Science
‘They’ll be finding bodies next year’: a renowned forensic scientist on Nepal’s ‘extreme challenges’
Prof Richard Bassed helped identify Boxing Day tsunami and victims of Australia’s catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires. ‘The randomness of this massive flood,’ he says. ‘That get…
Albanese’s resources minister celebrating the Beetaloo carbon bomb is a hell of a choice. Labor can’t say it wasn’t warned | Clear Air
Scientists will be able to estimate the amount of heating and destruction caused by the gas ultimately drawn from the BeetalooGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news p…
Light-triggered interface lets adhesive peel cleanly and rebond through 15 cycles
Adhesives are essential in electronics, vehicles and other products, but they can hinder repair and recycling when bonded parts are difficult to separate cleanly. A research team …
Soft nanoscale confinement prevents ice, exposing water's liquid-to-glass transition
An international collaboration of researchers has used ANSTO's facilities to uncover new properties of one of the most fundamental everyday materials, water, and answer an importa…
Tiny fossils reveal big insights about ant ancestors
Two tiny ant fossils recovered in southern Saskatchewan are helping scientists better understand the evolutionary history of modern ants. Ant fossils dating from 72–56 million yea…
From peas to potatoes, AI identifies nearly 800 promising plant proteins for food and cosmetics
Scientists from Leeds' School of Food Science and Nutrition have developed an advanced AI process that can rapidly identify plant proteins capable of acting as emulsifiers from te…
How an unassuming wildflower thrives in salt-laden air that kills other plants
On the windswept coasts of Oregon and California lives an unassuming little plant that can withstand salty blasts that kill its inland counterparts. It's called the yellow monkeyf…
Warming seas could shrink most mollusks by 2100, but some may grow
Research led by scientists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette challenges a long-held assumption about the effects of climate change on marine life: Warmer oceans won't si…
Built to last or break down: Ring size tunes biodegradable plastic lifetimes
Biodegradable plastics should be tough enough for use yet able to break down at an appropriate rate afterward. Researchers at the University of Osaka show that changing the size o…
Microbes—dead or alive—can be early indicators of soil health under regenerative farming
Researchers have demonstrated a series of biological tests that could serve as "proxies" for measuring how different regenerative agriculture practices could improve soil carbon—y…
Predictive tools can confuse rare mutations with dangerous ones
When a patient's DNA is read, it is compared with a reference version of the human genome. This allows geneticists and rare disease experts to look at a list of places where the p…
'Green thumb' molecule helps leaf stalks grow in crowded conditions
Potassium (K) is one of the three essential nutrients for plants. It plays a critical role in a wide range of processes, including cell growth, photosynthesis and regulation of wa…
A molecular brake that keeps muscle architecture in check
Every movement we make, from blinking to sprinting, depends on the ability of muscle fibers to contract in a rapid and coordinated way. Achieving this precision requires an intric…
How a plant's refusal to self-pollinate could help India grow more of its own cooking oil
Most people assume plants reproduce through whatever pollen happens to land on them. This is not true. A collaborative research initiative involving the Indian Institute of Techno…
Hot subdwarfs come into focus as AI scans thousands of stars in Gaia data
There are myriad ways of "being a star," and scientists spend years trying to uncover and understand them. One unusual type is the so-called hot subdwarf—small stars that burn mys…
Perseverance rover watches Earth vanish behind Martian moon
Earth and the Martian moon Phobos dance together in a series of images recently acquired by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. Earth appears as a point of light in the Martian sky, d…
'Power of disorder' tames CF₄, a semiconductor greenhouse gas that can persist for 50,000 years
Among the gases used in semiconductor manufacturing, tetrafluoromethane (CF₄) is a greenhouse gas more than 6,000 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
Early mammals weren't all loners—some may have lived in pairs alongside the dinosaurs
About 200 million years ago, furry, little egg-laying creatures evolved the ability to feed their offspring with a secretion from special glands: milk. Their evolutionary journey …
'Alien: Isolation 2': Facing a ruthless and evolved Xenomorph in our Gamescom hands-on preview
Sega and Creative Assembly's long-awaited survival horror sequel hits the ground running with a new cast of characters and a fast-paced prologue.
Minister tells Brits to stock up on days of supplies after ‘supersize’ El Niño warning
Exclusive: Angela Eagle urges people to be ‘a bit more resilient’ as she tells UK citizens to plan for national emergenciesBritish people have been urged to have enough food and w…
Court Stalls EPA Plan to Override California’s Vehicle Pollution Standards
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from challenging California’s longstanding authority to set vehicle pollution stan tdadards stricter th…
Photo: NASA's Hubble spies superbubble scene
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a sprawling cosmic vista in the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, the largest of the small galaxies that orbit our Milky Way gala…
Chimpanzees have accents too, study finds
A study has found that young chimpanzees develop distinct population-specific vocal patterns as they mature (ontogeny), challenging the long-held assumption that their calls are i…
Newly discovered 1666 manuscript may trace four-lens telescope experiments to Galileo
A potentially history-altering finding by a University of Limerick researcher may provide the most detailed technical analysis of a telescope demonstrably made by the famous astro…