The way that Earth's first animals reproduced held back life's diversity for millions of years, until stress and competition led to the development of sexual reproduction, which in turn accelerated the pace of evolution.
Too often, policy recommendations in climate-related research are either an afterthought or stray too far into advocacy, a new analysis has found. Researchers led by the University of Cambridge conducted a systematic review of more than 3,000 scientific papers focused on
A team led by Raju Tomer, professor of biological sciences at Columbia University, has created a new design for microscopes and microscope lenses that could push 3D tissue imaging beyond state-of-the-art systems while drastically cutting costs and complexity. Details of the
When asteroids slam into Earth, they can create hydrothermal vent systems
Authorities evacuated hundreds of people from their seaside homes in New Zealand's capital Tuesday as 11-meter (36-foot) waves lashed the coast.
The number of conflicts between states continued to increase sharply in 2025 and has now reached the highest level since World War II. At the same time, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) at Uppsala University registered a record total number of armed conflicts.
A genomic study has reshaped our understanding of the evolutionary history of the koala (Phascolarctos cinereus), revealing the iconic Australian marsupial experienced a severe population decline around 100,000 years ago, before the arrival of humans on the continent.
The June 2026 National Trends in Disability Employment (nTIDE) report reveals a large increase in job-seeking among people with disabilities, signaling that more individuals are entering the labor force as economic pressure intensifies. This finding aligns with last month's
When baseball fans watch a batter strike out with runners in scoring position, the reaction is often immediate: Shorten the swing. Put the ball in play. Stop swinging for the fences, they lament.
Deep beneath the icy waters surrounding Antarctica, a small marine organism may hold clues to a future cancer treatment. Researchers from USF recently returned from a six-week expedition in one of the most remote environments on Earth to study a species of ascidian, or sea
Exciting new research at Tohoku University's Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR) explains how to transform decades of scattered literature data into computable design rules for catalysts. By using human intelligence, regression models, and AI agents,
Astronomers have spent years searching for a possible hidden giant planet far beyond Neptune. Unusual orbits among distant Kuiper Belt objects have fueled the Planet Nine theory, but recent discoveries are challenging the idea by showing more stable motion than expected. If
A national report co-authored by a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa sociologist has found that while the humanities and social sciences continue to produce rigorous and valuable scholarship, some disciplines are experiencing instances where scholarly standards have been
Protected bike lanes increase Citi Bike ridership in New York City, but painted bike lanes and sharrows do not show a statistically significant causal effect on ridership after accounting for confounding factors, according to a new study from researchers at NYU's Tandon School
New research from the University of Victoria (UVic) has found that some kelp forests around Vancouver Island were disappearing far earlier than scientists previously thought, highlighting that climate change has been altering ecosystems long before most people were aware
Since NASA's Artemis II crew members safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10 after their record-setting mission around the moon, science teams have been busy collecting more data and combing through observations collected on the test flight. Results from these
Teams working on NASA's INCUS (Investigation of Convective Updrafts) mission, the first space-based survey of the dynamics of tropical convective storms, have completed assembly and tested two of the mission's small satellites, or SmallSats. Testing continues on the third
Water pollution caused by pharmaceuticals, pesticides and other organic contaminants is an increasing global issue, especially in regions with limited wastewater treatment infrastructure. A new doctoral thesis from Umea University in Sweden offers an innovative and sustainable
On a blazing hot day in South Africa, female southern pied babblers can't think straight. The medium-sized black-and-white birds are trying to get at tasty mealworms behind a see-through barrier. On cooler days, the birds can quickly figure out that all they have to do is go
NASA says a long-running air leak aboard the ISS recently worsened, leading engineers to investigate new suspected crack locations and consider a riskier repair strategy. Astronauts were temporarily moved into a safe haven as a precaution before the repair was postponed for
Asteroids and planetesimals regularly bombarded Earth between about 4.6 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, during the Hadean and Archean eons. Because few rocks today are more than 4 billion years old, our understanding of the planet's environment during that time is limited.
Colors brighten our lives and help define countless items we use daily—from the vibrant clothes we wear to decorative paper and packaging materials. What adds different colors to these things? Dyes, which bind themselves to the structure of the material they are coloring. For
Similar to the way DNA damage can contribute to human diseases such as cancer, it can also disrupt growth, development and survival in plants. Every day, plants endure environmental stresses such as sunlight, radiation, drought and soil stress—all of which can damage their DNA.
Researchers have identified a new Alzheimer’s target and created an experimental compound that blocks a damaging process inside brain cells. In mice, the treatment slowed nerve cell loss, reduced Alzheimer’s-related changes, and even appeared to promote healthier aging.
Over the last decade, podcasts have become big business, with more than a fifth of UK adults listening to podcasts each week. The format particularly resonates with men, who are more likely than women to identify as podcast fans. Men are also overrepresented as podcast hosts.
Almost a quarter of all freshwater species are threatened with extinction. The removal of human-made barriers from rivers, such as dams and weirs, is a popular way to restore water flow and sediment transport to its natural state and allow fish and other aquatic wildlife to
Thanks to effective therapies, more and more people are now able to live with or after cancer in the long term. Consequently, the number of patients affected by the long-term effects of their treatment is also increasing. Secondary leukemias are particularly serious. These can
From the air, you see it only through the constant jolt, tilt, and shudder of the low-flying Cessna aircraft. The landscape of the Llanos de Moxos, northern Bolivia, appears as a disconnected patchwork of open grassland savannahs, forest islands, and lakes.
As nations prepare to compete on the global stage this summer, researchers at the University of Reading have created a different kind of scoreboard that shows where each country really stands on climate change. The Real Scoreline compares countries using six climate
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have developed a practical, comprehensive noise-modeling framework for a popular class of superconducting quantum processors. Their work, published
The massive formation is older than the continents The post Vast Hidden Structure Discovered Beneath Antarctica appeared first on Nautilus .
For over a century, doctors have used electrocardiograms (EKGs) to render the invisible electrical activity of the human heart visible, using the pulse to diagnose disease before it becomes fatal. Now, scientists have invented a way to do the exact same thing for the places
NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon through the Artemis program and ultimately send humans to Mars highlight just how far space exploration has come. Yet while the moon and Mars remain compelling destinations filled with scientific mysteries, looking beyond our solar
A new study from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem challenges a long-held assumption in climate science by showing that aerosols—tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere—can either warm or cool the climate, depending on the time scale considered.
Plants are undeniably one of nature's most promising sources of new medicines, with monoterpenoid indole alkaloids (MIAs) being a great example. Some intricate compounds are built from multiple-linked chemical units that form highly complex three-dimensional structures. Because
Every internet search, streamed video and AI-generated response depends on a data center somewhere. Driven by rapid growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cryptocurrency, data centers have become the backbone of the modern digital economy. But though their key
The space industry is surging. In coming years, nearly 10,000 spacecraft are slated to launch into low-Earth orbit for a variety of purposes, such as global surveillance, space tourism, and satellite "megaconstellations" providing internet service.
Rice is a staple food for nearly half the global population and an important dietary source of magnesium, a mineral essential for human health, plant growth and energy metabolism. Although magnesium is known to influence grain quality and taste, the biological mechanism
A collaboration of scientists from NASA and Brazilian research institutions has produced a detailed picture of groundwater change across Brazil. The images reveal significant declines in some of the aquifers that are critical to one of the world's largest agricultural producers.
A Canadian deep-sea mining company may become the first to commercially mine the international seabed under a controversial U.S. executive order that bypasses United Nations regulations. A recent legal analysis suggests that this could place Canada in violation of international
Early hominins seemingly first tamed a flame 1.8 million years ago The post Human Ancestors Were Using Fire Earlier Than Previously Thought appeared first on Nautilus .
Are two sets of data genuinely different, or is it because of randomness? This question, known as the two-sample testing problem, becomes notoriously difficult in modern datasets, because they are often high-dimensional, complex, and differences between them can take countless
The last deglaciation (between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago) was a period of dramatic natural warming on Earth. During this time, North America experienced the most extensive ice-sheet melting on the planet, which profoundly reshaped its climate and water cycle. But when
High school students participating in pipeline programs aimed at increasing diversity in STEM fields are more likely to enroll in—and graduate from—elite colleges with a related degree. In addition, such improvements raised their predicted earnings by anywhere from 3% to 15%,
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and GlitterinTech, a startup founded by the same research group, have unveiled a fundamentally new type of optical spectrometer that delivers laboratory-grade precision in a device small enough to be embedded in portable and wearable
An international team led by the Max Born Institute has developed a new type of momentum microscopy to image magnons—the quanta of collectively excited spins—directly in two-dimensional reciprocal space using soft X-rays. Owing to its remarkable sensitivity, simplicity, and
A publication has revealed the first photographic evidence and confirmed sighting of the Cozumel dwarf fox in more than 20 years. Published in the journal Neotropical Biology and Conservation by researchers Travis D. Bayer, Maggie A. McGreal and A. Rafael Chacón D., the short
We don't know whether theorized primordial black holes (PBH) are real. If they are, they formed in the very early universe, when physics was much different. They had no stellar progenitors and were created by the direct collapse of densely packed subatomic matter. Theorists
Researchers from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Centre for Advanced Semiconductors and Integrated Circuits (CASIC) have achieved a major breakthrough in cryogenic electronics. The
Microplastics (MPs), defined as plastic fragments smaller than 5 mm, have become so pervasive that they are detectable in nearly every environment studied—from remote ocean trenches to urban air, tap water, and human blood. MPs are hardly uniform; they span an enormous size
