The discovery of the oldest ever dog DNA suggests they have been our best friends for nearly 16,000 years—5,000 years earlier than had previously been thought, new research said Wednesday. [...]
Tiny robots—around 50 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—open up fascinating possibilities: they enable the controlled manipulation of objects far too small for human hands. This brings us closer to a long-standing dream—the direct interaction with the microscopic world. [...]
Long before we had modern antibiotics to rely on, people often turned to traditional medicines from plants to treat infections. [...]
Astronomers analyzing gravitational-wave data from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration have reported that merging binary black holes fall into three distinct categories. The study shows that the three subpopulations have their own characteristic masses, spin behavior, and merger rate that may be linked to different dominant formation mechanisms. The paper outlining their results was submitted to the preprint server arXiv on March 18. [...]
A new study, published in Physical Review Letters, reports that scientists have successfully imaged the formation of cavity-induced density waves induced by laser light in an ultracold quantum gas. Previously, only global signals, such as photon leakage or the peak in energy deposition of a fast charged particle (Bragg peaks), have been used to detect this kind of ordering. Prior to this study, there had been no direct, high-resolution in situ imaging of cavity-induced density-wave order in ultracold gases. [...]
For decades, the strongest evidence for the earliest human settlement in the Americas came from a site in Chile called Monte Verde. [...]
At the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), Jérémie Palacci's research group is venturing into metallurgy—albeit with a twist. Instead of traditional tools, the scientists use E. coli bacteria, often associated with infection linked to contaminated food. [...]
They choose their clients, set their own rates and manage their businesses like any other entrepreneur. They are independent sex workers—women who work without pimps or agencies, often away from the streets and organized establishments. [...]
Happy Saturday! This week, researchers reported on the familiar phenomenon of speeding away from a slower-driving car only to have it catch up at the next traffic light—they've named it Voorhees law, after the well-known movie slasher who always catches up to his victims. A study finds that nonpsychotropic cannabinoid CBD reverses brain damage in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease. And scientists are testing methods to regrow joints damaged by arthritis. [...]
A Majorana fermion is a particle that would be identical to its antiparticle. Such an object has not yet been found. However, certain solid materials exhibit analogous behavior as if Majorana fermions were present through collective excitations of the system called quasiparticles. [...]
From false claims that a historic lunar fly-by was staged in a movie studio to unfounded narratives that footage of the crew was AI-generated, the Artemis II mission has been clouded by a blizzard of misinformation. [...]
Mississippi State researchers have developed an updated version of a widely used forestry decision-making tool, improving accessibility and usability while maintaining its analytical strength. [...]
NASA's Artemis II mission sent four astronauts—three Americans and one Canadian—on the first lunar flyby in more than 50 years. [...]
With Artemis II successfully completing its historic lunar mission on Friday, NASA is banking on billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk for the next step: landing astronauts on the moon. [...]
When NASA flight director Zebulon Scoville was working a shift during the uncrewed Artemis I test flight, he realized the US space agency wasn't consistently livestreaming the spacecraft's journey to Earth. [...]
Artemis II's astronauts closed out humanity's first lunar voyage in more than half a century with a Pacific splashdown on Friday, blazing new records near the moon with grace and joy. [...]
Marine heat waves are supercharging damage caused by hurricanes and tropical cyclones across the globe, a new study found. [...]
A study of HR professionals shows inclusion-focused AI can reduce disability discrimination and improve fairness in real-world recruitment scenarios. Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how organizations hire. From screening resumes to shortlisting candidates, AI is often promoted as a tool that can remove human bias and make recruitment more objective. [...]
Making wheat more resilient to climate change without compromising yields has become an urgent priority for the agricultural sector. Now, a study led by a research team from the University of Barcelona and the Agrotecnio research center has identified an innovative way to address this challenge: combining advanced technology and artificial intelligence to select the best varieties of this crop. [...]
Over the past few decades, a collaboration of St. Louis regional groups have partnered to be good stewards of Forest Park, one of the largest urban parks and wildlife areas in the country. Organizations such as Forest Park Forever have restored habitat, while scientists with the Saint Louis Zoo have partnered with conservation groups and universities, including WashU, to monitor wildlife populations. [...]
When Jasper Baur was a freshman at New York's Binghamton University, his interests centered on earth sciences. Then he got involved in a seemingly unrelated pursuit: harnessing drone-mounted geophysical instruments to aid in the slow, dangerous work of detecting land mines. [...]
Nicotine, a potent insecticidal alkaloid unique to the nightshade family, has been employed in agriculture as a pesticide since 1690. It also has therapeutic potential for neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and depression. Despite its profound influence on human history, agriculture, and plant evolution, however, the final steps of nicotine biosynthesis have remained unclear until now. [...]
We associate nests with shelter, warmth, and a safe retreat—and usually picture a bird's nest made out of twigs, grass and feathers. Yet many other animals take advantage of such refuges, with nests being built by a diversity of species ranging from termites to great apes, which impress with their hugely varied forms and the wide array of materials used to construct them. [...]
Elements essential to life, such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, were "delivered" to Earth and the moon during the early stages of the solar system via asteroids and comets impacting their surfaces. These exogenous materials may have provided the chemical building blocks necessary for the origin and early evolution of life on Earth. But extensive geological activity and biological processes on Earth have largely erased the direct records of these early inputs on our planet. [...]
Crystals, bacterial colonies, flame fronts: the growth of surfaces was first described in the 1980s by the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation. Since then, it has been regarded as a fundamental model in physics, with implications for mathematics, biology, and computer science. [...]
U.S. cities are rapidly becoming urban heat islands, where these cities are significantly warmer than their surrounding area. Vast expanses of asphalt and concrete trap heat, while large, densely packed buildings disrupt wind flow and intensify the effect. But beyond parking lots and skyscrapers, recent research points to highways as another cause behind America's urban heat islands. [...]
On the shores of the west coast of Australia lies a window to our past: the stromatolites and microbial mats of Gathaagudu (Shark Bay). [...]
The halomethane compound bromoform (CHBr3) has devastating effects on the ozone layer. In the upper layers of the atmosphere, bromoform reacts with UV radiation, releasing bromine molecules which destroy ozone molecules. This reaction, however, has long puzzled scientists; the molecules involved seem to wander relative to each other in a way that energetically does not make sense. Scientists at European XFEL have now revealed structural evidence for this roaming mechanism for the first time, establishing it as a universal characteristic of photochemical reactions. [...]
There are many poorly understood links in the food web, often referred to as trophic relationships. Out in East Antarctica, a previously unconfirmed link between sea snails and Adélie penguins might reveal more than meets the eye for the Southern Ocean ecosystem. [...]
Iron and oxygen bind together throughout the body. Most famously, iron binds dioxygen, or two oxygens paired with each other, in hemoglobin that transports oxygen through blood. But iron-oxo compounds, as they're called, are found in many other places throughout the body. For example, the highly reactive iron-oxo is used in liver enzymes that metabolize drugs. [...]