Headlines

China scrambling to unplug anti-Japan hate speech

Chinese social media platforms have shut down radical nationalist posts promoting hatred of Japan after a stabbing attack on June 24 that injured a Japanese mother and child at a school bus stop in Suzhou, west of Shanghai, according to media reports. A female bus attendant who

UK election analysis: A fragile landslide

The left of centre Labour Party has won a landslide victory in the UK election while right wing parties are prevailing elsewhere in Europe. But beneath the surface, the far right remains a force for the new Labour administration to reckon with.

Losing count: The mathematical magic of counting curves

How can you figure out which points lie on a certain curve? And how many possible curves do you count by a given number of points? These are the kinds of questions Pim Spelier of the Mathematical Institute studied during his Ph.D. research. Spelier received his doctorate with

EarthCARE offers a sneak peek into Earth's energy balance

Offering a foretaste of what's to come once it is fully commissioned, ESA's EarthCARE satellite has returned the first images from its broadband radiometer instrument. These initial images offer a tantalizing glimpse into the intricacies of our planet's energy balance—a

Shell expects to eat $1 billion over its biofuels pivot

A major investment in green energy is going poorly for Shell. The oil company announced Friday that it would be taking up to $2 billion in charges this quarter, partly for its sale of a refinery in Singapore and partly for a biofuels plant in the Netherlands. Read more...

New probe reveals water-ice microstructures

Ice is believed to have played a crucial role in the emergence of life. One reason is that organic molecules can be excluded into the gaps between the crystal lattice by orderly arranged water molecules, leading to the concentration of organic compounds.