This Journal of Raptor Research issue focuses on movement ecology—how and why raptors move. This can include classic movements like migration, as well as nomadism. [...]
The devastating wildfires in northern Canada in recent years have climate consequences that go far beyond smoke and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, according to a new study co-authored by two NAU researchers. The study, which looked at the various effects of fire in northern Canada and Alaska, wasn't all bad news: The researchers found fires in Canada, when coupled with snowpack, have a net cooling effect. That cooling, however, isn't enough to outweigh the warming effects of permafrost carbon released into the atmosphere from fires in Alaska. [...]
The warming El Niño weather phenomenon could return later this year as its cooling opposite La Niña fades away, the United Nations said Tuesday. [...]
Stephanie Kirsop didn't believe her son when he phoned to say a crocodile was lurking in a creek near their home. [...]
New minuscule fossils of Purgatorius, the earliest-known relative of all primates—including humans—have been unearthed in a more southern region of North America than ever before, and the breakthrough is providing paleontologists with fresh clues about evolution. The work appears in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. [...]
Wildfires are among the most economically costly natural disasters and are becoming more severe and frequent due to global warming. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction estimates that global damage from wildfires was on average $106 billion per year between 2014 and 2023. The US is especially prone: the 10 most costly wildfires since 1970 all happened there, with the 2025 wildfires around Los Angeles topping the charts at $53 billion. Worldwide, wildfires destroyed 3.9 million km2 in 2025. [...]
To operate fusion systems safely and reliably, scientists need to monitor plasma fuel conditions and measure properties like temperature and density that can affect fusion reactions. Making these measurements requires specialized sensors known as diagnostics. [...]
Chemists from St. Petersburg University has developed a new family of luminescent iridium complexes that, for the first time, realize a unique mechanism of photoactivated proton transfer. In the future, this discovery will potentially allow for the creation of a fundamentally new class of "smart" antitumor drugs that can be activated directly inside tumor cells and tracked in real time by the change in the color of their glow. [...]
Currently, Australia is the only continent in the world still free from the highly contagious H5 bird flu. But that status faces an ongoing threat. [...]
As digitalization drives banks to shutter more retail branches, the disappearance of these brick-and-mortar facilities has been found to be a significant factor behind the scourge of online scams and identity theft. The causal link, reported in a novel investigation by a trio of academics including Singapore Management University's (SMU) Assistant Professor of Finance Gloria Yang Yu, received the Best Paper Award (2025) from the ANU-FIRN Banking and Financial Stability Meeting. The annual meeting is organized by Australian National University, and the Financial Research Network (FIRN) for financial economics researchers in Australia and New Zealand. [...]
In the summer of 2023, something happened that engineers had talked about for decades but few genuinely expected to see in their lifetimes. SpaceX's Starship, a stainless steel tower taller than a 30-story building, lit its 33 engines simultaneously and lifted off from the Texas coast. It did not go entirely to plan. But it went. And when the Super Heavy booster returned in flight test five to be caught, midair, by the enormous mechanical arms of its own launch tower, it was clear that the rules of spaceflight had fundamentally changed. [...]
A newly published study from the University of Guam sheds light on a tiny but powerful ally in the soil and how it could help Guam farmers and growers protect their crops naturally. Published on Dec. 11, 2025, in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, the study was conducted by Dr. Richard R. Singh, an assistant professor of sustainable plant production, and soil chemist Clancy Iyekar of the agInnovation Research Center. The study focuses on nematodes—microscopic roundworms in soil that are poorly documented in Guam—specifically exploring how certain "good" nematodes may help control the harmful ones that damage crops. [...]
Strange things happen to materials when you peel them down, layer by layer, from thick chunks all the way to sheets just an atom thick. Reporting in the journal Nature Materials, a team led by physicists at The University of Texas at Austin has experimentally demonstrated a sequence of exotic magnetic phases in an ultrathin material that fully realizes, for the first time, a theoretical model of two-dimensional magnetism first proposed in the 1970s. The researchers say the advance might inspire new ultracompact technologies. [...]
An international group of researchers have investigated the role of memory in quantum systems and dynamics. Their findings show that a quantum process can appear memoryless from one perspective while retaining memory from another. The discovery opens new research avenues into quantum systems and technologies. [...]
A Florida State University chemist has developed a method to rapidly assemble significantly complex natural molecules with potential for biomedical applications, opening the door for novel drug therapies based on the molecule's structure. James Frederich, the Warner Herz Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and his team are the first to fully synthesize fusicoccadiene, a precursor to an emerging treatment in cancer chemotherapy. Their work is published in the Journal Of The American Chemical Society. [...]
February 2026 has seen thousands of dead seabirds washing up along the coastlines of the UK, France, Spain and Portugal. There's evidence that these "wrecks" (where large numbers of seabirds are found along beaches) are becoming increasingly common because of climate change. Worse still, these dead birds—including Atlantic puffins and European shags—only tell a fraction of the story. Many more are likely to have been lost out in the stormy open ocean. [...]
During their search for food, most insects head specifically for the flowers that promise the highest reward. But how do they know which ones to choose? Researchers from the University of Konstanz and the University of Würzburg have now studied how bumblebees process information about their food sources. [...]
Using future climate scenarios based on wildfire damages in North America, scientists estimate that up to 10,000 or more lives may be saved annually in the United States if society is able to mitigate climate change by keeping the global mean surface temperature (GMST) at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial age (1850-1900) levels. Currently, the GMST is at 1.3 to 1.4 degrees C but is projected to reach 3 degrees C with the current direction of climate change. The findings are detailed in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [...]
How do you keep a copper catalyst from losing its oomph? Just add a dusting of platinum, says a new study published in Nature Materials. A team of researchers, including scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, investigated a class of metal nanoparticles used as catalysts in major industrial processes. They found that adding a trace amount of platinum to copper nanoparticles greatly reduced an effect known as "sintering," which causes these catalysts to degrade over time. [...]
No "sticky ends"? No problem. A new study by NYU chemists finds that DNA tiles can assemble into 3D structures without the sticky cohesion of hydrogen bonding. This finding, published in Nature Communications, turns a fundamental paradigm in the field of DNA self-assembly on its head. [...]
In many countries, austerity is a hard sell. Loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) can provide economic stabilization and financial support for developing countries—with conditions. Recipients typically need to restructure their economies, moving away from public sector services in the effort to foster market competition and private-sector business. [...]
In 2022, a Russian whale researcher made a remarkable discovery on Bering Island off Russia's Pacific coast: a severed killer whale fin marked with the teeth of another killer whale. In 2024, it happened again. The two finds were two kilometers apart. [...]
Porpoises are entirely dependent on their hearing for survival. They navigate, hunt, and communicate by emitting rapid click sounds and listening to the returning echoes. However, with increasingly noisy oceans, it is getting harder for porpoises to "hear their way." Noise from shipping is a particular problem. While ship engines primarily emit low-frequency noise, they also produce high-frequency sounds that can drown out the porpoises' own clicks. These clicks are sharp, brief, and only travel limited distances, making them highly vulnerable to noise sources in their immediate vicinity. [...]
In their piece, published in Nature Human Behaviour, IIASA Distinguished Emeritus Research Scholar Wolfgang Lutz and IIASA Senior Researcher Guillaume Marois, who is also an associate professor at the Asian Demographic Research Institute of the Shanghai University, respond to political and public concern over declining birth rates in highly developed countries. While low fertility is increasingly framed as a crisis, associated with population aging, labor shortages, and fiscal pressure, the authors argue that this narrative is based on outdated assumptions that no longer reflect current demographic realities. [...]
A research team led by a Keele scientist has shed new light on how a mysterious rock formation in Oman was created, which could reveal new details about Earth's ability to store carbon dioxide (CO2). The study, led by Dr. Elliot Carter in Keele's School of Life Sciences, in collaboration with the Universities of Ottawa and Manchester, looked at geological evidence from Oman to better understand processes that occur in subduction zones, which is where one of Earth's tectonic plates sinks beneath another due to the plates colliding together. This process is active around much of the Pacific "Ring of Fire" today, for example. [...]
The Florida Everglades is a complicated climate actor. The 1.5-million-acre wetland system remains a carbon sink, removing an average of 13.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, but the system also releases methane. In a new study, Yale School of the Environment scientists have analyzed the greenhouse gas fluxes in its mangroves and fresh-water marshes, providing a more detailed approach for guiding restoration efforts. [...]
For the past two decades, scientists have wondered about a bright, distinct striped pattern seen in radio waves emanating from the Crab Pulsar, the remnant of a supernova observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in the year 1054. [...]
Protected natural areas across Europe are changing. Climate change, with rising temperatures and heavy rainfall, is turbocharging the growth of shrubs and trees, choking the flowers and insects that need the light and heat of open spaces. Traditionally, this scenario prompts nature managers to reach for chainsaws and brush cutters to keep the landscape open. But researchers at Aarhus University and the Natural History Museum, Aarhus, Denmark, can now show that horses and cattle represent a more effective method of nature management given adequate time to do their work. [...]
Viruses such as human norovirus can travel in vesicles, small fluid-filled sacs that are like shipping containers for cells. Viruses hidden in these containers are often harder to detect and may be more infectious than free-floating viral material. In addition, their prevalence in the environment remains relatively unknown, raising public health concerns. [...]
A study examining fossil evidence shows that large land predators were already hunting big plant-eating animals more than 280 million years ago. University of Toronto Mississauga researchers Jordan M. Young, Tea Maho, and Robert Reisz studied bite marks on the skeletons of three young herbivores from the early Permian of Texas, revealing feeding patterns from multiple predators and a glimpse into how animals hunted and interacted with each other. [...]