New analysis of ancient parrot DNA has revealed that vibrant Amazonian parrots were transported alive across the Andes to coastal Peru centuries before the Inca Empire, highlighting a sophisticated pre-Inca, long-distance trade network spanning rainforest, highlands and deserts. The international team of researchers, including scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), analyzed parrot feathers that were discovered at Pachacamac, Peru—one of the preeminent religious centers of the Andean civilization—far outside the birds' native rainforest range. The research is published in Nature Communications. [...]
New research from the Technical University of Denmark indicates that the outcome of a resistance measurement may depend on the conditions under which the bacterium is tested. Standard laboratory tests are carried out under fixed, uniform conditions, but if, for example, the test environment is altered, the very same bacterium may in some cases be either more or less susceptible to an antibiotic than the laboratory result indicates. The research is published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. [...]
Stopping viruses before they strike is a key challenge in public health. A research team led by Associate Professor Li Dan from the Department of Food Science and Technology at National University of Singapore's Faculty of Science has identified a natural probiotic-derived compound that can potentially prevent human norovirus infections by blocking the virus from attaching to host cells in the body. [...]
A new international survey reveals clear differences in how veterinarians and animal welfare scientists in Japan and the UK perceive animal welfare, particularly animal behavior. The findings are published in the journal Animal Welfare. [...]
Alaska's glacial lakes are growing faster than in previous decades. They expanded by more than 150 square kilometers between 2018 and 2024, and could eventually grow to more than four times their current size as glaciers retreat, according to a new study published in the journal PNAS. [...]
Human activity is making the underwater world increasingly noisy. Ph.D. candidate Fien Demuynck researched how wind farms affect fish and how to minimize any negative impact. "We don't want animals to become stressed, disoriented or deaf." [...]
Due to climate change, plants' pollination season has been growing longer and longer. As a result, people are exposed to allergens for extended periods each year, raising a major public health concern. Researchers from Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University, the University of Rouen Normandy and the University of Lille have developed an advanced computational model of outdoor airflow through trees. They recently used it to study how a tree's geometry affects the dynamics and dispersion of its airborne pollen grains. The work appears in Physics of Fluids. [...]
Quantum mechanical effects are known to be easily disrupted by disturbances from the surrounding environment, commonly referred to as noise. To minimize these disturbances, physicists often study these effects in small and carefully controlled systems, in which environmental noise can be minimized. [...]
No two snowflakes may be the same, but models that fail to take these variations into consideration often fall short when calculating the way snow accumulates on roofs. In Physics of Fluids, researchers from Harbin Institute of Technology in China modeled the way snow gathers on a roof based on snowflake size and distribution. [...]
A study by scientists at Hunan University introduces a new hydrogen isotope separation method that leverages proton quantum tunneling to produce heavy water, overcoming the key physical limitation faced by current methods that have made the production process difficult and expensive for decades. [...]
NASA's Van Allen Probe A is expected to reenter Earth's atmosphere almost 14 years after launch. From 2012 to 2019, the spacecraft and its twin, Van Allen Probe B, flew through the Van Allen belts, rings of charged particles trapped by Earth's magnetic field, to understand how particles were gained and lost. The belts shield Earth from cosmic radiation, solar storms, and the constantly streaming solar wind that are harmful to humans and can damage technology, so understanding them is important. [...]
A new University of Mississippi study shows that some sound waves don't just move forward—they also move slightly to the side. Understanding this movement could help researchers develop more precise acoustic tools. Likun Zhang, associate professor of physics and astronomy and senior scientist at the National Center for Physical Acoustics, published his team's study on the behavior of spiral sound waves in Physical Review Letters. [...]
High temperatures have long been empirically linked to violence, conflict, and aggression at the societal level—a troubling pattern in a warming world. Alessandra Cassar and colleagues sought to explore the effect of high heat on individual egalitarianism, resource maximization, selfishness, spite, and competitiveness. The study is published in PNAS Nexus. [...]
Does modernization—economic growth, technological advancement, globalization, increased education, and urbanization—reduce cultural differences? Conventional wisdom suggests that as nations get richer and more educated, a globalized, modern culture emerges featuring low birth rates, high divorce rates, and an overall focus on the individual. [...]
A recently detected flash of energy appears to have emanated from the wreckage of colliding galaxies, according to an international team of astronomers led by Penn State scientists. The burst, known as GRB 230906A, was likely caused by the collision of two neutron stars hundreds of millions of years ago and is now shedding light on how the universe creates some of its heaviest elements. [...]
A new study led by researchers at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Institute of Science Tokyo challenges a long-standing assumption about Earth's most extreme ice ages. Using numerical geochemical models, the team showed that chemical weathering may have continued beneath thick continental ice sheets during the snowball Earth event, consuming atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) and potentially prolonging global glaciation. [...]
When choosing an education or job, your choice is not only based on skills and opportunities. Your personality plays a notable role, too—and according to new research, certain traits can cause you to disregard certain types of work. This is also true for people who score high on the so-called Dark Factor of Personality (D), which represents one's tendency to put one's own interests above those of others, e.g., via using aggressiveness, cheating, or manipulation as a means to that end. [...]
Materials that encourage mineralization, mimicking the process in the human body, are becoming increasingly important in medicine and technology. This process, which occurs at the interface between inorganic materials and organic coatings, can facilitate the formation of biological tissue, aid in detecting specific ions, and even assist in removing contaminants from water. [...]
A research team at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has developed new laser technology that could lead to tiny, cost-effective biosensors. The sensors integrate lasers and optics together on a centimeter-sized chip, which could move testing from hospitals to patients' homes. This, in turn, would free up hospital beds and reduce visits to clinics. [...]
A study led by McKenna Litynski, a Ph.D. graduate in anthropology and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Wyoming, confirms that ancient needles and awls enabled humans to survive in cold climates and shows these tools served a variety of purposes beyond clothing production, from medicine to ceremony. [...]
Climate change since the 1950s has doubled the amount of time per year that millions of people around the world must endure heat so extreme that everyday physical activities cannot be done safely, a new study concludes. [...]
Computer scientists and weather scientists have taken the first steps toward creating an AI agent capable of analyzing and answering questions in natural language, such as English, about data from AI-driven weather and climate forecasting models. The research team from the University of California San Diego will present the first AI weather agent they developed, named Zephyrus, at the 14th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) from April 23–27 in Rio de Janeiro. The research is published on the arXiv preprint server. [...]
For millions of commuters, the workday doesn't just begin with a train ride. It also begins with a blast of heat. In one of the largest studies ever conducted on thermal comfort in metro systems, Northwestern University scientists found that subway riders consistently report feeling uncomfortably hot while underground. [...]
Farmers could turn more of the UK's farmland into productive agroforestry systems if they had access to trusted advice and real farm examples, according to new research from the University of Reading. Dr. Amelia Hood, from the Department of Sustainable Land Management at the University of Reading, worked with 220 stakeholders including farmers, policymakers and NGOs to identify why agroforestry is still rare in the UK, despite strong interest from farmers and government funding for tree planting. [...]
Indigenous people in the United States are at higher risk of fatal police violence in and around American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) reservations, according to the first comprehensive national study on the subject from researchers at Drexel University's Dornsife School of Public Health and the University of Washington. The study, using data on the 203 AIAN people killed by police from 2013 through 2024, is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors hope this work will inform policy action to better protect these communities. [...]
By 2050, nearly 20% of the areas currently suitable for cocoa cultivation in Colombia could lose the climate conditions needed for production, particularly in the lowlands of the Caribbean region and the country's northeastern departments, according to a new scientific study. [...]
Observations of the Rimae Bode region on the moon reveal five distinct types of terrain and identify several potential landing sites for China's first crewed mission, according to research titled "Geology of Rimae Bode region as priority site candidate for China's first crewed lunar mission." The work is published in Nature Astronomy. [...]
They raid compost bins, outsmart latches and sometimes look gleeful doing it. A new study in Animal Behaviour suggests raccoons may not just be opportunistic—they may be genuinely curious. [...]
Asteroids are some of the oldest objects in the solar system: leftovers from the chaotic time when planets were assembling from dust and rock. They're time capsules, preserving clues about what the early solar system was like, and, ultimately, what the building blocks of planets are. [...]
An international team of researchers has modified a probiotic yeast to make it safer for use by immunocompromised people, older adults and infants. Testing in an animal model found that the modified yeast is less likely to cause infection than unmodified strains of the same organism. The associated research paper is published in the journal Communications Biology. [...]