A series of 'bone biographies' created by a major research project tell the stories of medieval Cambridge residents as recorded on their skeletons, illuminating everyday lives during the era of Black Death and its aftermath. ⌘ Read more
A series of 'bone biographies' created by a major research project tell the stories of medieval Cambridge residents as recorded on their skeletons, illuminating everyday lives during the era of Black Death and its aftermath. ⌘ Read more
A new study of a migratory songbird shows that individuals with average-sized white tail spots—a trait that is critical to successful foraging—live longer than individuals with more extreme amounts of white in the tail. ⌘ Read more
Most NASA missions feature one spacecraft or, occasionally, a few. The agency's Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) uses half a dozen. This month, mission members completed the construction of the six identical cereal box-size satellites, which will now go into storage and await their final testing and ride to space. SunRISE will launch as a rideshare aboard a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket, sponsored by th ... ⌘ Read more
More than two million people across the Horn of Africa have been forced from their homes by torrential rains and floods, according to an AFP tally compiled Thursday from government and UN figures. ⌘ Read more
A Venezuelan zoo this week welcomed the country's first three white lion cubs born in captivity, a boost for the genetically rare animal whose wild population numbers only about a dozen living in their native South Africa. ⌘ Read more
White, wealthy neighborhoods in the LA area are about to start feeling the same heat that has plagued poorer, Hispanic neighborhoods for generations. A new study shows the protective effect of income has largely eroded over the past 40 years, as landscape plants can't keep up with the pace of climate warming. ⌘ Read more
The UN climate conference opens in Dubai on Thursday with nations urged to increase the pace of action on global warming and phase out fossil fuels, amid intense scrutiny of oil-rich hosts UAE. ⌘ Read more
Researchers at Kanazawa University report in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters high-speed atomic force microscopy studies that shed light on the possible role of the open reading frame 6 (ORF6) protein in COVID-19 symptoms. ⌘ Read more
A new Griffith-led study has developed a framework to operationalize global "theories of change," coordinating local and global actions to secure a future where humans live in harmony with nature. ⌘ Read more
This new Picture of the Month from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals intricate details of the Herbig Haro object 797 (HH 797). Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars (known as protostars), and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. ⌘ Read more
A Hobart-based solicitor built his reputation as "the foremost scientist in the colony" in the mid-1800s, despite limited contributions to scientific knowledge. ⌘ Read more
Researchers have concluded that Saudi Arabia is likely no longer home to sustainable populations of Arabian leopards, as detailed in the journal Oryx. ⌘ Read more
Single-cell multi-omics technologies allow a profound system-level biology understanding of cells and tissues. However, an integrative and possibly systems-based analysis capturing the different modalities is challenging. In response, bioinformatics and machine learning methodologies are being developed for multi-omics single-cell analysis. ⌘ Read more
Our park ponds typically hold good numbers of mallards, and urban grassy areas often hold concentrations of geese. In the UK, Canada Geese are an abundant and widespread alien species, well known for fouling parks with their feces. ⌘ Read more
Activists from Greenpeace International have boarded a ship that is conducting deep sea mining research in the Pacific Ocean, vowing to occupy the vessel until it abandons the expedition. ⌘ Read more
Tetrodotoxin, the neurotoxin that makes a blue-ringed octopus deadly, also protects Taricha newts—but we don't understand how they produce it, or what purposes it serves for them. ⌘ Read more
In 2022, 184 women and girls were killed by violence in Canada. This number has steadily increased in each of the past three years; 148 women and girls were killed in 2019, 172 in 2020 and 177 in 2021. ⌘ Read more
When a negatively charged electron and a positively charged hole in a pair remain bound together following excitation by light, they produce states known as excitons. These states can influence the optical properties of materials, in turn enabling their use for developing various technologies. ⌘ Read more
A Sumatran rhino has been born in western Indonesia, officials said Monday, a rare sanctuary birth for the critically endangered animal with only several dozen believed to be left in the world. ⌘ Read more
Greek organic farmer Zaharoula Vassilaki looks with admiration at a huge olive tree on her property believed to be over two centuries old, still yielding despite a direct lightning hit years ago. ⌘ Read more
Unlike her fellow Hong Kong urbanites toting plastic or paper cups filled with coffee, pet groomer Lucine Mo takes her caffeine hit in a thermal mug with a QR code. ⌘ Read more
A small team of chemists from Nankai University, Nanjing Tech University and Shanxi University, all in China, working with a colleague from Universidad San Sebastián, in Chile, has, for the first time, created a fullerene-like molecule made entirely of metal atoms. ⌘ Read more
There are different ideas about how quantum computers could be built. But they all have one thing in common: you use a quantum physical system—for example, individual atoms—and change their state by exposing them to very specific forces for a specific time. However, this means that in order to be able to rely on the quantum computing operation delivering the correct result, you need a clock that is as precise as possible. ⌘ Read more
The hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has been getting deeper in mid-spring over the last two decades, despite a global ban on chemicals that deplete Earth's shield from deadly solar radiation, new research suggested Tuesday. ⌘ Read more
This week, we reported on new developments in lithium-ion batteries, and a real industrial pollution hat trick with stories on coal, lead and microplastics. ⌘ Read more
Towards the end of autumn the days get colder and shorter. This triggers the reduction of the plant hormone auxin in most deciduous trees, which start to shed their leaves. ⌘ Read more
In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, the United Nations (UN) identified what it called a "shadow pandemic" of domestic violence against women. The UN includes in its definition of domestic violence what it refers to as "economic violence," which it explains as: "making or attempting to make a person financially dependent by maintaining total control over financial resources, withholding access to money, and/or forbidding attendance at s ... ⌘ Read more
When is a language extinct and when is it merely dormant? There are certainly languages that have passed over that line, and many remain threatened today. But what of those in the twilight zone—can we revive them, and what would that look like? ⌘ Read more
More information is always better when it comes to publicly funded space exploration projects. So it's welcome when a NASA engineer takes time out of the assuredly busy work lives to provide an update on everyone's favorite helicopter on Mars. Ingenuity has been having a rough few months, and a new article entitled "The Long Wait," posted by Travis Brown, Chief Engineer on the Ingenuity project, on NASA's website, provides a good amount of detail as to ... ⌘ Read more
A recent paper released by Opportunity Insights, a Harvard-based team of researchers and policy analysts, found that children of the wealthiest 1% of Americans were 13 times likelier than the children of low-income families to score 1300 or higher on SAT/ACT tests. ⌘ Read more
In a landmark collaboration between Wiradjuri people, NSW State government and archaeologists, new research has revealed the deep-time hidden story of Wiradjuri carved trees (marara) and burials (dhabuganha) in Southeast Australia. ⌘ Read more
A combination of machine learning and lab experiments has given researchers a peek into the different languages bacteria use to communicate. Understanding how bacteria communicate—and when they can't—has implications for treating drug-resistant bacteria and for developing biocomputing tools. ⌘ Read more
The European Space Agency's Ariane 6 rocket successfully completed a dress rehearsal on Thursday, test-firing its engine in preparation for a maiden voyage scheduled for 2024. ⌘ Read more
The Fens of eastern England, a low-lying, extremely flat landscape dominated by agricultural fields, was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, according to new research. ⌘ Read more
A team of environmental scientists at the University of Wollongong Faculty of Science Medicine and Health's School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, working with a colleague from the University of New South Wales, has found that sea level rise is encouraging mangrove expansion on some Great Barrier Reef islands. In their paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group describes h ... ⌘ Read more
An estimated 50,000 shipwrecks can be found around the UK's coastline and have been acting as a hidden refuge for fish, corals and other marine species in areas still open to destructive bottom towed fishing, a new study has shown. ⌘ Read more
Extreme events like tropical cyclones have immediate impacts, but also long-term implications for societies. A new study published in the journal Nature Communications shows that accounting for the long-term impacts of these storms raises the global social cost of carbon by more than 20%, compared to the estimates currently used for policy evaluations. This increase is mainly driven by the projected rise of tropi ... ⌘ Read more
The efforts to increase society's environmental sustainability focus on four major challenges that need to be addressed: climate change, natural resource dissipation, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss. ⌘ Read more
A study published recently in the journal Eco-Environment & Health, has shown that natural processes, especially reactions involving certain reactive oxygen species, play a big role in how paddy soils release CO2. This adds to our understanding of the world's carbon balance. ⌘ Read more
In a first for CSIRO's research vessel (RV) Investigator, a state-of-the-art robotic float has been recovered from the Southern Ocean after its three-year mission sampling deep waters about 500 kilometers south of Tasmania. ⌘ Read more
Tracking unprecedented changes in land use over the past century, global land cover maps provide key insights into the impact of human settlement on the environment. Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University created a large-scale remote sensing annotation dataset to support Earth observation research and provide new insight into the dynamic monitoring of global land cover. ⌘ Read more
After years of working on bringing back one of the most popular extinct animals—the dodo—Colossal Biosciences has found a home for its bird in Mauritius in a new partnership with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation. ⌘ Read more
Astronomers from the Liverpool John Moores University have performed photometric and spectroscopic observations of a recently discovered nova, known as AT 2023prq. Results of the observational campaign, published in the November issue of the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), shed more light on the nature of this nova. ⌘ Read more
During missions into space, astronauts are exposed to high levels of galactic cosmic radiation and weightlessness. Simulation experiments in male rats indicated that these aspects of spaceflight can negatively affect vascular tissues relevant to erectile dysfunction, even after a period of long-term recovery. ⌘ Read more
Advances in areas such as robotics and artificial intelligence enable the automation of a range of occupational tasks, leading to fundamental changes in the nature of work. New research published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology indicates that the effects of job automation vary across race and gender and, without targeted interventions, will likely result in increasing inequality. ⌘ Read more
Anthocyanins are key pigments in plants for plant resistance to abiotic stress. It can provide photoprotection by potentially absorbing visible light and scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS) when biotic stress occurs. However, comparative studies of anthocyanin function are challenged due to the absence of isogenic plant models with variable anthocyanin levels. ⌘ Read more
Sweet orange (Citrus sinensis L.), a hybrid fruit crop originating from mandarins (Citrus reticulata Blanco) and pummelos [Citrus maxima (Burm.) Merr.], exhibits complex genomic diversity due to ancient interspecific hybridization. At present, the best assembly of the sweet orange genome is the double haploid sweet orange (HSO). ⌘ Read more
For the first time, it was shown in living cells how the bacterium E. coli regulates genes that help it survive in a new environment. Biochemist Fatema Zahra Rashid managed to do this using a technique she fine-tuned. Her research into changes in 3-dimensional chromosome structure offers clues for ways to fight pathogens and appeared in Nature Communications on November 17. ⌘ Read more
Variations in the skull shape of vultures have been found to coincide with the preferred method each species uses to feed on a carcass. ⌘ Read more
To age or not to age? How does aging affect organisms on a cellular level? What mechanisms help cells survive self-inflicted or external harm? It is known that lysosomes—critically important cellular structures—are crucial for digesting damaged cellular components and pathogens, and to maintain stability within cells and tissues. But can they also be repaired, and if so, how? ⌘ Read more
The burden of heat-related mortality during the summer of 2022 in Europe may have exceeded 70,000 deaths according to a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal). ⌘ Read more
On 17 November 2023, ESA's Juice spacecraft carried out one of the largest and most important maneuvers in its eight-year journey to Jupiter. ⌘ Read more
A significant step forward in protein design from Generate Biomedicines, Massachusetts, has developed an AI that can generate feasible protein structures and predict the potential functionality of the proteins generated. ⌘ Read more
A team of biologists at Monash University, working with a colleague from Wageningen University, has found an explanation for why purple-crowned fairy wrens engage in cooperative breeding. In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the group describes their study of the birds in the wild. ⌘ Read more
Similar to human teenagers, teenage galaxies are awkward, experience growth spurts and enjoy heavy metal—nickel, that is. ⌘ Read more
At least 21 people, including three children, died after heavy rainfall inundated the Dominican Republic over the weekend, authorities said Sunday, warning the downpours were linked to worsening climate change. ⌘ Read more
The richest one percent of the global population are responsible for the same amount of carbon emissions as the world's poorest two-thirds, or five billion people, according to an analysis published Sunday by the nonprofit Oxfam International. ⌘ Read more
Australians began voting Monday on a name for the country's first home-made moon rover, with a shortlist including "Mateship", "Roo-ver" and "Kakirra"—an Indigenous word for the Earth's satellite. ⌘ Read more
Many organizations, from community sporting groups to the United Nations, have set themselves a target of gender parity: ensuring half of staff or members are women. Gender parity is desirable because training and retaining equal halves of a population's available talent influences an organization's growth, problem-solving capacity and future-readiness. ⌘ Read more
A bottle of The Macallan 1926, described by Sotheby's auction house as the "most valuable whisky in the world", on Saturday went under the hammer for a record £2.1 million. ⌘ Read more
SpaceX on Saturday made progress in the second test launch of its mammoth Starship rocket, with the booster separating from the spaceship, but both then exploding shortly after over the ocean. ⌘ Read more
Monkeys are not usually a popular menu item for big cats. Primates are, after all, hard to catch: living in the canopies of large trees and rarely coming down to the ground. Jaguar and puma have varied diets and will normally hunt the species that are most common where they live, such as deer, peccary (a type of wild pig) and armadillo. ⌘ Read more
Small molecules called immunomodulators can help create more effective vaccines and stronger immunotherapies to treat cancer. ⌘ Read more
College students' sense of belonging is believed to have important and far-reaching implications, contributing to academic achievement and persistence at college as well as offering protective effects against anxiety and depression. ⌘ Read more
A new molecular technology capable of binding to mRNA and regulating gene expression may offer a new avenue for treating diseases caused by haploinsufficiency, or the absence of one functional gene copy, according to a study published in Nature Communications. ⌘ Read more
SpaceX has pushed back by one day the long awaited second launch of its next-generation Starship rocket because of technical issues, the company's CEO Elon Musk said Thursday. ⌘ Read more
The discovery that chimpanzees use tools to fish for termites revolutionized our understanding of their abilities—but we still don't have crucial context to help us understand termite fishing and chimpanzee minds. Are chimpanzees fishing for a seasonal treat or trying their luck? ⌘ Read more
On a summer's day in July 1943, a U.S. B-25 Mitchell bomber left Tunisia in North Africa on a mission to attack the Sciacca Aerodrome in Sicily, Italy. ⌘ Read more
City dwellers have long had to contend with smog—that ugly haze that hangs over urban areas—as a result of emissions-producing human activities as diverse as manufacturing, mowing the lawn, driving cars, and even cooking. ⌘ Read more
Many songbirds are nesting earlier in spring because of warmer temperatures brought about by climate change. But the shift brings another danger that is especially deadly for nestlings: greater exposure to temperature variability in the form of cold snaps and heat waves. Such extremes result in more nest failures. These findings come from a Cornell Lab of Ornithology study just published in the journal Nature Communications. ⌘ Read more
It is a real problem: Microplastic particles are everywhere. Now a team from the University of Potsdam and HZB has developed a method that allows it for the first time to precisely localize microplastic particles in the soil. The 3D tomographies show where the particles are deposited and how structures in the soil are changed. ⌘ Read more
A town has been evacuated in southwestern Iceland after hundreds of earthquakes caused by shifting underground magma sparked fears of a full-blown volcanic eruption. ⌘ Read more
The internal clocks of grizzly bears appear to keep ticking through hibernation, according to a genetic study. This persistence highlights the strong role of circadian rhythms in the metabolism of many organisms including humans. ⌘ Read more
Threats posed by the climate crisis disproportionally affect certain communities and social groups that are more exposed. People living in low- and middle-income (LMIC) countries are at heightened risk. Within these countries, women typically face higher climate risk than men. ⌘ Read more
Dechen, 40, grew up in Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan. Her native language was Mangdip, also known as Nyenkha, as her parents are originally from central Bhutan. She went to schools in the city, where the curriculum was predominantly taught in Dzongkha, the national language, and English. ⌘ Read more
If you're like most people, you've been taught that climate action is a sacrifice. Cutting emissions from fossil fuels, you've probably been told, is the economy-squeezing price we must pay for a livable planet. But our research explains why we should look at this issue through a different frame. ⌘ Read more
The OSIRIS-REx mission is NASA's first mission to collect samples from an asteroid—in this case 101955 Bennu—and return to Earth. ⌘ Read more
PFAS, the "forever chemicals" that have been raising health concerns across the country, are not just a problem in drinking water. As these chemicals leach out of failing septic systems and landfills and wash off airport runways and farm fields, they can end up in streams that ultimately discharge into ocean ecosystems where fish, dolphins, manatees, sharks and other marine species live. ⌘ Read more
A new study by Dr. Lindsay Spiers (Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission) and Professor Thomas Frazer (College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida), published in PeerJ presents crucial findings on the feeding preferences of herbivorous fishes and the sea urchin Diadema antillarum in Little Cayman. ⌘ Read more
Researchers have developed a new deep learning AI tool that generates lifelike bird songs to train bird identification tools, helping ecologists to monitor rare species in the wild. The findings are presented in Methods in Ecology and Evolution. ⌘ Read more
The U.K. needs an evidence-led and proportionate regulatory approach for genetically modified (GM) crops to realize the technology's benefits for human health, agriculture and the environment, according to a new Royal Society policy briefing. ⌘ Read more
Research in the International Journal of Tourism Policy has shown how social media platforms can influence holidaymakers and travelers in seeking out destinations that have been the victims of adverse events, natural disasters or conflicts. The colloquial term "revenge tourism" was coined in 2021 for this kind of vacation where people sought out experiences to combat the negative impact of lockdowns and lost time caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, t ... ⌘ Read more
Many organisms have evolved to survive in some of the Earth's harshest conditions, tolerating freezing temperatures, crushing pressures and other extremes. In studying these organisms, scientists deepen our understanding of how life has adapted on our planet—and of what it could look like on others. ⌘ Read more
An international research team has identified potential new 'weapons' in the 'arms race' for new antibiotics and possible future therapies for a more balanced gut microbiome and human health. ⌘ Read more
From Christmas gifts to sheep, residents forced from an Icelandic town damaged by hundreds of earthquakes in recent days were able to briefly return on Monday to retrieve their belongings, authorities said. ⌘ Read more
From a gently rocking boat, Nyunt Win tends a floating tomato crop in the cool water of Myanmar's famed Inle Lake, nestled in the Shan Hills and once the country's most popular tourist spot. ⌘ Read more
Protecting forests globally could vastly increase the amount of carbon they sequester, a new study finds, but given our current emissions track, does it really matter? ⌘ Read more
A research team from the University of Cologne, in collaboration with colleagues from the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology in Freising, has discovered a receptor for bitter taste in twelve different cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays). The receptor belongs to the so-called taste receptors type 2 (T2R), which also make humans perceive bitter and potentially toxic foods. ⌘ Read more
To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of declining phytoplankton in the North Atlantic may have been greatly exaggerated. A prominent 2019 study used ice cores in Antarctica to suggest that marine productivity in the North Atlantic had declined by 10% during the industrial era, with worrying implications that the trend might continue. ⌘ Read more
After decades of unrestricted pumping in the rain-starved northwestern corner of the Mojave Desert, the Indian Wells Valley Groundwater Basin Authority has the distinction of managing one of the most critically overdrawn aquifers in California. ⌘ Read more
By analyzing the data from the TÜBİTAK National Observatory and ESA's Gaia satellite, astronomers have investigated King 6 and NGC 1605—two young Galactic open clusters. Results of the study, published October 31 on the pre-print server arXiv, deliver important insights into the properties and nature of these clusters. ⌘ Read more
Plants have a symbiotic relationship with their surrounding environment, being a vital indicator of the overall health of the landscape, as well as significant changes within it. One such driver of plant response is gas emissions, such as those from volcanic activity, which elevate carbon dioxide and water emissions in the immediate area, consequently impacting leaf area and photosynthesis (the biological process through which organisms ... ⌘ Read more
A surge in clean power generation will reduce carbon emissions in China next year and could put the world's biggest polluter on a path to sustained declines, according to a new report. ⌘ Read more
The latest negotiations towards a global treaty to combat plastic pollution open in Nairobi on Monday, with tensions expected as nations tussle over what should be included in the pact. ⌘ Read more
A crowd has gathered to see off Rose, a loggerhead sea turtle, who labors across the Tunisian sand to rejoin the waters of the Mediterranean. ⌘ Read more
More children in South Asia are struggling due to severe water scarcity made worse by the impacts of climate change than anywhere else worldwide, the United Nations said Monday. ⌘ Read more
Just like any other organism, plants can get stressed. Usually it's conditions like heat and drought that lead to this stress, and when they're stressed, plants might not grow as large or produce as much. This can be a problem for farmers, so many scientists have tried genetically modifying plants to be more resilient. ⌘ Read more
SpaceX is hoping to re-launch Starship, the most powerful rocket ever built, next week, the company said, after an attempt in April ended in a spectacular explosion. ⌘ Read more
Scientists have discovered the oldest black hole yet, a cosmic beast formed a mere 470 million years after the Big Bang. ⌘ Read more
RIKEN researchers have brought low-energy devices based on spintronics one step closer, by measuring the dynamics of tiny magnetic vortices. ⌘ Read more