Just 10 viral particles of the H5N1 bird flu that caused hundreds of influenza outbreaks in U.S. dairy cattle can cause infection in cows, a new study shows. The research also hints at why the outbreaks have confounded scientists, farmers and livestock handlers hoping to
The "right to repair" movement is gaining steam as consumers push corporations to offer them more freedom to fix products—from cars to dishwashers to toys.
University of Mississippi researchers are studying how plants respond to heat at the molecular level, an important consideration for farmers, businesses and policymakers as global temperatures rise.
When stars like our sun age, they puff up into red giants. Their bubbling outer mass gradually escapes into space, and their remaining cores contract into white dwarfs. Since most stars end their lives this way, the universe is teeming with white dwarfs. A new study from
The world has never had more data, more models or more economists. It has rarely felt more out of control. Uncertainty, not risk, has become the defining condition of our era. Central bankers invoke it. Political leaders use it to defer decisions and justify extraordinary ones.
Researchers around the world are racing to develop new quantum-based systems for sensing, communication, computing and control that have the promise of outperforming traditional systems. Creating stable, measurable, distinguishable quantum states—which would be the heart of any
The aftermath of a supernova, a stellar explosion, is usually a slowly fading cloud of hot gas. So when astronomers pointed NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory at the nearby galaxy Messier 83 (M83), they did not expect to find a population of supernova remnants, or the debris from
Oxford's 2024 Word of the Year, "brain rot," refers to the loss of intelligence or critical thinking skills due to the overconsumption of specific types of content, most often in the digital sphere. A Binghamton University doctoral student has published findings that help
The Ontong Java Plateau in the western Pacific Ocean is the largest oceanic plateau on Earth, and its formation mechanism has not been well understood.
New research is shedding light on how comparing ourselves to others affects happiness and life satisfaction. Led by McGill University researchers, the study shows that people who feel worse off financially than their peers are more likely to report signs of languishing, even
The sum is hard to comprehend The post What Is a Trillion, Really? appeared first on Nautilus .
Human skeletal biologists traditionally provide sex estimations as part of establishing biological profiles (skeletal sex, age-at-death, stature, ancestry/population affinity) for skeletonized remains, often using the shapes and sizes of the pelvis, long bones and skull, among
Over 40,000 seamounts—undersea mountains that don't breach the ocean's surface—are scattered across the ocean floor. Some form linear chains, while others occur as dispersed, isolated features that are not part of well-defined volcanic chains.
Change can be hard—especially when you're used to receiving change. Switching from cash-based to digital payment methods can be a difficult sell, particularly in developing economies, poorer neighborhoods and among older people who have gotten used to cash. But digital payments
Caltech researchers have identified a novel chemical reaction that could explain the formation of the building blocks of DNA and RNA, the molecules that encode all of life's functions. The work is an important step toward understanding how life may have emerged on Earth and
The warm Gulf Stream is maintained by coldness. The Barents Sea is a cooling machine. To predict how ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean may develop, one needs to know what drives them. The hunt for driving forces has led researchers to follow the warm water from the Gulf
More than 2.6 million Canadians work for themselves, and according to an annual RBC poll conducted in 2025, 59% of Canadians aspire to own a business—the highest level since 2017.
Kids who can hold it together until the final bell may be primed for more academic success in life The post Bad Third-Grade Behavior Could be a Preview of Educational Failure appeared first on Nautilus .
Sedimentary basins—depressions in Earth's crust caused by tectonic activity—tend to be flat and are favored places to build cities. But during earthquakes, they can become natural resonance chambers.
Debris is still raining down on Earth more than 100 million years after the giant cosmic explosion that created it. A study published this week in Nature Astronomy by an international team reached this conclusion using measurements of rare isotopes within a slow-growing
"Love makes fools of all of us," wrote 19th-century novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. A moment spent watching the pigeons at your local park suggests he was right: males with puffed-up, shimmering necks hop, pirouette, coo, and bow to capture the attention of unimpressed
A young mother remains in hospital after being bitten by a shark at Coogee Beach in Sydney on Saturday morning. Leah Stewart, 35, was swimming about 30 meters (33 yards) offshore when the shark—believed to be a 3- to 4-meter (10- to 13-foot) great white shark—struck.
A cold blob of water in the North Atlantic points to a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, researchers report.
Imagine you poll your friends on how many minutes per pound to roast a turkey. Five respond with 15 minutes; one answers 33 minutes. The most popular model of conformity, the French-Harary-DeGroot model (or more commonly, DeGroot model), assumes that you would carefully weigh
The CEO of dating app Hinge recently suggested that generation Z, "struggling to have the confidence to put themselves out there," needs AI to help them find love. Apparently, without AI tools, younger people will struggle to express who they really are.
Can a snake in Thailand influence the evolution of a snake in the Philippines even if the two species never cross paths? According to a new study, the answer may be yes. The research suggests that migratory predators can act as evolutionary "messengers," carrying their
What does it take for an insect or worm to live full-time on a glacier?
It's official: El Niño is back. By late fall 2026, forecast models give a 2-in-3 chance of a strong-to-very-strong El Niño affecting the weather, climate and ocean temperatures across the planet.
A team of astronomers, led by Brooke Kotten of the University of Michigan, has shown that TOI-5882—a sunlike star located some 1,300 light-years away—has likely eaten one of its planets.
Rare earth elements (REEs) are essential for everyday technologies such as smartphones, LED lights, wind turbines and many medical applications. At the same time, supply chains are under pressure because of the geographic concentration of production, and electronic waste is
Researchers have developed a new approach using data from NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite to observe the timing and progression of fall colors across landscapes.
Mikhail Verbitsky was detained at an Armenian airport last Thursday on charges of inciting terrorism
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a unique environment in our solar system. It is the only moon (or body beyond Earth) to have a dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and its methane cycle is very similar to Earth's hydrological cycle, in which solid and liquid methane evaporate to
What would it take to instantly transform a material from an electrical insulator into a conductive state without ever touching it? Using ultrafast laser pulses and powerful X-rays, scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II)—a U.S. Department of Energy
With El Niño-driven heat and prolonged dry spells threatening rice production, scientists from Japan's National Agriculture and Food Research Organization (NARO), other Japanese research institutions and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) have discovered a gene
Imagine living in the same forest as your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and all your ancestors as far back in time as stories can tell, and depending on the forest for food, shelter, recreation and education. Imagine, then, that the forest depends on you, too,
They preceded vertebrates on land by about 80 million years The post These Ancient Millipedes Paved the Way for Terrestrial Life appeared first on Nautilus .
Picture the Milky Way not as a silent pinwheel of stars but as something that quietly sings. Scattered through it are millions of pairs of dead stars, mostly white dwarfs, whirling around each other and stirring ripples in spacetime as they go. Individually, these ripples are
Listening to someone who disagrees with you on a controversial topic, but shares basic values, might not change your mind—but it could moderate an extreme position, reducing polarization, new Cornell economics research finds.
A molecular geneticist at Montana State University has discovered a cellular process once believed impossible by scientists—the creation of the amino acid cysteine within a living cell when the cell's primary systems for doing so fail. The discovery may one day lead to new
Adults vary in how easily they learn new languages. While previous studies suggest this variability may be due to the distribution of groups of brain areas involved in attention, control and memory, a direct link has been lacking. Using a large sample of participants (101
The Arctic and northern high latitudes are warming about 2–4 times faster than the global average, allowing ancient permafrost to thaw and release stored carbon. These permafrost soils currently store roughly one-third of the world's organic soil carbon, much of which has
Prime editing can potentially repair the vast majority of known disease-causing human mutations, but the technology, first developed in 2019, has not yet been widely used in the body, or in vivo, to treat genetic disease. The only clinical application of prime editing that has
Growing up in Los Angeles, Sydney Scott was accustomed to Whole Foods and "organic" labels. Yet instead of simply filling her cart, she found herself asking why those labels were so compelling to many people.
While most businesses have introduced AI in the workplace to enhance employee productivity, an Auburn University information systems researcher cautions that under certain circumstances, AI deployment can inadvertently zap the motivation of its highest-performing workers, which
Trinity's Prof. Stefan Sint, along with collaborators from Germany, Spain and Italy, has published the most precise determination to date of the strong coupling constant. This parameter governs the interactions between quarks and gluons, the fundamental components of nuclear
The surprising discovery of mysterious blobs inside our cells is revolutionising our understanding of how life works, and how it got started
IVF could be done inside the body using sperm that have been magnetised, allowing them to be directed to an egg while getting around the need for invasive egg retrievals and embryo transfers
Porpoises that strand in the Netherlands have, on average, a lower BMI than their counterparts in Scotland and elsewhere, according to an international study led by Utrecht University in collaboration with the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme (SMASS), based at the
The vaquita (Phocoena sinus), an elusive porpoise found only in the shallow waters of Mexico's northern Gulf of California, is one of the rarest and most endangered marine mammals on Earth. Measuring about 5 feet (1.5 meters) in length, it is the world's smallest cetacean—a
