Soybean farmers around the world face a persistent and costly enemy hidden beneath the soil: soybean cyst nematode (SCN), a microscopic roundworm that attacks plant roots and drains yields. SCN is one of the most damaging pests affecting soybean production globally, resulting in significant losses every year. [...]
What do Thomas Edison and 2010 Nobel Prize in physics winners Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim have in common? According to a recent publication from the lab of Rice University's James Tour in ACS Nano, it could be graphene—an answer that might have confused Edison, who died almost 20 years before physicist P.R. Wallace proposed such a substance could exist and nearly 80 years before Novoselov and Geim were awarded a Nobel Prize for isolating and characterizing it. [...]
Over Christmas, vegetables, bananas and insulation foam washed up on beaches along England's southeast coast. They were from 16 containers spilled by the cargo ship Baltic Klipper in rough seas. In the new year, a further 24 containers fell from two vessels during Storm Goretti, with chips and onions among the goods appearing on the Sussex shoreline. [...]
Researchers investigating the effectiveness of outdoor ads promoting climate change awareness and action found that a general message of climate emergency awareness received more QR code scans compared to a more-specific campaign focusing on sustainable fashion, according to a study published in PLOS Climate by Maxwell Boykoff from the University of Colorado Boulder, U.S., and colleagues. [...]
What kinds of marketing messages are effective—and what makes people believe certain political slogans more than others? New research from the University of California San Diego Rady School of Management explores how people constantly evaluate whether messages are true or false and finds that a surprisingly small ingredient—whether a word has an easy opposite—can shape how confident people feel when deciding whether a message is true. [...]
A newly published Perspective article in Nature Nanotechnology details groundbreaking nanoparticle technology to eliminate harmful, disease-causing proteins in the body. The technology marks a transformative leap in the potential to drug "undruggable" proteins, to treat diseases such as dementia and brain cancer. [...]
Life in the ocean runs on light. It fuels photosynthesis, shapes food webs and determines where many marine species can live. [...]
The atmosphere is an important transport medium that carries microplastics to even the most remote parts of the world. These microplastics can be inhaled and pose a health risk to humans and animals. They can also settle out of the atmosphere and contaminate oceans and soils worldwide. [...]
A study by CUNY SPH researchers suggests that U.S. high school students who are bullied at school have substantially higher odds of attempting suicide than peers who are not bullied, with bullied girls facing the greatest risk. [...]
Plastic pollution is one of those problems everyone can see, yet few know how to tackle it effectively. I grew up walking the beaches around Tramore in County Waterford, Ireland, where plastic debris has always been part of the coastline, including bottles, fragments of fishing gear and food packaging. [...]
When we think of the world's oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous cave paintings in France and Spain often seen as evidence this was the birthplace of symbolic human culture. But new evidence from Indonesia dramatically reshapes this picture. [...]
Information that we select for ourselves, such as things we click online, has a stronger impact than passively acquired information on our perception of truth and falsehood. [...]
In the modern workplace, flexible arrangements can be as important as salary for some. For many employees, flexibility is no longer a nice-to-have luxury. It has become a fundamental requirement for staying in the workforce, especially after COVID. [...]
A unique study exploring popular ways to "self‑gift" has found that ordering a takeout meal is a preferred treat regardless of whether people have had a good or a bad day at work. [...]
In a new study Indiana University researchers observed episodic memory in rats to a degree never documented before, suggesting that rats can serve as a model for complex cognitive processes often considered exclusively human. Unlike semantic memory, which involves isolated facts, episodic memory involves replaying events in the order and context in which they occurred. [...]
A new three-way bond-breaking and making mechanism makes the synthesis of five-membered rings easier than before. [...]
Organic chemistry is packed with rules about structure and reactivity, especially when it comes to making and breaking chemical bonds. The rules governing how these bonds, which hold atoms together in molecules, form and the shapes they give molecules are often thought to be absolute, but UCLA organic chemists are pushing the boundaries of the possible. [...]
Skoltech researchers and their colleagues from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, Nanjing University of China, and the National Institute for Materials Science of Japan have developed a method for depositing organic molecules on a two-dimensional semiconductor in a highly controlled manner. In this proof-of-concept study, the technique uses self-assembled DNA origami nanostructures to carry organic dye molecules in a predefined pattern covered by a 2D semiconductor. [...]
Ancient pine trees growing in the Iberian mountains of eastern Spain have quietly recorded more than five centuries of Mediterranean weather. Now, by reading the annual growth rings preserved in their wood, scientists have uncovered a striking message: today's storms and droughts are becoming more intense and more frequent than almost anything the region has experienced since the early 1500s. [...]
Predicting the duration of a Central Pacific El Niño event has long frustrated climate scientists and forecasters. Now, a new study reveals that Central Pacific El Niños follow two fundamentally different life cycles—and the difference is determined months before they peak. [...]
Graphene has drawn attention as a scientific curiosity owing to its record conductivities, strength and thermal properties. But now, it's starting to make its way into a number of real-world applications, from batteries to concrete, sensors and material composites. Its market is already worth billions and is set to boom in the next few years. [...]
It's Saturday! This week, in an eminently practical analysis of the Boltzmann brain conjecture, physicists put constraints on the idea that memories could arise from random fluctuations in entropy rather than reflecting the actual past of the universe—news you can use! Researchers managed to put thousands of sodium atoms in a "Schrödinger's cat" state. And an ancient mass grave revealed the impact of the earliest-known pandemic. [...]
Americans stripped supermarket shelves Friday ahead of potentially "catastrophic" winter weather that threatened at least 160 million people across the country with transportation chaos, blackouts and life-threatening cold. [...]
Smartphone weather apps that summarize their forecasts with eye-popping numbers and bright icons may be handy during mild weather, but meteorologists say it's better to listen to human expertise during multi-faceted, dangerous winter storms like the one blowing through the U.S. [...]
From a social sciences perspective, people with radical, extremist, or fundamentalist attitudes are similar in some respects: In most cases, they are younger and less educated men who feel that they are not taken seriously enough. This is one of the key findings of a research team led by professor Marc Helbling, sociologist at the University of Mannheim focusing on Migration and Integration and Executive Board member of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES). [...]
In the same week that New South Wales experienced four shark attacks, Victorian beachgoers were warned about stinging jellyfish. [...]
An animal ecologist researching large marine animals such as whales and dolphins, Assistant Professor Iwata Takashi of the Graduate School of Maritime Sciences has performed surveys in oceans across the world. By using a method known as "biologging," which involves attaching various recording instruments to animals in order to collect data, Iwata is working to elucidate the activity and surrounding environment of mysterious marine life. [...]
When we assign work or chores in social units like our workplaces and households, feelings of unfairness are inevitable. While we hope to keep things fair, this can sometimes be difficult to achieve, and we often find ourselves caught in terrible dilemmas. [...]
With western states deadlocked in negotiations over how to cut water use along the Colorado River, the Trump administration has called in the governors of seven states to Washington to try to hash out a consensus. [...]
There's growing concern about the rise of harmful and aggressive forms of masculinity, whether at home, in schools or in public spaces. [...]
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