It's been 54 years since the last Apollo mission, and since then, humans have not ventured beyond low-Earth orbit. But that's all about to change with next week's launch of the Artemis II mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [...]
Every day, thousands of images and signals are collected at sea. Sonar, buoys, satellites, and cameras installed on ships generate enormous amounts of data. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already being used to interpret this information. For example, to detect the presence of dolphins in real time to prevent bycatch, to estimate biodiversity indicators, or to automatically identify species caught onboard fishing vessels and improve fisheries management models. But behind this technological transformation emerges a key question: can we fully trust what AI says when the health of the ocean is at stake? [...]
A hunk of romaine was easy pickings for Porkchop and her three flippers. On a rainy day last week, the green sea turtle pumped her limbs and stretched her beak up to chomp a lettuce leaf floating on the surface of a tank at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. That's where she's been on the mend since early March, when she arrived with a hook lodged in her throat and a flipper that was mostly dead from fishing line that had choked off circulation. [...]
In November 2012, during my first year as a Ph.D. student, a 23-year-old medical student knocked on my door. Earlier that day, we had been discussing our ages in our shared kitchen. At 30, I had stayed silent, feeling a sharp sting of embarrassment next to my 20-something housemates. [...]
As kids head back to school and attention returns to the daily grind of lunch boxes, new research reveals Australian parents are overwhelmingly supportive of school-provided lunch programs, with nutrition and variety their biggest priorities. Led by Flinders University's Caring Futures Institute, the research team surveyed almost 400 parents of primary school children across Australia, finding 93% of parents were interested in school-provided lunches and willing to pay for them. [...]
The patchwork efforts to identify and safely remove contamination left by the 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires have been akin to the Wild West. Experts have given conflicting guidance on best practices. Shortly after the fires, the federal government suddenly refused to adhere to California's decades-old post-fire soil-testing policy; California later considered following suit. [...]
Picture an aircraft streaking across the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, unleashing millions of laser pulses into a dense tropical forest. The objective: map thousands of square miles, including the ground beneath the canopy, in fine detail within a matter of days. [...]
Researchers at Concordia have developed a new method of measuring the amount of usable water stored in snowpacks. The comprehensive technique, known as snow water availability (SWA), uses satellite data and climate reanalysis techniques to calculate snow depth, snow density, and snow cover across a wide swath of Canada and Alaska. [...]
Students' well-being in higher education has been a growing concern globally since the coronavirus pandemic, which disrupted learning and lives generally. [...]
A new study evaluating climate policies in 40 countries over a 32-year period finds that carbon pricing and taxation—combined with investments in renewable energy and research—are among the most effective tools governments can use to reduce CO₂ emissions. [...]
In North America and Europe, emissions of ozone precursors such as nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) declined by half between 2000 and 2018. However, the ozone content of the air—and thus the risk to human health—has not decreased proportionally. Until now, theories about the causes have been largely based on conjecture. Scientists from the Research Institute for Sustainability (RIFS) at GFZ and collaborators have now provided more clarity. Their study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, shows that the weaker-than-expected decline of ozone is mainly driven by increased transport of ozone produced abroad. [...]
The origin of life from Earth's primordial chemistry has long fascinated and perplexed us. Generations of scientists have endeavored to understand how complex biochemistry developed from organic compounds. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have recently found that the conditions inside certain, naturally forming droplets promote reduction and oxidation (redox) reactions, which are crucial for life. The results support the idea that these droplets could have acted as proto-enzymes, enabling the formation of more complicated organic molecules. [...]
In a breakthrough that could power next-generation electronics, sensors, and energy storage devices, CMU engineers have developed a fabrication technique that arranges MXene nanosheets, each a million times thinner than a sheet of paper, into complex 3D structures in just a single printing step. [...]
The 20th century was marked by the discovery of exotic states of matter. First, liquid helium was observed to flow without friction at extremely low temperatures, a phase now known as superfluid. Soon after, it was also discovered that under appropriate external conditions, some materials can conduct electricity without resistance; these materials were therefore named superconductors. [...]
Researchers in Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Department of Chemical Engineering and at the University of Akron have published research in Chemical Engineering Journal about a new technology that seeks to solve long-standing challenges in plastic recycling that limit the overwhelming majority of plastics to a single use and contribute to the accumulation of plastic waste. [...]
A surface capable of responding to chemical signals generated by microorganisms and automatically producing biocidal substances—this is not a futuristic vision, but a description of how the B-STING silica nanocomposite works. The new material, developed at the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, acts as a nanofactory of reactive oxygen species, activating itself only when necessary. [...]
Air pollutants like nitrogen dioxide (NO2), primarily produced during fossil fuel combustion, pose a serious concern for human health, contributing to respiratory diseases like pulmonary edema, bronchitis, and asthma. Effective air-quality monitoring therefore requires portable gas sensors that offer high sensitivity, selectivity, and long-term stability. Among existing technologies, organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) are promising for highly sensitive portable sensors with their lightweight, flexible, and simple-to-fabricate structure. [...]
Should growing glacial lakes be used for energy production and water supply—or remain protected as ecologically valuable systems? A research team from the University of Potsdam, together with partners from the University of Leeds, has recorded the distribution and volume of glacial lakes worldwide. Their findings allow various usage scenarios to be derived, particularly in areas where the largest glaciers still exist today. Their article has been published in Nature Water. [...]
Researchers from Drexel University who discovered a versatile type of two-dimensional conductive nanomaterial called MXene nearly a decade and a half ago, have now reported on a process for producing its one-dimensional cousin: the MXene nanoscroll. The group posits that these materials, which are 100 times thinner than human hair yet more conductive than their two-dimensional counterparts, could be used to improve the performance of energy storage devices, biosensors and wearable technology. [...]
Wildfire causes most living things to flee or die, but some fungi thrive afterward, even feasting on charred remains. New University of California, Riverside research finds the secret to post-fire flourishing hidden in their genes. The study is among the first to investigate how fungi that are barely detectable in the soil before a fire are able to proliferate wildly once an area has burned. [...]
Researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi have developed a new light-based nanotechnology that could improve how certain cancers are detected and treated, offering a more precise and potentially less harmful alternative to chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. The study advances photothermal therapy, a treatment approach that uses light to generate heat inside tumors and destroy cancer cells. [...]
In beehives on the CERN site, a buzzing team of bees collaborates to build hexagon after hexagon of honeycomb—a shape that allows the most honey for a given amount of beeswax to be stored. Working nearby, a team of similarly committed scientists has recently pieced together some more high-tech hexagons to form the first prototype "cassette" for the new CMS endcap calorimeters. [...]
One of the biggest problems facing modern microelectronics is that computer chips can no longer be made arbitrarily smaller and more efficient. Materials used to date, such as copper, are reaching their limits because their resistivity increases dramatically when they become too small. Chiral materials could provide a solution here. These materials behave like left and right hands: they look almost identical and are mirror images of each other, but cannot be made to match. [...]
A new study out of York University has found that the amount of atmospheric trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), the tiniest forever chemical, significantly declined in Toronto during COVID in 2020, which researchers say is good news for the world's ability to mitigate it in the future. The paper, "Atmospheric Removal of Trifluoroacetic Acid by Dry and Wet Deposition: A Multiyear Analysis in Toronto," was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters. [...]
Living organisms are made up of hundreds of thousands of cells that cooperate to create the organs and systems that breathe, eat, move, and think. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a new way to track how and when cells touch each other to work together in these ways. In a study published in January in Cell Reports Methods, researchers from The University of Osaka reported the development of fluorescent markers for monitoring cell communication under a microscope. [...]
New simulations performed on a NASA supercomputer are providing scientists with the most comprehensive look yet into the maelstrom of interacting magnetic structures around city-sized neutron stars in the moments before they crash. The team identified potential signals emitted during the stars' final moments that may be detectable by future observatories. [...]
A UBC Okanagan-led research project has given a group of international scientists their clearest view yet of the Milky Way's magnetic field, revealing that it is far more complex than previously believed. [...]
The sensory proteins that control the motion of bacteria constantly fluctuate. AMOLF researchers, together with international collaborators from ETH Zurich and University of Utah, found out that these proteins can jointly switch on and off at the same time. The researchers discovered that this protein network operates at the boundary between order and disorder. The findings are published in Nature Physics on January 29. [...]
A QUT-led study has found how increasing aridity and habitat variation and the subsequent emergence of grasslands shaped the evolution of modern kangaroos and wallabies. The study, published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, resolves long-standing questions about when, and why, these iconic Australian marsupials diversified. [...]
By combining two fundamentally different microscopy techniques, researchers can now measure the optical properties of a sample with pinpoint accuracy. The original goal was to investigate biological samples on a molecular scale—but this soon led to stubborn technical problems. Eventually, however, the researchers realized that the very source of their frustrating measurement inaccuracies—the variable refractive index of the sample—could itself be determined precisely. When two fundamentally different microscopy methods are combined, this former source of error turns into a highly informative measurement result. [...]