Humans have always imagined the natural world. From Ice Age cave paintings to the modern day, we depict the animals and landscapes we value—and ignore those we don't. [...]
Insects make up to 90% of all animal species on the planet, and most of them can be found in the tropics, the regions around the equator. Yet we still know surprisingly little about how these species will cope with rising temperatures driven by climate change. [...]
In about 5 to 8 billion years, our sun is expected to evolve into a white dwarf—an extremely dense, Earth-sized stellar remnant that has exhausted its fuel and shed its outer layer. But while our sun is a solitary star, research over the past 15 years has demonstrated that binary or multi-star systems are far more common than astronomers once thought. When a dense and compact remnant like a white dwarf is involved in a binary system, it often "snatches away" material from its companion star. This process, called accretion, usually emits X-rays in what is considered a "signature" signal. [...]
Extreme heat kills more people in the U.S. each year than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. But how can we address a seemingly natural force? Heat can often seem solely weather-related, with policies trying to find a solution through temperature metrics, cooling technologies, and alerts. However, a new report from the Vanderbilt Cultural Contexts of Health and Wellbeing Initiative (VU-CCH) suggests that extreme heat is not just a climate issue, but also a social one. [...]
Animal life is extraordinarily diverse and complex, having colonized almost all environments on Earth—from hostile hydrothermal vents in the deep sea to the skies across our continents. But the planet was not always teeming with complex animal life. For the first 3.7 billion years after it originated, life was small, simple and largely confined to the oceans. This microbe-dominated world was a tumultuous place, with several major swings in its climate. [...]
Humor plays a vital role in helping older adults cope with the challenges of aging and staying socially connected, according to new research. [...]
A quick heart trace taken during a warm-up trot could identify racehorses at risk of cardiac arrhythmias during high-intensity exercise, according to a new study led by the University of Surrey. The screening method analyzes short, routine electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings that could be used to help prevent cardiac events in otherwise healthy horses, where no obvious signs of arrhythmia have been detected. [...]
Newly discovered fossils have given scientists their first real glimpse of when Earth made a crucial transition from plants and unrecognizably simple animals to the complex creatures that took over the world and would eventually lead to us. [...]
It's a well-established fact that forests and water are deeply connected. For decades, paired-watershed experiments—a scientific method for evaluating land-use impacts on water quantity or quality—have shown that when we lose forests, the total amount of water flowing through our rivers tends to rise. [...]
A research team has, for the first time in the world, elucidated the microscopic mechanism by which quantum order is lost and collapses in "open quantum environments" existing in nature. Since perfectly isolated quantum systems cannot exist in reality, this study is expected to provide a decisive breakthrough in bridging the gap between ideal quantum theory and quantum technologies that must operate in real-world environments. [...]
The butternut tree, a close relative of black walnut prized for its pale wood and wildlife value, is on the brink of disappearing from North American forests. A new study from Virginia Tech offers hope that the species could regain its foothold with help from modern data science. By mapping climate and soil conditions linked to natural disease resistance, researchers are guiding restoration strategies that could help this native species recover across the eastern United States. [...]
New research from Michigan State University challenges the popular assumption that narcissists gradually damage their relationships over time. [...]
When paper dries and is subsequently rewetted, its properties change permanently. This phenomenon is known as hornification. New research now shows that the process is more complex than previously assumed, and that temperature, humidity, and fiber type all play decisive roles. During hornification, fibers in paper products lose some of their ability to absorb water. This has major implications for everything from paper manufacturing to recycling, where controlling the material's strength and durability is crucial. [...]
Iridium is a key component in many electrochemical technologies used for chemical transformations. These include producing hydrogen fuel from water, manufacturing chlorine from seawater for use as a disinfectant and extracting metals from their ores. Yet scientists still know surprisingly little about how this metal behaves at the very spot where those reactions unfold—the thin boundary where the surface of a solid electrode meets a water-based electrolyte. [...]
As four astronauts whiz toward a flyby of the moon, looking out for them are mission control experts using cutting-edge technology and lessons learned from the Apollo program 50 years ago. [...]
It's easy to take our eyes for granted. But our recent research shows they took an incredible evolutionary journey to reach their current familiar form. [...]
They're sipping smoothies, snapping phone pics, dealing with crashed email and fixing broken toilets: astronauts, they're just like us. [...]
NASA is joining international partners to hunt for ice on the moon in support of future human exploration. The agency is providing a water-detecting instrument, the Neutron Spectrometer System (NSS), to the Lunar Polar Exploration (LUPEX) mission led by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). [...]
The Artemis 2 astronauts have passed the halfway point between Earth and the moon on Saturday as they sped toward a planned lunar flyby, with NASA releasing initial images of Earth taken from inside the Orion spacecraft. [...]
Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen felt like he was "falling out of the sky" as his spacecraft followed its complex flight path to the moon, the Canadian said in a Saturday video call. [...]
The Artemis II astronauts have captured our blue planet's brilliant beauty as they zoom ever closer to the moon. [...]
When tourists travel to Seattle, it's common to take in the Space Needle and the downtown skyline from Puget Sound. [...]
For over half a century, people in Central Africa have told tales of the fish seen climbing waterfalls, but these claims have never been officially confirmed. Now, these fish have finally been caught on camera, studied more closely, and described in a study published in Scientific Reports. [...]
Researchers Soma Chiyoda, Ko Mochizuki, and Atsushi Kawakita from the University of Tokyo have discovered that nocturnal hawkmoths are the main pollinators of Jasminanthes mucronata, a plant species native to Japan that produces black nectar. This is the first time that a colored nectar flower has been confirmed to be mainly pollinated by nocturnal insects. The discovery thus promotes further research into this so far unexplored ecology. The findings were published in the journal Ecology. [...]
Imagine a dump truck dropping 13 tons of dirt into the waters of Brush Creek, a waterway that feeds northwest Arkansas' primary drinking water source, Beaver Lake. That's how much soil and sediment researchers measured going into the stream as runoff due to a single large storm event. [...]
Detecting a single particle of light is hard; detecting a single microwave photon is even harder. Microwave photons, the tiny packets of electromagnetic radiation used in current technologies like Wi-Fi and radar, carry far less energy than visible light. They are about 100,000 times weaker than optical photons. [...]
A team led by principal investigators Bobo Dang and Ting Zhou at Westlake University/Westlake Laboratory have developed a high-throughput platform for engineering fast-acting covalent protein therapeutics. Their study, titled "A high-throughput selection system for fast-acting covalent protein drugs" published in Science, opens new avenues for next-generation biologics. [...]
A research team led by Zhen-Xing Endowed Professor Jian Yang at the School of Life Sciences, Westlake University, has developed a pangenome-informed genome assembly (PIGA) method. By combining a cost-effective hybrid sequencing strategy of long and short reads, the team successfully constructed a pangenome for more than 1,000 individuals. This achievement breaks through the limitations of previous small-sample pangenomes and provides a critical foundational infrastructure for medical and population genetics research. The study is published in the journal Nature. [...]
A new Rice University study offers one of the first national measures of a viewpoint called "racial realism" and considers how it fits into the broader spectrum of perspectives Black Americans hold about race relations. [...]
The interiors of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune could be home to a previously unknown state of matter, according to new computational simulations by Carnegie's Cong Liu and Ronald Cohen. Their work, published in Nature Communications, predicts that a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride exists under the extreme pressures and temperatures found deep inside these outer solar system bodies. [...]