Beyond cutting back on meat or making the jump to an electric vehicle, another way consumers can reduce their environmental impact is to switch to a green bank. It's a lifestyle change that could deliver powerful effects—removing money from the fossil fuels pipeline—for little effort or inconvenience. [...]
Pupils with special educational needs and disabilities are twice as likely as their peers to be persistently absent from school. [...]
A study published in the International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation has mapped the fast-growing field of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in education. The research highlights both the technology's transformative potential and gaps in understanding how it affects learning and cognition. Academic interest in GenAI has surged, from just a handful of papers to many hundreds now. [...]
It sounds like the plot of a medieval historical drama: A once-powerful monarch, weakened by illness, is overthrown by her previously loyal subjects. But in honey bee colonies, such high-stakes coups aren't just fantasy—they're a common occurrence that comes with both risk and reward for bee colonies and the food systems that depend on them. [...]
Research by Assistant Professor Jacob S. Suissa at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is revealing complexity in how ferns have evolved. Instead of the vascular structure inside fern stems changing as a direct adaptation to the environment, he discovered that shifts in vascular bundle arrangement in the stem are developmentally covaried with leaf placement on the stem. [...]
An international team of biologists, including those at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, have discovered that the spiny-tailed iguanas on Clarion Island (Mexico), previously thought to be introduced by humans, have likely been there since before humans colonized the Americas. [...]
Air pollution is widely recognized as a public health hazard, but its role in workplace safety is often underestimated. A new study reveals that polluted air can make industrial accidents both more likely and more severe, adding a hidden layer to their human and economic costs. [...]
What happens when cows are allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to be indoors or outdoors? When calves grow up with their mothers, can visitors observe the animals, everyday life in the barn and the research—without disturbing them? An Invited Review on the "dairy barn of the future," published in the Journal of Dairy Science, answers this question. The concept focuses on a family herd with cow-calf contact, a large free-lying area, year-round access to pasture or paddocks, automation and sensor technology—and a visitor corridor for a safe viewing of everyday life in the barn. [...]
New research from the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) reveals how missing just one essential amino acid can change gene expression and the brain's sensory systems, prompting animals to seek out protein-rich yeast and gut bacteria that help them restore nutritional balance and survive in times of need. [...]
In early 2025, some of Canada's largest banks—including those with the highest digital emissions and greatest responsibility—withdrew from the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. [...]
In a new study, chemists have developed a novel framework for determining how effectively carbon monoxide sticks to the surface of a catalyst during conversion from carbon dioxide. [...]
Electrocatalytic transformations not only require electrical energy—they also need a reliable middleman to spark the desired chemical reaction. Surface metal-hydrogen intermediates can effectively produce value-added chemicals and energy conversion, but, given their low concentration and fleeting lifespan, they are difficult to characterize or study in depth, especially at the nanoscale. [...]
A study by researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found that net primary productivity in Miscanthus × giganteus (M × g) is driven by aboveground productivity, influenced by nitrogen application and site. The results provide useful data for agroecosystem models and crucial insights for future perennial belowground sampling, and will help improve understanding of the carbon sequestration potential of this perennial grass. [...]
An international, multi-university research team, including scientists from Columbus State University, has unearthed a crucial new piece of the puzzle in the evolution of sharks. [...]
Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich, together with international collaborators, have demonstrated for the first time that memristors—novel nanoscale switching devices—can provide stable resistance values directly linked to fundamental constants of nature. This paves the way for electrical units such as electrical resistance to be traced back far more simply and directly than it has been possible to date. By contrast, conventional, quantum-based measurement technology is so demanding that it can only be carried out in a few specialized laboratories worldwide. [...]
Hurricane season can be stressful for anyone near the potential path of a storm, as powerful winds and heavy rain can cause widespread damage, cut power for days or weeks and otherwise upend people's lives. [...]
Touch the branches of Leptogorgia chilensis, a soft coral found along the Pacific coast from California to Chile, and its flexible arms stiffen. Penn Engineers have discovered the mechanism underlying this astonishing ability, one that could advance fields as varied as medicine, robotics and manufacturing. [...]
Between 2008 and 2010, polarization in society increased dramatically alongside a significant shift in social behavior: the number of close social contacts rose from an average of two to four or five people. The connection between these two developments could provide a fundamental explanation for why societies around the world are increasingly fragmenting into ideological bubbles. [...]
Some 3,500 years ago, hunter-gatherers began building massive earthwork mounds along the Mississippi River at Poverty Point, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northeast Louisiana. "Conservatively, they moved 140,000 dump truck loads of dirt, all without horses or wheels," said Tristram "T.R." Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of anthropology. "It was incredibly hard work. The big question is why? What was their motivation?" [...]
The first steps into a house are important ones. When it comes to assessing flood risk from hurricanes, first-floor elevation can be a key factor. Agencies such as the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) rely on data such as first-floor elevation in their damage modeling Hazus program. [...]
Today's computers store information in magnetic hard drives, keeping files safe even when the device is powered off. But to run programs and process information, computers rely on electricity. Each calculation requires a transfer of information between the electric and magnetic systems. This back-and-forth is a major bottleneck in the speed of modern computing. [...]
A new study analyzing historical photographs taken by the Palomar Observatory between 1949 and 1957 has detected several mysterious bright spots in the sky. These transient objects, captured on film before the first satellites were ever launched, appear to have occurred on dates that strongly correlated with nuclear weapons tests. [...]
Metagenomics is the study of all organisms present in a particular environment, such as soil, water, or the human body. A key part of metagenomic analysis is understanding what species are present (classification), how much of each there is (abundance), and the function of the microorganisms present. [...]
Topological insulators could form the basis for revolutionary electronic components. However, as they generally only function at very low temperatures, their practical application has been severely limited to date. Researchers at the University of Würzburg have now developed a topological insulator that also works at higher temperatures. Their results are published in Science Advances. [...]
When a slab slides beneath an overriding plate in a subduction zone, the slab takes on a property called anisotropy, meaning its strength is not the same in all directions. Anisotropy is what causes a wooden board to break more easily along the grain than in other directions. In rock, the alignment of minerals such as clay, serpentine, and olivine can lead to anisotropy. Pockets of water in rock can also cause and enhance anisotropy, as repeated dehydration and rehydration commonly occur at depth in a subducting slab. [...]
Researchers at Kyushu University have found that rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere could lead to future disruptions in shortwave radio communications, including systems used for air traffic control, maritime communication, and radio broadcasting. [...]
Floods account for up to 40% of weather-related disasters worldwide, and their frequency has more than doubled since 2000, according to a recent report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. Global flood losses now average $388 billion a year. Simultaneously, droughts are becoming more widespread and damaging across the world. [...]
Scientists at the University of Glasgow have harnessed a powerful supercomputer, normally used by astronomers and physicists to study the universe, to develop a new machine learning model which can help translate the language of proteins. [...]
Small and unassuming, Segue 1 is a nearby dwarf galaxy containing only a handful of stars—too few to provide the gravity needed to keep itself from scattering into space. Like other dwarf galaxies, it was long believed that gravity from a mysterious substance called dark matter was the main binding force. [...]
Animals respond to injury in many ways. So far, evidence for animals tending wounds with biologically active materials is rare. Yet, a recent study of an orangutan treating a wound with a medicinal plant provides a promising lead. [...]