdenum was playing the central role. | Continue reading
Scientists have discovered the precise way detergents break biological membranes, which could increase our understanding of how soaps work to kill viruses like COVID-19. | Continue reading
The Bantu Expansion transformed sub-Saharan Africa's linguistic, economic, and cultural composition. Today, more than 240 million people speak one of the more than 500 Bantu languages. It is generally accepted that the ancestors of current Bantu speakers lived around 5,000 to 6,0 … | Continue reading
Cave explorers have traversed what's now the deepest known cave in Australia. On Saturday a group of explorers discovered a 401-meter-deep cave, which they named Delta Variant, in Tasmania's Niggly-Growling Swallet cave system within the Junee–Florentine karst area. Its depth jus … | Continue reading
New research by scientists at Yale's Cardiovascular Research Center advances the current understanding of the pathways that inhibit inflammation and promote vascular health. | Continue reading
A miniaturized robot invented by Nebraska Engineering Professor Shane Farritor may soon blast into space to test its skills. | Continue reading
A land iguana that disappeared more than a century ago from one of the Galapagos Islands is reproducing naturally following its reintroduction there, Ecuador's environment ministry announced Monday. | Continue reading
The melodic songs from families of endangered monkeys ring out over the jungle near Cambodia's Angkor Wat temple complex—a sign of ecological rejuvenation decades after hunting decimated wildlife at the site. | Continue reading
A new study has put a remarkable and unexpected chemical genesis on more solid footing. | Continue reading
Even though it seems that Americans are constantly on their phones, studies have shown that the majority of Americans still get their news from television. At the beginning of 2020, the average American adult consumed around nine-and-a-half hours of television news per week, acco … | Continue reading
Many crustaceans, including lobster, crabs, and barnacles, have a cape-like shell protruding from the head that can serve various roles, such as a little cave for storing eggs, or a protective shield to keep gills moist. | Continue reading
New research utilizing data from U.S. Supreme Court law clerk hiring decisions finds that female job applicants with recommendations from other highly tenured women have the strongest chance of getting a job offer. | Continue reading
Humans are good at looking at images and finding patterns or making comparisons. Look at a collection of dog photos, for example, and you can sort them by color, by ear size, by face shape, and so on. But could you compare them quantitatively? And perhaps more intriguingly, could … | Continue reading
A team of scientists led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed a theory that thylakoids, membrane networks key to plant photosynthesis, also function as a defense mechanism to harsh growing conditions, which could aid the development of hardier plants. | Continue reading
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Energetic Materials Center and Purdue University Materials Engineering Department have used simulations performed on the LLNL supercomputer Quartz to uncover a general mechanism that accelerates chemistry in detonati … | Continue reading
Global heating could become "catastrophic" for humanity if temperature rises are worse than many predict or cause cascades of events we have yet to consider, or indeed both. The world needs to start preparing for the possibility of a "climate endgame." | Continue reading
Deep evolution casts a longer shadow than previously thought, scientists report in a new paper published the week of Aug. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Smithsonian scientists and colleagues looked at eelgrass communities—the foundation of many coastal … | Continue reading
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers are developing a first-of-its-kind artificial intelligence device for neutron scattering called Hyperspectral Computed Tomography, or HyperCT. The fully automated, AI-driven platform can rotate a sample in almost any direction, eliminatin … | Continue reading
The ways in which bacteria infect cells are important for understanding host-pathogen interactions. The knowledge also opens up a world of practical applications. | Continue reading
The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon increased by eight percent last month compared with July 2021, according to official figures released Monday, the latest alarm bell for the world's biggest rainforest. | Continue reading
France and parts of England saw their driest July on record, the countries' weather agencies said on Monday, exacerbating stretched water resources that have forced restrictions on both sides of the Channel. | Continue reading
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have described the way an enzyme and proteins interact to maintain the protective caps, called telomeres, at the end of chromosomes, a new insight into how a human cell preserves the integrity of its DNA through repeated cell div … | Continue reading
Electrons find each other repulsive. Nothing personal—it's just that their negative charges repel each other. So getting them to pair up and travel together, like they do in superconducting materials, requires a little nudge. | Continue reading
Atoms are notoriously difficult to control. They zigzag like fireflies, tunnel out of the strongest containers and jitter even at temperatures near absolute zero. | Continue reading
A survey of coaches and athletic officials in Texas indicates many of them would be wise to think harder about the risks their students face as the climate changes, according to Rice University researchers who conducted the statewide study. | Continue reading
A plant scientist from the University of Missouri has discovered a new way of measuring stress in plants, which comes at a time when plants are experiencing multiple stressors from heat, drought and flooding because of extreme weather events. | Continue reading
Rice researchers set up a Microsoft HoloLens as a mixed-reality sensor to feed VegSense, their application to measure understory vegetation, plant life that grows between the forest canopy and floor. | Continue reading
Imagine stretching a piece of film to reveal a hidden message. Or checking an arm band's color to gauge muscle mass. Or sporting a swimsuit that changes hue as you do laps. Such chameleon-like, color-shifting materials could be on the horizon, thanks to a photographic technique t … | Continue reading
Depictions of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are powerful sources of inspiration for young women who aspire to a career in those fields. But stereotypes of female scientists persist, and we have some way to go to vanquish them. So says Alexandra … | Continue reading
June 1 marked the start of another perilous hurricane season in the eastern United States. | Continue reading
A surprise finding from new research on controlling pests and disease in New York commercial onion fields will enable the state's producers to cut their use of synthetic chemicals without sacrificing yield. | Continue reading
It was a risk that likely was not perceived back in 1886, when Forest and Stream magazine editor George Bird Grinnell, distraught over the mass slaughter of birds, decided to name his new organization after one of the most noted artists and naturalists of his time, John James Aud … | Continue reading
An international team of researchers has observed part of the formation of a dwarf galaxy, helping to explain how they evolve from a dwarf state to maturity. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes finding evidence of maturation in such galaxies. | Continue reading
When managing degraded tropical landscapes to achieve global biodiversity and ecosystem services targets, it is necessary to not only restore new forests but conserve natural remnants of old forests as well finds a new study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology. | Continue reading
In a year marked by drought and heatwaves, rockfalls and gaping crevices have made access to the top of Mont Blanc even more difficult and perilous—to the great frustration of amateur mountaineers. | Continue reading
About 37,000 years ago, a mother mammoth and her calf met their end at the hands of human beings. | Continue reading
Employees who practice mindfulness are less bored at work and less likely to quit, according to a new study. | Continue reading
When a dog starts a new diet, the community of microbes in its gut changes. Wallflower bacteria multiply to dominate the scene, with the old guard slinking off in defeat. As microbial species jostle for control, their metabolic byproducts, many of which are critical for Fido's ov … | Continue reading
Paid, migrant, live-in care workers in London are at greater risk of falling victim to modern slavery, according to a new report. | Continue reading
On a recent morning inside Chalmers School of Excellence on Chicago's West Side, five preschool and kindergarten students finished up drawings. Four staffers, including a teacher and a tutor, chatted with them about colors and shapes. | Continue reading