Headlines

Biodiversity at risk in Colombia's tropical dry forests

A study of changes to the habitats of more than 700 species reveals massive biodiversity loss—but also possibilities for restoration. "There is a lot of talk about deforestation and biodiversity loss in the Amazon, but even here in Colombia there is much less said about the

Eye-tracking study explores fear of spiders

Whether it's a sudden dash across the garage or silhouette in a backyard web, spiders evoke fear in many people. But researchers don't have a clear picture of why, exactly, this phobia is so common. An interdisciplinary team at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln is using

Get ready for the Rubin Observatory's deluge of discoveries

It's been about eight months since the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) saw first light. Now the telescope is scanning the night sky to detect transient changes and sending alerts to astronomers and observatories around the world so they can perform follow-up observations. This

Wildfire smoke silences grassland birds in New York state

On a hazy day in June 2023, doctoral students Trifosa Simamora and Timothy Boycott noticed that the birds at their field site had gone quiet. Now in a study published in Biological Conservation, they show that the culprit was smoke from that summer's record-breaking Canadian

The stars that lit up the early Milky Way

Imagine trying to reconstruct the history of a city by studying only its oldest surviving buildings. You can't watch it being built, you can't interview the architects, all you have are the structures themselves, their materials, their arrangement, the subtle clues locked into