Weather forecasting is a powerful tool. During hurricane season, for instance, meteorologists create computer simulations to forecast how these destructive storms form and where they might travel, which helps prevent damage to coastal communities. When you're trying to forecast space weather, rather than storms on Earth, creating these simulations gets a little more complex. To simulate space weather, you would need to fit the sun, the planets and the vast empty space between them in a virtual environment, also known as a simulation box, where all the calculations would take place. [...]
When we hear the word "disaster" we often think of floods, droughts or earthquakes—events caused by nature. But what really turns these events into disasters is how prepared we are to deal with them. A flood becomes a disaster when people do not have safe housing, early warnings or emergency support. [...]
Lead poisoning was once thought to largely be a problem of the past, as the globe gradually weaned itself off leaded gasoline in road vehicles in 2021. But has global lead pollution truly been resolved? [...]
Lack of incentives and low adoption of metadata standards are limiting AI's potential for bioimage analysis—a community initiative proposes solutions. [...]
For billions of years, Earth's continents have remained remarkably stable, forming the foundation for mountains, ecosystems and civilizations. But the secret to their stability has mystified scientists for more than a century. Now, a new study by researchers at Penn State and Columbia University provides the clearest evidence yet for how the landforms became and remained so stable—and the key ingredient is heat. [...]
Infertility affects about one in six couples, and male factors account for roughly half of all cases—often because sperm don't swim well. Researchers from the University of Osaka have uncovered a key component of the "switch" that keeps the movement signal strong, offering a promising new avenue for both diagnosis and treatment. When this switch is absent, sperm slow down, and fertilization fails. By restoring that signal in the lab, the team rescued swimming and achieved healthy births in mice. [...]
Scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) have discovered a way to control sound and vibrations using a concept inspired by "twistronics," a phenomenon originally developed for electronics. [...]
Deep inside caves, water dripping from the ceiling creates one of nature's most iconic formations: stalagmites. These pillars of calcite, ranging from centimeters to many meters in height, rise from the cave floor as drip after drip of mineral-rich water deposits a tiny layer of stone. [...]
A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the deadly drug-resistant bacteria NDM-CRE found a 70% rise in infections in the U.S. between 2019 and 2023. Also known as "nightmare bacteria," NDM-CRE has few effective treatment options and high mortality rates. [...]
Breakthrough inventions are most likely to emerge when knowledge categories are blurred. Research by Gianluca Carnabuci, professor of organizational behavior at ESMT, and Balázs Kovács, professor at Yale School of Management, shows that patents in low-contrast categories, which have ambiguous or overlapping boundaries, catalyze more disruptive technologies than patents in clearly defined ones. The study draws on an analysis of 3.1 million U.S. patents granted between 1975 and 2013. [...]
Professor Edmund Lam, Dr. Ni Chen and their research team from the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering under the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) have developed a novel uncertainty-aware Fourier ptychography (UA-FP) technology that significantly enhances imaging system stability in complex real-world environments. The research has been published in Light: Science & Applications. [...]
Hidden beneath farmland in the central tablelands of New South Wales lies one of Australia's most extraordinary fossil sites—McGraths Flat. It dates back between 11 million and 16 million years into the Miocene epoch, a time when many of today's familiar plants and animals evolved. [...]
A research team has co-developed a nanomaterial-based 'wireless multi-sensing platform' for the early detection of pressure injuries, which have a high prevalence among individuals with limited mobility, including the elderly and people with disabilities. The team's findings are published in Advanced Functional Materials. [...]
We are lizard biologists, and to do our work we need to catch lizards—never an easy task with such fast, agile creatures. [...]
Betelgeuse, the brilliant red star marking Orion's shoulder, has long been suspected of harboring a secret. I have to confess, Betelgeuse holds a special place in my heart as the first star I ever looked at through a telescope as a child, so learning that astronomers theorized this massive supergiant wasn't alone made it even more intriguing. [...]
When galaxies collide, it's not a gentle affair, but it does take millions of years. Over this time, the two massive star systems slowly merge together, their gravitational pull drawing them closer. At the heart of each galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, an object containing millions or even billions of times the mass of our sun. After the galaxies merge, these two black holes should eventually find each other, settling into orbit around their shared center of gravity. The result is one of the universe's most extreme phenomena, a supermassive black hole binary. But to date, none have been found. [...]
Humans have about 400 odorant receptors (ORs), but scientists have had trouble finding ligands that match up with most of these ORs in lab settings—leaving them with a murky understanding of how certain smells are recognized in our brains. Only 71 human receptor-ligand interactions have been identified in studies thus far, often with low sensitivity in assays. Scientists have struggled with poor in vitro expression of ORs in lab conditions, limiting identification of receptor–odorant pairs. [...]
A new update to an influential economic theory called "Doughnut Economics" shows a global economy on a collision course with nature. [...]
Molecular biologists have long believed that the beginning of a gene launched the process of transcription—the process by which a segment of DNA is copied into RNA and then RNA helps make the proteins that cells need to function. [...]
SpaceX is set to attempt the next test flight of its massive Starship rocket on Monday, as concerns grow that Elon Musk has overpromised his company's ability to deliver NASA's lunar projects and fulfill his own Mars ambitions. [...]
Accurately modeling gross primary productivity (GPP) and evapotranspiration (ET) in terrestrial ecosystems is essential for understanding and predicting the global carbon and water cycles. However, current models face considerable uncertainties and limitations when estimating these two core components. [...]
Dark matter, the substance that makes up about 27% of the universe, could potentially be detected as a red or blue light "fingerprint," new research shows. The research is published in the journal Physics Letters B. [...]
Peroxidases are enzymes that break down hydrogen peroxide in organisms. Since their discovery in 1998, the electron source of "peroxiredoxin 6-type" peroxidases for this reaction remained unclear. The research group of Professor Marcel Deponte at RPTU has now closed this knowledge gap. The researchers demonstrated in two model organisms—humans and malaria pathogens—that peroxiredoxin 6-type enzymes react rapidly with hydrosulfide, the anion of hydrogen sulfide. The study was published in the journal Advanced Science. The findings reveal a previously unknown connection between peroxide and sulfide metabolism. [...]
Using advanced techniques in biophysical chemistry, a team led by Meredith Jackrel, an associate professor of chemistry, has achieved unprecedented views of a protein that may play a pivotal role in some cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and the related disorder frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Their work could open doors to new approaches for treatment and prevention. [...]
An international research team led by the University of Bremen has investigated what influenced the expansion of the Patagonian ice sheet during the last ice age. The scientists found evidence that the advances and retreats of glaciers in South America over the past 120,000 years were primarily influenced by changes in summer solar radiation and the duration of the summers. [...]
A comprehensive review of scientific literature has identified nanofiltration (NF) membrane technologies as the most effective method for removing pharmaceutical contaminants from water sources, according to researchers from the University of Sharjah. [...]
A research team led by Prof. Xu Pingyong from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed an innovative approach to visualize and rapidly screen small peptide knockins. The new approach, termed ALFA Nanobody-guided Endogenous Labeling (ANGEL), solves a long-standing problem of high-throughput screening for nonfluorescent small peptide knockins. Results were published in Nature Chemical Biology on August 29. [...]
Widely used to prevent infection, one of the active ingredients in the ointment, Neosporin, is neomycin. Discovered in the 1940s, neomycin is an effective topical antibiotic; however, if injected into the body to treat systemic infections, it can cause deafness, kidney damage, and neurological damage. [...]
With growing concerns over fossil fuel depletion and the environmental impacts of petrochemical production, scientists are actively exploring renewable strategies to produce essential industrial chemicals. [...]
Using 11 years of magnetic field measurements from the European Space Agency's Swarm satellite constellation, scientists have discovered that the weak region in Earth's magnetic field over the South Atlantic—known as the South Atlantic Anomaly—has expanded by an area nearly half the size of continental Europe since 2014. [...]
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