The UK braced for a record-breaking heat wave Tuesday as hundreds of schools closed early for the next two days and train companies slashed services. [...]
Ten Australians—including a firefighter, First Nations leaders and young people—are bringing their concerns about the nation's coal and gas exports to the United Nations. On Tuesday, the group lodged a complaint with the UN Human Rights Committee, claiming the Australian government is failing to protect them from climate harms. [...]
When colleagues and I found microplastics in hedgehog droppings, we wanted to know where they were coming from. One answer was surprisingly close to home: pet food. [...]
Europe is baking under a scorching heat wave, with health warnings in place across Western and Central Europe as temperatures climb to record-breaking highs. [...]
The latest heat wave sweeping across Europe is a stark reminder that it is the world's fastest-warming continent, stretching into an Arctic that is heating at an even greater pace. [...]
Long-awaited monsoon rains arrived in India's financial capital, Mumbai, on Tuesday, cooling weeks of blazing heat despite persistent fears of water shortages, with total rainfall so far staying below the long-term average. [...]
For decades, astronomers and policymakers have been working on plans to protect our planet from killer asteroids. But now there's a new realm to protect: the thousands of satellites we're putting in orbit. [...]
Polystyrene—common in packing peanuts and box inserts—is manufactured from fossil fuels. To develop a sustainable alternative, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Polymer Materials tested an unconventional starting material: sawdust. Their prototype foams incorporated cellulose binders and other additives to form rigid or flexible materials, and some versions matched polystyrene's strength and impact resistance. A simple beeswax coating made them water-resistant, producing biobased foams with potential for packaging and building materials. [...]
Europe is sizzling under an early heat wave this week, with millions of people experiencing extremely high temperatures, and experts say a phenomenon known as a heat dome is to blame. [...]
The dried larvae of the yellow mealworm beetle (Tenebrio molitor) are comparable to beef or poultry in nutritional value, but the mealworm has a far smaller ecological footprint. It was recently approved for human consumption by the European Food Safety Authority. [...]
Researchers from the University of Sydney, working with IBM, have identified and quantified important factors limiting the performance of quantum computers and demonstrated ways to overcome their impact. [...]
New research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) suggests attitudes, particularly those that excuse harmful behavior, may be a stronger predictor of willingness to create deepfake pornography than personality traits. The findings are published in the Journal of Sexual Aggression. [...]
For her doctoral dissertation, Yale's Nathalie Alomar decided to study a small amphibian that appeared to have eluded the forces of evolution. She found that there is more to its evolution than meets the eye. [...]
Coral reef ecosystems, widely seen as a climate change bellwether, are more complex than previously understood. A new international study by the universities of Bristol, Wuhan in China, and Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany reveals that the evolutionary advantage of coral-algae symbiosis is not fixed; it depends entirely on environmental context. [...]
New Adelaide University research has identified which industries, workplace structures and employment policies are most strongly linked to gender pay gaps in Australian workplaces, with flexible work arrangements being a key indicator. [...]
Research examining Pride events across the U.K. has found that modern Pride celebrations have evolved into year-round community hubs that act simultaneously as protests, safe spaces and cultural festivals for local LGBTQIA+ communities. [...]
Four goose skulls were pulled from a former toilet shaft in Brandenburg, Germany, each of them riddled with strange holes. As it turns out, these holes were the telltale signs of fancy feathered crests, making them the first crested geese ever identified in the archaeological record. [...]
This April, when the spring breeze carried the formal acceptance notice of our paper by the Journal of the American Chemical Society to my desk, my thoughts instantly drifted back to the late Phil Geissler. A legendary physical chemist and the original spark for this research, Geissler had once observed a baffling phenomenon: When the hairy, flexible ligands passivating a nanoparticle's surface spontaneously order themselves into crystalline patterns, a massive, seemingly magical attractive force suddenly erupts between the particles. [...]
Salmonella is a common source of food poisoning that leads to potentially life-threatening illnesses, widespread food recalls and a consistent challenge for poultry producers. UConn Department of Animal Science associate professor Mary Anne Amalaradjou and her research team study ways to improve processing strategies to prevent foodborne illnesses by using probiotic bacteria. In a new study published in Poultry Science, they describe a method to use postbiotic compounds produced by probiotic species of Lacticaseibacillus to take the benefits one step further. [...]
Nitrogen is essential for all living organisms, but in many ecosystems it is in short supply. Plants and soil microbes both rely on nitrogen to grow, leading to intense competition below ground. Researchers at The University of Manchester have uncovered how plants and soil microbes divide up nitrogen in alpine ecosystems, helping explain how these communities coexist in nutrient limited environments. Their new study is published in Soil Biology and Biochemistry. [...]
A study of funded AI startups provides a glimpse of which jobs may be most affected by AI. As AI tools are embraced by industry after industry, the impacts of these tools on jobs remain unclear. Previous analyses have focused on the theoretical capabilities of LLMs, but social factors are also likely to play a role in shaping what aspects of work see AI integration—or full automation. [...]
Contact lenses are a great vision correction option for many, but if one of them gets damaged, there is little to do other than throw it away. A team reporting in ACS Applied Polymer Materials has a solution: special polymer hydrogels and UV light. Scratches on lenses made from their new material were easily repaired with an hour of UV light exposure. This demonstration is a first step toward the next generation of contact lenses. [...]
Online advertisers and government agencies use algorithmic tools to tailor and target their campaigns to reach as many people as possible. [...]
When a physics student asked baristas at the Warsaw Coffee Conference what their biggest question for scientists was, the baristas said they wanted to know how to stop channeling during brewing. [...]
Successfully operating in a deep underground space requires mitigating two factors: air and water. [...]
Some fish swim in synchrony. Others, it turns out, breathe in synchrony. This is true for arapaimas, an obligate air-breathing species living in the Amazon. A new study in Communications Biology, led by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence "Science of Intelligence," has demonstrated for the first time that arapaima juveniles gather by the hundreds to synchronize their trips to the water surface with split-second precision, most likely to avoid predators and maximize survival and efficiency. [...]
A scientific project launched by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in direct collaboration with fishermen in the region has evaluated the state of fishery resources and ecological quality in the Garraf and Plana de Foix Marine Area. The species were found to be in good biological and health condition, with low levels of contaminants and an overall healthy state. The research has led to the creation of a Strategic Plan for Sustainable Fisheries. [...]
White barn owls are effective killing machines. They fly silently through the night air and swoop down on unsuspecting prey with their sharp talons. But they have something you would think goes against being a stealth predator: their white feathers. And perhaps this visual giveaway would be even worse when they glow in the moonlight. [...]
An echidna in Tasmania looks very different from one in Western Australia. But the differences run much deeper than appearance. A new review published in Australian Zoologist by University of Tasmania zoologist Stewart Nicol, an associate professor from the School of Natural Sciences, has found echidnas across Australia differ widely in diet, breeding, behavior and physiology, challenging long-held assumptions that they are the same. [...]
Researchers have identified "DNA switches" that become active as honeybee larvae grow into worker bees, offering new insight into the development of these important pollinators and the ecosystems they support. [...]