We found direct and definitive evidence for surface-exposed water ice in the lunar polar regions. The abundance and distribution of ice on the Moon are distinct from those on other airless bodies in the inner solar system such as Mercury and Ceres, which may be associated with th … | Continue reading
Although storytelling often has negative connotations within science, narrative formats of communication should not be disregarded when communicating science to nonexpert audiences. Narratives offer increased comprehension, interest, and engagement. Nonexperts get most of their s … | Continue reading
Fracture processes are ubiquitous in nature, from earthquakes to broken trees and bones. Understanding and controlling fracture dynamics remain one of the foremost theoretical and practical challenges in material science and physics. A well-known problem with direct implications … | Continue reading
The Oklo natural nuclear reactors provide a wealth of information regarding the migration and retention of fission products in nuclear wastes. Radioactive volatile and gaseous elements easily escape from reactor fuel into the environment without proper containment. Cesium, in par … | Continue reading
Many human endeavors—from teams and organizations to crowds and democracies—rely on solving problems collectively. Prior research has shown that when people interact and influence each other while solving complex problems, the average problem-solving performance of the group incr … | Continue reading
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emis … | Continue reading
Deserts, already defined by climatic extremes, have warmed and dried more than other regions in the contiguous United States due to climate change. Our resurveys of sites originally visited in the early 20th century found Mojave Desert birds strongly declined in occupancy and sit … | Continue reading
On December 28, 1917, a fascinating article appeared in the pages of the New York Evening Mail. The article, titled “A Neglected History,” written by H.L. Mencken, laments the fact that the 75th anniversary of the introduction of the bathtub to the United States had passed withou … | Continue reading
The history of sweet potato in the Pacific has long been an enigma. Archaeological, linguistic, and ethnobotanical data suggest that prehistoric human-mediated dispersal events contributed to the distribution in Oceania of this American domesticate. According to the “tripartite h … | Continue reading
Identifying biological targets in major depressive disorder (MDD) is a critical step for development of effective mechanism-based medications. The epigenetic agent acetyl-l-carnitine (LAC) has rapid and enduring antidepressant-like effects in LAC-deficient rodents. Here, we found … | Continue reading
Semantic typology documents and explains how languages vary in their structuring of meaning. Information theory provides a formal model of communication that includes a precise definition of efficient compression. We show that color-naming systems across languages achieve near-op … | Continue reading
Despite being one of the most important foodstuffs consumed in the modern world, the origins of bread are still largely unknown. Here we report the earliest empirical evidence for the preparation of bread-like products by Natufian hunter-gatherers, 4,000 years before the emergenc … | Continue reading
The composition of the biosphere is a fundamental question in biology, yet a global quantitative account of the biomass of each taxon is still lacking. We assemble a census of the biomass of all kingdoms of life. This analysis provides a holistic view of the composition of the bi … | Continue reading
Genome-wide association study (GWAS) discoveries about educational attainment have raised questions about the meaning of the genetics of success. These discoveries could offer clues about biological mechanisms or, because children inherit genetics and social class from parents, e … | Continue reading
In crustaceans, as in most animal species, the amine serotonin has been suggested to serve important roles in aggression. Here we show that injection of serotonin into the hemolymph of subordinate, freely moving animals results in a renewed willingness of these animals to engage … | Continue reading
Using administrative register data with information on family relationships and cognitive ability for three decades of Norwegian male birth cohorts, we show that the increase, turning point, and decline of the Flynn effect can be recovered from within-family variation in intellig … | Continue reading
Recent advances in genomics have revealed that many polygenetic diseases are caused by complex combinations of many common variants with individually small effects. Thus, building informative disease models requires the interrogation of many patient-derived genetic backgrounds in … | Continue reading
Periodic variations in Earth’s orbit and rotation axis occur over tens of thousands of years, producing rhythmic climate changes known as Milankovitch cycles. The geologic record of these climate cycles is a powerful tool for reconstructing geologic time, for understanding ancien … | Continue reading
Increasing our understanding of Earth’s biodiversity and responsibly stewarding its resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges of the new millennium. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and inter … | Continue reading
The composition of the biosphere is a fundamental question in biology, yet a global quantitative account of the biomass of each taxon is still lacking. We assemble a census of the biomass of all kingdoms of life. This analysis provides a holistic view of the composition of the bi … | Continue reading
Birds are remarkably intelligent, although their brains are small. Corvids and some parrots are capable of cognitive feats comparable to those of great apes. How do birds achieve impressive cognitive prowess with walnut-sized brains? We investigated the cellular composition of th … | Continue reading
An individual’s socioeconomic status (SES) is a central feature of their environmental surroundings and has been shown to relate to the development and maturation of their brain in childhood. Here, we demonstrate that an individual’s present (adult) SES relates to their brain fun … | Continue reading
We discuss recent developments in our understanding of matter, broadly construed, and their implications for contemporary research in fundamental physics. | Continue reading
Understanding the risk factors of carcinogenesis is a major goal of biomedical research. Historically, the focus has been on the role of somatic mutations, and the reason for cancer typically occurring late in life is predominantly attributed to a gradual accumulation of such mut … | Continue reading
Rhythmic climate cycles of various assumed frequencies recorded in sedimentary archives are increasingly used to construct a continuous geologic timescale. However, the age range of valid theoretical orbital solutions is limited to only the past 50 million years. New U–Pb zircon … | Continue reading
Why do scientists with similar backgrounds and abilities often end up achieving very different degrees of success? A classic explanation is that academic achievement exhibits a “Matthew effect”: Early successes increase future success chances. We analyze data from a large academi … | Continue reading