This week marks 48 years since the Sept. 5, 1977, launch of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to study Jupiter and Saturn up close. Nearly a half-century later, Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2 are still exploring. Only now they're in the outer reaches
Beneath the surface of the Chesapeake Bay, a subtle but dramatic shift is taking place as eelgrass gives way to its warmer-water relative, widgeon grass. A new study from researchers at William & Mary's Batten School & VIMS shows that this seagrass swap could have ecological
Drawing on nature, researchers have developed a method to pump CO2 captured from industrial processes into volcanic rocks for safe and permanent underground storage.
The collapse of a major system of ocean currents, the meltdown of major ice sheets or the dieback of the Amazon rainforest are all examples of negative climate tipping points. These are the big risks associated with a changing climate, where harmful change becomes
Male "ghost sharks"—eerie deep-sea fish known as chimaeras that are related to sharks and rays—have a strange rod jutting from their foreheads, studded with sharp, retractable teeth. New research appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals these are not
Maintaining American energy independence requires minimizing reliance on foreign countries to produce commodity chemicals and fuels. Using carbon dioxide electrolyzers to produce valuable chemical precursors such as ethylene provides one way to diversify domestic feedstocks.
When severe heat waves, droughts, and other weather-related disasters strike, age and education shape who migrates and who stays put, according to a study in Nature Communications.
When a baby babbles and their parents respond, these back-and-forth exchanges are more than adorable-if-incoherent chatter—they help to build a baby's emerging language skills.
The textile and meat-processing industries produce billions of tons of waste annually in the form of feathers, wool and hair, all of which are rich in keratin—the strong, fibrous protein found in hair, skin and nails.
Burning, blisters, pain: More than 40 million people worldwide are infected with the herpes virus every year. The virus can pose a serious threat to newborns and people with weakened immune systems. Researchers in Hamburg and Göttingen have now generated a mini-antibody that
When we think of pollinating insects, bees, butterflies, or flies usually come to mind—but rarely true bugs. Yet it seems that in the past, they also played an important role in plant pollination. A Hungarian research group has now confirmed, based on an ancient bug preserved
The ability to detect vocal sounds, and the more specialized skill of recognizing calls from one's own species, is supported by evolutionarily ancient brain mechanisms, according to a new study from the ELTE Department of Ethology, Hungary.
Carlotta Rigotti, postdoctoral researcher at eLaw—Center for Law and Digital Technologies, has published a new article, "Desire in Code: Legal Perspectives on Sex Robots and Consent," in Law, Culture and the Humanities.
Hungarian ethologists have developed the first diagnostic system capable of screening family dogs with suspected ADHD, following the diagnostic principles of human ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder).
Most well-studied proteins are folded, meaning they have a defined three-dimensional shape that helps determine each protein's specific function. But as the tools of science have improved, so has the understanding that many important proteins—or sections of proteins—don't
It doesn't take an expert photographer to know that the steadier the camera, the sharper the shot. But that conventional wisdom isn't always true, according to new research led by Brown University engineers.
Biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate and is driven by human activity: contamination, greenhouse gases and extreme temperatures. But how exactly do these factors affect the reproduction and survival of species?
Antibiotic resistance is considered one of the most urgent health threats of our time. Common bacteria such as E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus are evolving defenses against the drugs doctors rely on most. To combat the threat, scientists are racing to find new ways to halt
The world's largest and most enduring iceberg is splintering into smaller pieces, to the point that it's no longer the biggest chunk of ice floating in the oceans.
For over a hundred years, schoolchildren around the world have learned that ice melts when pressure and friction are applied. When you step out onto an icy pavement in winter, you can slip up because of the pressure exerted by your body weight through the sole of your (still
The PET (polyethylene terephthalate)-alternative PDCA (pyridinedicarboxylic acid) is biodegradable and has superior physical properties, according to a recent study. A Kobe University team of bioengineers engineered E. coli bacteria to produce the compound from glucose at
Switzerland has set itself the goal of reducing its CO₂ emissions to net-zero by 2050. The final report of the POLIZERO research project—led by the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the University of Piraeus—shows which policy measures are best suited to this goal. The
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, are exploring a new approach to producing food on demand with unconventional materials. Through the Feedstocks for Food Production (FFP) project, APL is investigating ways to grow edible
Adding an electrical jolt to fermentation of industrial food waste speeds up the process and increases the yield of platform chemicals that are valuable components in a wide range of products, new research shows.
If biomolecules were people, heparin would be a celebrity. Best known as a powerful blood thinner with a global market of more than $7 billion, heparin is used during and after surgery and is essential to kidney dialysis. Most of today's heparin comes from pigs, but the Food
Ireland's first satellite, EIRSAT-1, has completed its mission orbiting Earth. The CubeSat, which was built and launched by students and faculty of University College Dublin (UCD), will de-orbit in a day or two.
One of the ways that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) earn their "forever chemical" nickname and persist in the environment is their acidity.
If you've ever bitten into a fresh fig, you've tasted the delicious result of one of nature's most extraordinary and longstanding partnerships. But the figs in your local grocery store only tell a small part of the tale.
Scientists are using artificial intelligence to understand escalating unrest in Italy's Campi Flegrei, a volcanic area that is home to hundreds of thousands of people.
LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, has been called the most precise ruler in the world for its ability to measure motions more than 10,000 times smaller than the width of a proton. By making these extremely precise measurements, LIGO, which consists
Researchers led by Ken Shirasu at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) in Japan have identified an ancient protein that has the potential to help defend plants against tens of thousands of different bacteria and other pathogens.
Hundreds of species have gone extinct in recent centuries, but losses are few among larger classification levels, meaning we are not witnessing a mass extinction just yet, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by John Wiens of the University of
There are various ways to create artificial diamonds, but a new method developed by researchers, including those at the University of Tokyo, yields some extra benefits.
Picture a squirrel eating an acorn. It's holding the nut in its front paws. More specifically, squirrels handle their food with their thumbs. And instead of the thin, curved claws on the rest of the squirrel's fingers, their thumbs have smooth, flat nails.
The seas have long sustained human life, but a new UC Santa Barbara study shows that rising climate and human pressures are pushing the oceans toward a dangerous threshold.
In a study published in Science, a research team led by Prof. Wang Feng from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, along with Prof. Paolo Fornasiero from the University of Trieste in Italy, has developed a photochemical strategy for
Spintronics, or spin-electronics, is a revolutionary approach to information processing that utilizes the intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of electrons, rather than solely relying on electric charge flow. This technology promises faster, more energy-efficient data storage and
The answer to this supposedly simple particle physics question isn’t so simple
Thumbnails might have boosted rodents’ food-handling skills, helping them thrive worldwide.
A new analysis suggests that recent extinctions have been rare, limited mostly to islands and slowing. But others argue this is all just semantics.
A synthetic cell that can be activated by a magnetic field to release a medicine while deep in the body has been created by chemists at UCL (University College London) and the University of Oxford.
For much of Sydney's history, the city supported its population with crops, orchards, dairies, abattoirs, oyster beds, wineries and market gardens scattered across the basin.
Dr. Seunghak Lee, Jaeshik Chung, and Sang Hyun Kim of the Water Resources Cycle Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) observed how oil and water interact in porous media under various conditions using a microfluidic system that allows precise
JetBlue Airways will become the first airline to use Amazon's Project Kuiper satellite network to power its in-flight Wi‑Fi service, the companies announced Wednesday, as the online retail giant tries to challenge the dominance of Elon Musk's Starlink.
Solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs) offer a route for efficient energy conversion and storage by converting renewable electricity into storable chemical fuels through high-temperature carbon dioxide electrolysis. However, sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) at the anode
This dramatic scene captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope looks like a fantastical tableau from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. But truth is even stranger than fiction. In reality, what appears to be a craggy, starlit mountaintop kissed by wispy clouds is
Since 1945, three-quarters of all global economic growth has been driven by technological advances. Since 1990, 90% of that advance has been rooted in fundamental science, according to Michael M. Crow, president of Arizona State University.
The explosion of animal life in Earth's oceans half a billion years ago during and after the Cambrian Period is commonly attributed to a substantial and sustained rise of free oxygen (O2) in seawater. Some researchers even argue for near-modern levels of ocean oxygenation at
Until now, most microbial cultivation efforts focused on fast-growing organisms that grow in nutrient-rich media. This has left many of the most abundant aquatic microbes, slow-growing oligotrophs that are adapted to low nutrient conditions, largely unstudied.
Scientists have discovered a giant black hole that they believe may have been formed in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang. The black hole is so huge that it may change our understanding of how these cosmic giants form. If the findings are confirmed, this will be the
