Jared Isaacman, US President Donald Trump's two-time appointee to lead NASA, said it was his goal that the United States beat rival China in the race to return humans to the moon, during a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday.
Higher plant diversity in agricultural grasslands increases yields with lower inputs of nitrogen fertilizer. That is the headline finding of a landmark, international study led by Trinity College Dublin that paints a promising picture for more sustainable agriculture.
Inside human cells, biology has pulled off the ultimate packing job, figuring out how to fit six feet of DNA into a nucleus about one-tenth as wide as a human hair while making sure the all-important molecules can still function.
A short interaction with a chatbot can meaningfully shift a voter's opinion about a presidential candidate or proposed policy in either direction, new Cornell University research finds.
When DNA breaks, cells must repair it accurately to prevent harmful mutations. Researchers have discovered that during a key repair process called homologous recombination, the cell uses loops in its DNA structure to speed up the search for an intact copy of the damaged region.
For decades, paleontologists argued over the lone skull used to establish the distinct species Nanotyrannus. Was it truly a separate species or simply a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex? A new paper published in Science has definitively shown that Nanotyrannus is, in fact, nearly
Nanotyrannus wasn’t a juvenile T. rex but a petite adult of a separate species, a new study of fossil hyoid bones finds, bolstering a recent report.
A closeup look at colibactin’s structure reveals chemical motifs that guide its mutation-wreaking “warheads” to specific stretches of DNA.
Chatbots that dole out fact-laden arguments can sway voters. Those facts don’t have to be true.
Acoustic signals have been important markers during NASA's Mars missions. Measurements of sound can provide information both about Mars itself—such as turbulence in its atmosphere, changes in its temperature, and its surface conditions—and about the movement of the Mars rovers.
Women are largely absent from the questions, sources, and mark schemes that shape how history is taught and assessed in schools in England.
Clothing is one of the top categories in online sales worldwide, with expected revenues of more than US$920 billion (£702 billion) this year. And for clothing businesses, like many others, online retail opens the door to a wider customer base.
While much has been written about the race to modernize industry and agriculture in fascist Italy, the history of animal husbandry during this period has largely been overlooked by scholars. The "Battle of Zootechnics"—the Italian project to centralize and modernize animal
An ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza has affected more than 184 million domestic poultry since 2022 and, since making the leap to dairy cattle in spring 2024, more than 1,000 milking cow herds.
Being close to a natural habitat such as a forest doesn't necessarily make farmland more attractive to pollinators, a new study shows.
MPE Director and Nobel Laureate Reinhard Genzel is spearheading an open letter signed by nearly 30 eminent international astronomers urging the Chilean government to relocate the proposed INNA industrial complex. The project threatens the world-renowned dark skies over ESO's
A naturally fluffy white beard, a round belly and a jolly laugh might seem like the keys to being a successful Santa Claus, but new research suggests that a calling to play the man with the bag full of toys is enough to help candidates overcome a lack of typical attributes for
In 2024, the global art market hit an estimated $57.5 billion (€49.5 billion) in sales, according to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report 2025, underscoring art's significance as an asset class. Art is traditionally associated with noble motivations and heritage. However,
The late Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh often emphasized the interconnectedness of everything in this world. He explained how meditation can change our perceptions about the things we encounter in our daily lives by revealing this interdependence.
When Cyclone Ditwah made landfall on November 28 2025, Sri Lanka experienced one of its deadliest environmental disasters in modern history.
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have rapidly emerged as one of the most promising frontiers in modern biology. These nano-sized messengers mediate communication between cells, tissues, and organs, influencing processes from immune signaling to cancer progression. Their growing
The team behind what has been described as "one of the most significant mosaics discovered in the UK" have revealed that it depicts an alternative "long-lost" telling of the Trojan War. The paper is published in the journal Britannia.
Cover crops improve soil health and water quality, prevent nutrient loss, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but they're only grown on about 5% of U.S. agricultural lands. That's despite billions in annual federal investments, primarily in the form of cost-share and incentive
Picture a baby Brachiosaurus the size of a golden retriever, hunting for food with its siblings while dodging predators that would happily eat it. Meanwhile, its parents—towering over 40 feet tall—are dozens of miles away, going about their lives completely unbothered by their
When people use hand gestures that visually represent what they're saying, listeners see them as more clear, competent and persuasive. That's the key finding from my new research published in the Journal of Marketing Research, where I analyzed thousands of TED Talks and ran
If you look across space with a telescope, you'll see countless galaxies, most of which host large central black holes, billions of stars and their attendant planets. The universe teems with huge, spectacular objects, and it might seem like these massive objects should hold
In the middle of a chilly October night in 2025, my two friends and I suited up at the Cottonwood Creek trailhead and started a trek into the Sangre de Cristo mountains of Colorado. It was a little below freezing as we got moving at 1:30 a.m., and the moon illuminated the snowy
Coastal wetlands, like salt marshes, keep pace with sea-level rise by accumulating sediment and burying organic carbon in their soils, an important natural process that also helps sequester carbon. Accurately measuring this stored carbon is essential for understanding marsh
Searching for technosignatures—signs of technology on a planet that we can see from afar—remains a difficult task. There are so many different factors to consider, and we only have the technological capabilities to detect a relatively small collection of them.
New research points the finger for precipitating Europe’s most deadly pandemic at scores of massive eruptions The post Did Volcanoes Spark the Black Death? appeared first on Nautilus .
A boiling sea of quarks and gluons, including virtual ones—this is how we can imagine the main phase of high-energy proton collisions. It would seem that particles here have significantly more opportunities to evolve than when less numerous and much "better-behaved" secondary
Just north of the great Serengeti wildebeest migration, a smaller migration across the Mara ecosystem is collapsing. New maps published in the Atlas of Ungulate Migration reveal the dramatic impact of fencing on the long-distance movements of one of Africa's most iconic
Weed control is essential in apple orchards because weeds compete with trees for nutrients, water and sunlight, which can reduce fruit yields. However, physically removing weeds is not only labor-intensive, but it also can damage soil structure and tree roots. Using chemical
The Xwulqw'selu Sta'lo' (Koksilah River) is a culturally important river to the Cowichan Tribes, located on traditional Quw'utsun land on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The land, which was never ceded to Canada, is part of a watershed that faces challenges including
Antibiotics are no longer able to treat infections as effectively as they once did because many pathogens have developed resistance to these drugs. This phenomenon, known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), claims over a million lives worldwide each year.
A University of Michigan study has found that people in Ghana and across the Global South who recycle electronic waste face a difficult paradox: earning livelihoods to ensure survival comes at the cost of severe long-term exposure to toxicity and dramatic environmental pollution.
Polyester and a host of other plastic products could potentially be manufactured with non-toxic and sustainable BPA alternatives identified in a multidisciplinary study published in Nature Sustainability by researchers in Sweden.
Social media are a breeding ground for jealousy. It could be a new follower liking your partner's profile pic, an ambiguous comment under a post, a story shared with an overly friendly stranger, or a single emoji taken out of context.
Scientists have uncovered how changing ocean currents in South Georgia's fjords could affect the survival of young mackerel icefish. The species is a key component of the island's rich marine ecosystem and is an important prey species for seals and penguins.
A UBC research team has developed a cleaner way to produce rayon, a popular fabric used in clothing for more than a century. The process could significantly reduce chemical use and improve sustainability in textile manufacturing.
China has rapidly become the world leader in renewable energy, but continued coal use means it could take longer for its emissions to decline
Glycine is a major inhibitory neurotransmitter that reduces nerve activity, helping to regulate pain signals, motor control and sensory processing. Glycine transporter 2 (GlyT2) is a key regulator of glycinergic neurotransmission because it removes glycine from the synaptic
Cholera is a deadly bacterial disease that kills about 95,000 people every year. Vibrio cholerae bacteria infect cells in the small intestine, which the bacteria can do in part due to their flagella—powerful tail-like structures that the pathogen uses to move around.
Which words do we find beautiful? And do beautifully sounding words stick better in memory? A new study led by linguist Theresa Matzinger from the University of Vienna suggests that the phonemic composition of words influences how beautiful we perceive them to be, and how well
While it is widely assumed that civil wars reinforce the existing political divisions, a recent sociological study sheds light on how these divisions actually can be reinvented during social conflict. The study, "Fabricating Communists: The Imagined Third That Reinvented the
Although its existence had been theorized for decades, the Higgs boson was finally observed to exist in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Since then, it has continued to be heavily studied at the LHC. Now, a new study from the researchers at CERN combines the
The Black Death ravaged Europe, and scientists and historians are still working to understand how it became so deadly
Researchers studying people with major psychiatric disorders found that drinking up to four cups of coffee a day is associated with longer telomeres. This suggests a potential slowing of biological aging by about five years. However, drinking five or more cups showed no benefit
Nature is a source of well-being and recovery for many people. However, research shows that there is also a growing number of individuals who experience negative emotions, such as fear, discomfort, or even disgust, toward nature. The phenomenon, called biophobia, is now
Clues contained in tree rings have identified mid-14th-century volcanic activity as the first domino to fall in a sequence that led to the devastation of the Black Death in Europe.
