Gold nanoparticles, which are about one-thousandth the width of a human hair, can convert light they receive from a laser into heat. This capacity, known in medicine as photothermal therapy, is effective at destroying cancer cells without harming the surrounding healthy tissue.
Extreme heat and drought could damage harvests and worsen global food insecurity this summer.
Quantum technologies promise powerful new kinds of computers, giving scientists new tools to mimic and explore nature at its tiniest scales. At those levels, everything in nature—from atoms and electrons to light itself—follows the strange rules of quantum mechanics. But the
We often assume that how we respond to a rude comment says something stable about us: our personality, our culture, even the language we are speaking. If someone reacts calmly, we presume they are a patient person. If they snap back, we might assume they are short-tempered.
What happens when a scientific problem seems too complex to solve precisely, yet understanding it could reshape how researchers design new materials and medicines? For decades, much of the polymer science community has relied on a "good enough" approach to a stubborn problem:
How well do language models understand Meenzerisch, the dialect spoken in the German city of Mainz? A research team led by Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has now investigated this question for the first time. Meenzerisch still shapes regional language culture today
You skip the pesticides, you remove weeds by hand, you choose heirloom seeds. Organic methods give you comfort in knowing that your vegetables are grown without excessive chemicals.
For decades, historians have generally agreed that the progress of small villages as they evolved into cities came at the price of widening inequality. A small group of leaders, kings and priests, would inevitably seize control of the wealth and the gap between rich and poor
Scientists at VIB and Vrije Universiteit Brussel have uncovered a previously unknown mechanism that helps a widely used biological pesticide become more effective. The study, published in Nature Communications, reveals how bacteria produce ultra-strong protein fibers that form
Economists have identified—and resolved—a seeming paradox regarding how competition from China affects the price and volume of products that are exported from other countries into the United States. The findings shed new light on the complex dynamics of international trade and
The practice of freediving is teaching physiologists how humans stretch their physical and mental limits, which in turn may improve treatments for lung and heart ailments.
A new European-led telescope could map the dusty, hidden half of the universe, all without using fossil fuels. If you have ever seen the Milky Way in the night sky, you probably noticed that it looks cloudy. That is because towards the center of our galaxy, and of most
When I first became co-director of an archaeological project at Jebel Barkal in northern Sudan in 2018, I was amazed by the site's pyramids, temples and palaces. It had been an urban center in the ancient empire of Kush, which dominated the Nile Valley off and on for more than
Formula 1 auto racing is one of the most energy-intensive and logistically complex sports on the planet. The events involve cars, of course, but also long-haul freight, international travel, temporary event infrastructure, and a global calendar that keeps people and equipment
A large-scale analysis of Grokipedia, the world's first AI-written encyclopedia, has found that while many Grokipedia articles closely resemble their Wikipedia counterparts, a substantial subset diverged markedly in style, sourcing and political leaning.
The crewman captured the light show while waiting on a supply craft The post NASA Astronaut Films Spectacular Fireball Over Earth appeared first on Nautilus .
Holding off on that late-night online order of a book, blender or blue jeans could ease the strain on a warehouse worker. Consumers' around-the-clock, often impulsive demand for cheap, rapidly delivered products creates harsher working conditions in e-commerce fulfillment
In every organism, the regulation of cell populations is a constant process. This balance relies on a continuous interplay between "guardian" proteins that promote cell survival and "killer" proteins that trigger programmed cell death, known as apoptosis. Any disruption of this
According to NOAA, the global average sea level has risen 8–9 inches (21–24 centimeters) since 1880. The rate at which the sea level is rising is increasing, threatening coastal cities and ecosystems around the world.
The pre-print website arXiv has announced that researchers who put their names to papers which included errors clearly generated by artificial intelligence (AI) will face a year-long ban and ongoing restrictions.
Physicists at the University of Bayreuth have investigated the so-called Basset–Boussinesq history force acting on particles in fluids. Due to the difficulty of calculating it, this force is often neglected—a fact that Bayreuth doctoral researcher Frederik Gareis already
It may sound counterintuitive, but new research suggests that cleaning up air pollution could contribute to a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This is the ocean current system that acts like a giant conveyor belt, moving warm surface water
An AI trained to use thermal images to detect whale body heat could help warn ships at risk of colliding with the marine mammals.
Some animals can move efficiently beneath granular surfaces. These include the sandfish (Scincus scincus), a lizard native to the Sahara. It can burrow into the sand and then literally "swim" through the desert sand to hunt or escape predators.
As space missions travel farther from Earth, spacecraft must increasingly be able to process and store their own data. Soon, artificial intelligence (AI) could be the primary tool for handling this growing volume of information.
The sudden resolution of a well-known conjecture highlights the growing adoption of AI as an assistant in high-level mathematics
It was the hardest field trip they had ever been on, but the result was both surprising and exciting. After hiking 9 kilometers with a 400-meter elevation gain and carrying heavy backpacks through very rocky terrain, the researchers spent more than 24 hours in the field and
A study of 66 million GPS mobility records shows that racial minorities are not as well served by transit as white New Yorkers. Publishing in PNAS Nexus, Yong Li and colleagues mapped the number of job sites, banks, health care facilities, parks, and schools that could be
The scale of chemistry simulations with quantum computing has increased dramatically in just the last few months. In the latest milestone for the field, researchers from Cleveland Clinic, RIKEN, and IBM used a quantum-centric supercomputing (QCSC) framework to calculate the
Researchers have uncovered a new type of gender gap in the workplace that places women at a disadvantage. In a new study published in the International Economic Review, they found that women in leadership roles are judged by results alone, whereas male leaders are judged by
Anti-Asian discrimination and violence increased during COVID, and new research from Murdoch University has revealed one key psychological driver. Rather than being driven by a fear of infection, aggressive forms of discrimination appeared to be more strongly associated with
The uninhabited islet of Formicula in Greece's Inner Ionian archipelago is a popular tourist draw for its clear waters, swimming spots, and marine diversity. A major attraction is the Mediterranean monk seal, one of the world's most threatened seal species.
DNA can voyage along intercellular highways called tunneling nanotubes. It’s a phenomenon that could potentially spread tumor DNA to healthy cells.
And we followed in their tiny footsteps The post These Three Newly Discovered Mammals Survived the Extinction Event That Wiped Out the Dinosaurs appeared first on Nautilus .
A new study of the largest dam removal project in United States history on the Klamath River in Oregon and California is offering new insight into a long-running water conflict by finding that farmers and conservation groups share priorities that may help guide decision-making
Bacteria from the Middle East have caused precipitation all the way out in California. The same bacteria, which are known to attack plants, have also been found embedded within lumps of hail in West Africa.
The new image shows the galaxy NGC 1266, a transitional object with a clutch of young stars that likely collided with a smaller galaxy 500 million years ago
A new free online platform is tackling one of higher education's most persistent problems—how students engage with and constructively use feedback they receive from academics.
While neutrinos are some of the most abundant particles in the universe, they remain among the least understood. One of the biggest puzzles is their mass: although experiments have shown that neutrinos must have some mass, pinning down exactly how much has proven
German defense tech start-up Helsing and space technology group OHB on Tuesday unveiled a joint venture to develop an AI-powered surveillance and targeting system for use in outer space.
Scientists have uncovered how tobacco plants naturally make nicotine, solving a mystery that has puzzled researchers for nearly two centuries. The discovery, published in Nature Communications, could lead to safer production of medicines and vaccines using tobacco plants,
A colorful and diverse garden brings joy to any gardener, but the increased popularity of non-native plants in place of native species has brought about unprecedented changes in the local wildlife.
What plant do cats love most? In Europe and North America, many people would probably answer "catnip." In Japan, the answer would more likely be silver vine (matatabi in Japanese). Both plants are famous for triggering the well-known feline response: cats rub their faces and
A hidden network of earthquake faults running beneath Seattle may be far more active than scientists realized. New research reveals that smaller “secondary” faults in the Seattle Fault Zone appear to rupture roughly every 350 years — much more often than the massive main fault
Why we think quakes are becoming more frequent The post The Earthquake Illusion appeared first on Nautilus .
Clinical trials for treatments against Ebola Bundibugyo virus are ‘in a strong position’ to be launched quickly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda
In the trenches with a paleoseismologist The post How to Predict an Earthquake appeared first on Nautilus .
What do a thriving coral reef and a bustling city neighborhood have in common? More than you might think. A Perspective by Federico Botta and colleagues published in PNAS Nexus proposes a method for measuring urban vibrancy by studying cities the way ecologists study
Using the MeerKAT radio telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered 15 new millisecond pulsars in 47 Tucanae—one of the closest and best studied globular clusters. The finding is reported in the latest issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Scientists spent decades chasing signs of a mysterious new force hidden inside the muon, one of nature’s strangest particles. But after years of supercomputer calculations, researchers discovered the apparent anomaly was likely a calculation error — and the Standard Model still