Only around 1.1% of the world's population is vegan, but this percentage is growing. For example, in Germany the number of vegans approximately doubled between 2016 and 2020 to 2% of the population, while a 2.4-fold increase between 2023 and 2025 to 4.7% of the population has been reported in the UK. Many people cite health benefits as their reason to go vegan: moving from a typical Western diet to a vegan one can lower the risk of premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases by an estimated 18% to 21%. [...]
As a true milestone on the path to autonomous space systems, a research team at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) has successfully tested an AI-based attitude controller for satellites directly in orbit—a world first. The test was carried out aboard the 3U nanosatellite InnoCube. [...]
As the United Nations COP30 climate change conference convenes in Belém, Brazil, the world's attention will turn to the heart of the Amazon rainforest—a region that symbolizes both hope and concern in the fight against climate change. [...]
World leaders and delegates are meeting in the northern Brazilian city of Belém for COP30, this year's major UN climate summit. [...]
Reading is a complex cognitive skill that predicts career prospects and social mobility throughout our lifetimes. For newcomers to a country, success often depends on learning to read fluently in a new language. [...]
Negotiators for seven Western states are under mounting pressure to reach an agreement outlining how they plan to share the Colorado River's dwindling water. [...]
California's coastal redwoods have stood for centuries, weathering a changing climate, logging, and time itself. But in an era of hotter, more frequent wildfires, their future resilience depends on how we care for them, according to new research published in Forest Ecology and Management. [...]
Small-group discussions designed to help elementary students engage in conversations that promote critical analytic thinking, reasoning and deeper understanding of the content they read increased critical thinking over time for fourth- and fifth-grade students, according to a new study by a team that includes researchers from the Penn State College of Education. [...]
A new study has given new insights into people's understanding of the environmental impact of the food they eat and shown that they often misperceive it, supporting the need for environmental impact labeling. [...]
Researchers from Skoltech, the University of Potsdam, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a fundamental physical law that governs the seemingly chaotic motion of chromosomes inside a living cell. This discovery helps solve a long-standing biological mystery of how two-meter-long DNA molecules, packed into dense chromosomes, remain mobile enough for vital processes such as turning genes on and off. [...]
The breakup of a personal relationship can bring hurt feelings, tension and confrontation, and sometimes even violence. But predicting which ones are most volatile is a complex matter. [...]
The way clusters of differently sized water droplet populations are distributed within clouds affects larger-scale cloud properties, such as how light is scattered and how quickly precipitation forms. Studying and simulating cloud droplet microphysical structure is difficult. But recent field observations have provided crucial, centimeter-scale data on cloud droplet size distributions in stratocumulus clouds, giving researchers an opportunity to better match their models to reality. [...]
Janelia researchers have uncovered a novel way that two of the structures inside cells—the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and lysosomes—coordinate the production of proteins, highlighting how interactions between organelles are important for regulating cellular processes. The research is published in the journal Nature. [...]
You are having dinner with friends, and the conversation is lively. Do your hands join the chat, or do they stay focused on your knife and fork? [...]
Every effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can help us combat the rampant effects of global warming. While research on sustainability practices is making progress in various aspects of our lives, academic research itself has a considerable environmental footprint that must not be overlooked. In its commitment to sustainable research, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) actively raises awareness of this topic and seeks effective strategies to mitigate the climate impact of research. [...]
In a new Nature Sustainability commentary, Professors Laura Pereira and Sally Archibald, and Dr. Kim Zoeller, together with 12 African co-authors, propose six guiding principles to ensure that climate actions benefit both people and ecosystems on the continent. [...]
Mining is a controversial topic: On one hand, we need raw materials such as copper for the transition to climate-friendly technologies, but on the other hand, exploration and raw material extraction are primarily associated with environmental pollution and exploitation. [...]
University of Liverpool and Newcastle researchers have uncovered how bacterial organelles assemble, opening new routes for bioengineering and climate innovation. [...]
When scientists compared what California sea lions eat in the Channel Islands (U.S.) and the Gulf of California (Mexico), they expected to find a clear explanation for why populations were booming in California but shrinking in Mexico. Instead, they found something more complicated. [...]
A team led by University of Pittsburgh's Graham Hatfull has developed a method to construct bacteriophages with entirely synthetic genetic material, allowing researchers to add and subtract genes at will. The findings open the field to new pathways for understanding how these bacteria-killing viruses work, and for potential therapy of bacterial infections. [...]
Many people still fall for new forms of network marketing, multi-level marketing (MLMs) and other organizations that, despite their products, strongly resemble pyramid schemes. However, Claudia Groß (Radboud University) and William Keep (College of New Jersey) discovered that scientific research is remarkably lenient in its assessment of this business model. [...]
Space dust provides more than just awe-inspiring pictures like the Pillars of Creation. It can provide the necessary materials to build everything from planets to asteroids. But what it actually looks like, especially in terms of its "porosity" (i.e., how many holes it has) has been an area of debate for astrochemists for decades. A new paper from Alexey Potapov of Friedrich Schiller University Jena and his co-authors published in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review suggests that the dust that makes up so much of the universe might be "spongier" than originally thought. [...]
Researchers at University of Tsukuba have achieved high-resolution visualization of cellular organelles, such as nuclei and mitochondria, using an external apodized phase contrast (ExAPC) microscope. By effectively suppressing halo artifacts—false images caused by light diffraction—the technique reveals the tightly regulated and remarkably stable movement, spatial arrangement, and morphology of these organelles. The team also observed unlabeled biomolecular condensate-like structures whose molecular components remain unidentified. [...]
There are no confirmed exomoons, moons orbiting distant exoplanets in other solar systems. There are a few candidates, but none have passed the threshold and been accepted as confirmed. But they must exist. Moons are common in our solar system, so it would be extremely weird if they didn't exist elsewhere. [...]
The interstellar object known as 3I/ATLAS just flew past Mars, and China's Tianwen-1 mission managed to snap some pics with its high-resolution camera. According to the China National Space Agency (CNSA), the orbiter's high-resolution camera captured images of the comet from a distance of about 30 million km (18.6 million mi). This makes the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars for four years and eight months, one of the closest missions to observe the ISO since it was first detected (on May 7th, 2025). [...]
Most expectant mothers have a clear idea of when they will return to work, how maternity leave will be divided, and how their careers will continue. But according to new research from the University of Copenhagen, expectations do not always match reality. [...]
Cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, are found almost everywhere in the world—from hot springs to arctic ice to antioxidant smoothies. Part of their extreme adaptability lies within a unique light-harvesting structure called the phycobilisome. These modular antennae both collect energy from sunlight and adapt to changing light levels in order to provide a sort of sunscreen for the bacteria. [...]
Eight global millennium development goals were established in 2000 by member states of the United Nations (UN) and endorsed by other multilateral organizations. They ranged from eliminating hunger to empowering women, and from reducing child mortality to environmental sustainability. [...]
Since ChatGPT and other large language models burst into public consciousness, school boards are drafting policies, universities are hosting symposiums and tech companies are relentlessly promoting their latest AI-powered learning tools. [...]
Before atomic elements came together, less than a second after the Big Bang, if particles condensed into halos of matter, these halos may then have collapsed, creating the first black holes, boson stars, and so-called cannibal stars. This is the conclusion of a new study just published in Physical Review D, conducted by a team of researchers from SISSA—Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, in collaboration with INFN, IFPU, and the University of Warsaw. [...]