Biology
Finding new ways to catch a thief—via intruders' airborne eDNA
Environmental DNA (eDNA) is increasingly being investigated by forensic scientists as a tool to help solve criminal cases that lack biological traces—and attention is also turning…
Turning up the heat on chickpea yield
A University of Queensland study has outlined a practical pathway for accelerating the development of heat-adapted chickpeas using data from new 'omic' technologies. Ph.D. candida…
Early growth differences help explain which beech trees survive forest competition
The fight for survival in the forest is fierce: light, water and nutrients are all limited. This is particularly true in "mast years"—times when trees and shrubs produce an unusua…
Cyril Hilsum obituary
Government physicist whose radar research paved the way for flat-panel TV and computer screens based on liquid crystalsCyril Hilsum’s research into stable liquid crystals and the …
Ascension Island: How a planting project created a lush cloud forest
In the middle of nowhere, a small island emerges in the Atlantic Ocean. This unique territory completely changed in the 19th century thanks to the efforts of two British scientist…
Is your boss watching you? The rise of AI surveillance at work – podcast
Workers have always been monitored by their bosses, first through output targets, and then via computer software labelled ‘bossware’. But AI is transforming the capabilities of th…
Consumers need clearer answers before they can trust precision fermentation, new report finds
Consumers may not fully understand precision fermentation yet, but many are curious enough to taste the results. New qualitative research from the EIT Food Consumer Observatory, p…
Report identifies investment priorities for low-emissions agriculture
A new report by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, has found a growing suite of promising options already available to reduce on-farm emissions, as well as further opport…
Now you see them: Researchers uncover patterns in vessels that vanish at sea
Across the waters of West Africa, commercial fishing vessels vanish along international boundary lines.
Scientists alarmed as super El Niño collides with 'strange uptick' in Galapagos iguana trafficking
The only lizard in the world that can live and forage at sea may now be in a fight for survival. International scientists warn black-market trafficking of Galapagos marine iguanas…
One-third of food is lost or wasted: How to help farmers cut postharvest losses
Agriculture in the Global South remains under pressure to produce more food while responding to climate change and resource constraints. Policy responses have focused on increasin…
Uganda's sugarcane boom leaves families hungry: What needs to change
Busoga, in eastern Uganda, is a low, fertile plateau surrounded on three sides by Lake Victoria, the Nile River and Lake Kyoga. Most of its 4.3 million people farm small, rain-fed…
Urbanization takes a bigger toll on bird diversity in the tropics than it does at other latitudes, study finds
Researchers at McGill University have found that urbanization is weakening one of Earth's most enduring ecological patterns: the tendency for biodiversity to increase toward the t…
Spawning coral release quintillions of eggs each year, new calculations suggest
Most kinds of coral spawn once a year. In an enormous multiday event synchronized to specific phases of the moon, they release vast slicks of eggs and sperm into the ocean to be m…
Genome publishing overhaul targets 200 reports per month, up from 30
The Wellcome Sanger Institute's Tree of Life program plans to accelerate publication of genome notes from approximately 30 per month to 200, expanding access to research that is s…
How E. coli eavesdrops on the metabolic activity of other gut bacteria
The gut microbiome is teeming with hundreds of bacterial species and trillions of bacteria. These microorganisms influence many aspects of health, including digestion, and assist …
How detection dogs are helping protect one of Australia's most imperiled lizards
Many of the Australian animals most at risk of extinction are extremely tough to track down. That's because they live in small pockets of disappearing nature, such as rare grassla…
Scientists identify avian cholera as major cause of penguin deaths in Antarctica
Thousands of Adélie penguins found dead in Antarctica in 2024 were primarily victims of avian cholera, not high pathogenicity avian influenza (H5N1) as researchers initially suspe…
Engineered enzyme could improve detection of HIV and other viruses
Scientists have long used a powerful gene-editing tool called CRISPR to make precise changes to DNA. But a different version of the technology, known as Cas13a, targets RNA, the g…
Mollusk family trees play a key role in shaping microbiomes, researchers find
A mollusk's microbial community has more to do with its family tree than its address. In other words, the composition of a mollusk's microbiome depends less on the environment in …
Learning reshapes inhibitory synapses differently within the same nerve cell, study suggests
Our brain must be able to learn new things without losing previously stored information or the stability of its networks. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (LI…
Sheep grazing in solar fields offers farmers economic, ecological gains
Two new research papers shed light on the growing practice of grazing sheep in fields with solar arrays. One demonstrates that, in the right numbers, sheep grazing increases popul…
SpaceX rocket launch creates glowing 'space jellyfish' cloud – video
The sun illuminated the exhaust plume of a SpaceX rocket launch on 13 October, creating a glowing jellyfish-like cloud in the sky, according to Nasa. Continue reading...
Healthy corals restore bleached neighbors' color after five days of contact
The world's coral reefs face an existential threat from rising seawater temperatures that trigger widespread bleaching, a problem driven by climate change and compounded by this y…