This striking image from the science camera on ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS spewing dust and gas. The tiny nucleus of the comet (not visible) is surrounded by a bright halo of gas known as the coma. A long tail stretches away from the comet, and we see hints of rays, jets, streams, and filaments. [...]
New research from the University of St Andrews published in Current Biology has shown that the role of age in male humpback whale reproduction has changed as populations recover from centuries of exploitation. Whaling drove many large whale populations to the brink of extinction. But its legacy runs deeper than a drastic decline in numbers. Decades after commercial whaling ended, its impacts continue to shape whale populations, influencing not just how many whales there are, but which males get to reproduce. [...]
From a bird's eye view, the Amazon rainforest appears as a lush green mosaic of treetops stretching as far as the eye can see. It is home to countless animal and plant species, many of which are endemic, and the forest plays an important role in the global climate as a carbon sink. However, deforestation threatens to destroy this unique ecosystem and its important functions. One-fifth of the area has already been cleared, and there is no end in sight to this intensive use. This has serious consequences for biodiversity and the global and regional climate. [...]
Rising carbon dioxide levels are being detected within the human body, with new research warning a key blood marker for the gas could near its healthy limit within decades if current trends continue. The findings are especially relevant for children and adolescents, whose developing bodies will experience the longest cumulative exposure to rising atmospheric CO₂. [...]
UBC Okanagan researchers and Canadian egg farmers have created a practical tool to help producers balance environmental and economic trade-offs. Researchers at UBC Okanagan and Canadian egg farmers have built a practical decision-making tool to help producers balance environmental, economic and management trade-offs on their farms. The project developed software that brings together key sustainability indicators in one place to help farmers establish benchmarks for their farms, compare options and understand the consequences of different green technology adoption and management choices. [...]
With a simple motion, a jack-in-the-box-like spring designed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory showed the potential of additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to cut costs and complexity for futuristic space antennas. Called JPL Additive Compliant Canister (JACC), the spring deployed on the small commercial spacecraft Proteus Space's Mercury One on Feb. 3, 2026. An onboard camera captured a video of the spring popping out of its container as the spacecraft passed over the Pacific Ocean in low-Earth orbit. [...]
Greenland's largest glacier, Jakobshavn Glacier, may be edging closer to a critical threshold as meltwater runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet accelerates in ways not seen in over a century, according to new research published in Climate of the Past. The study reconstructs more than 100 years of freshwater discharge flowing from the ice sheet into Disko Bay in western Greenland, revealing a striking and sustained change that began in the early 2000s. [...]
For over 50 years, the Landsat program has provided the longest continuous satellite record of Earth's land surface from space. Landsat 9, launched in 2021, is the latest mission in this remarkable legacy—building on decades of Earth observation with upgraded technology, including enhanced radiometric resolution, improved signal-to-noise performance, and polar night thermal imaging. [...]
Underground, intricate networks of soil fungi underpin the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Yet despite their global importance, only 30% of global ecosystems have been sampled for these fungal partners. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi form important resource trade partnerships with plants. The fungi grow complex networks to help plants acquire nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen. [...]
New Zealand's earlier efforts to safeguard marine or coastal environments, particularly as marine reserves and marine protected areas, typically focused on shallow ecosystems, largely because that is where most data exists. [...]
From sportswear to cosmetics, brands love telling women they are strong and empowered. But women can spot inauthentic, performative messaging a mile away. New research by Macquarie University Ph.D. student Vu Phuong Uyen Ho and marketing experts Dr. Syed Rahman, Professor Jana Bowden and Professor Jamie Carlson reveals six make-or-break factors that determine whether gender-equality advertising builds loyalty or triggers backlash. [...]
Yale junior Donglin Wu leads a new study showing that some of the biggest stars in the universe shed some of the smallest dust particles. It's fitting that Wu's first major scientific journal article as lead author focuses on stardust—tiny solid grains that form from stellar winds, drift into interstellar space, and may eventually become parts of new planets. [...]
Getting an up-close view of life at the cellular level can be as simple as placing onion skin under a microscope and adjusting the knobs. Peering deeper, into the heart of the atoms within, isn't as easy. It requires peeling through layers of particle accelerator data to shed light on protons, neutrons and the subatomic processes at play. [...]
As the news cycle shows, Australia and the world are confronting deeply distressing events, with experts warning that schools are increasingly carrying the emotional fallout. Children are coming to school carrying fear, grief and stress caused by events that shake their sense of safety and the effects are showing up through anxiety, withdrawal, aggression and disrupted learning. Educators say these experiences don't disappear at the school gate, but play out daily in behavior and engagement. [...]
As you pass the popcorn or settle in to binge a new series, the carbon footprint of the on-screen world is unlikely to be at the front of your mind. But the reality is that, like many industries, film and television production can be startlingly resource-hungry. Part army, part circus, freelance film crews mobilize to set up base after little more than a few phone calls. They swiftly begin sourcing and building everything they need to realize the script—be it camera rigs, prosthetic noses, virtual environments or, increasingly, AI assets. [...]
You pull on your rain jacket, step out into the storm, and within half an hour your undershirt is soaked. The jacket you purchased as "waterproof" seems to have stopped working, and all the marketing claims feel a bit suspect. In reality, the jacket probably hasn't failed overnight: a mix of how it's built, the exact level of water protection it offers, and years of sweat, skin oil and dirt have all played a part. [...]
A new experiment has uncovered the mechanism responsible for the screeching sound made by peeling sticky tape. Using a combination of ultrafast imaging and synchronized acoustic recordings, Sigurdur Thoroddsen and colleagues at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology have shown that the noise is produced by a rapid train of tiny shockwaves, released through a specialized form of stick–slip motion. The research is published in Physical Review E. [...]
When it comes to the price of financial services such as loans, mortgages, and insurance, the perception of what is "fair" has a lot to do with how wealthy you are. In the study "Seeing Like a Company or a Customer: Selective Empathy in Pricing," appearing in American Sociological Review, authors Barbara Kiviat (Columbia University) and Carly R. Knight (New York University) examine how Americans evaluate the fairness of risk-based pricing—where consumers who are predicted to be high-risk/costly are charged more. [...]
Tiny insects trapped in amber could tell us a great deal about their roles in past ecosystems: pollinators, parasites, predators, and prey. But how many of the insects preserved alongside each other reflect interactions during life, and how many are just unlucky coincidences? [...]
A study published in Nature Food by researchers from the Politecnico di Milano and the University of California at Berkeley provides forward-thinking answers to the debate on the role of environmental stresses on migration processes. The analysis, conducted on a dataset of 40,000 cases of environmental migration in Somalia and led by Professor Maria Cristina Rulli, coordinator of the Glob3ScienCE (Global Studies on Sustainable Security in a Changing Environment) Lab, shows that the main reasons for these displacements can be attributed to water scarcity. Drought, the insufficient water content of the soil with respect to the needs of agriculture, and food insecurity caused as a result, directly affect Somalia's agricultural and pastoral communities, which represent about 80% of the national population. [...]
A study published in the Chemical Engineering Journal proposes a new approach to environmental remediation of pharmaceutical pollutants in water flows. This approach is based on a phenomenon known as "sparks," which refers to the sparks that appear on the surface of a metal when it is subjected to plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO). [...]
Even the most remote regions of the globe are not free from plastic pollution. In a study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, researchers from São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Brazil have detected plastic rocks on Trindade Island, the easternmost point of South America. [...]
An international team of scientists led by the University of Bath has developed a new catalyst—a substance that speeds up chemical reactions—that uses sunlight to break down so-called "forever chemicals" prevalent in the environment and known to accumulate in the human body with unknown long-term health effects. [...]
Future devices will continue to probe the frontier of the very small, and at scales where functionality depends on mere atoms, even the tiniest flaw matters. Researchers at Rice University have shown that hard-to-spot defects in a widely used two-dimensional insulator can trap electrical charges and locally weaken the material, making it more likely to fail at lower voltages. The findings are published in Nano Letters. [...]
A recent study by the University of Bonn and University Hospital Bonn and the University of Freiburg shows that the mitochondria appear to be able to influence the number of lipid droplets in the cell using a mechanism that is actually intended for a completely different purpose. Their results have now been published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. [...]
Thanks to modern therapies, a cancer diagnosis is no longer an automatic death sentence. But many patients still suffer from unwanted side effects and limited efficacy. In a recent Bioconjugate Chemistry publication, William & Mary researchers have designed an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) with the potential to improve the potency and decrease the cost of currently approved cancer drugs. [...]
The human genome is a rich, complex record of migration, encounters, and inheritance written over thousands of millennia. Genomic research by members of Sarah Tishkoff's lab at the University of Pennsylvania are revisiting a particularly intimate chapter, suggesting that ancient mating patterns between modern humans and Neanderthals shaped why Neanderthal DNA is largely missing from the human X chromosome. [...]
The world is never really at rest. Even in a vacuum near ultracold temperatures where all classical motion should come to a halt, you'll find quantum fluctuations. In thin, two-dimensional materials, these include random vibrations that can alter electromagnetic fields, a feature that theorists have posited could be quite useful for modifying materials. [...]
Researchers studying the soft-bodied Ediacaran biotas of the world generally accept that there are three distinct assemblages. The 575–560-million-year-old (Ma) Avalon Assemblage is best known from the Ediacaran of Newfoundland, Canada, characterized by the weird and wonderful fractal Rangeomorpha like Charnia that thrived in the deep, dark waters around the ancient continent of Avalonia. The 560–550-Ma White Sea Assemblage is best known from shallow marine rocks of Australia, Russia, and China, marking the acme of Ediacaran biodiversity and including some famous animal ancestors such as Dickinsonia and Kimberella. And the 550–538-Ma Nama Assemblage is a low-diversity biota that persisted until the extinction event preceding the Cambrian Radiation event at 538 Ma. [...]
Along with forests, grasslands and wetlands are also being converted to cropland and pasture at an increasing rate around the world—often for livestock farming and the export of agricultural products. An international team of researchers, including Martin Persson from Chalmers, has now analyzed for the first time where, for what purpose, and how quickly natural non-forest ecosystems are being converted into agricultural land on a global scale. The results show that these ecologically highly valuable areas are converted at a rate almost four times faster than forests. [...]