Science
Green, pink and purple: Astronomers reveal the surprising true colors of white dwarf stars
University of Warwick astronomers have shown that white dwarf stars can glow in a range of colors, including the first star ever found that would appear green to the human eye.
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…
NASA develops batteries to power humanity's return to moon
If you've ever had your car start sluggishly, or not at all, on a particularly frigid winter morning, you know standard batteries do not like extreme cold. That's why NASA researc…
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…
New chip-scale gyroscope measures rotation with unprecedented sensitivity
Researchers have developed a chip-scale optical ring-laser gyroscope that can measure rotation as slow as 37 degrees per hour. This record sensitivity, approaching Earth's rotatio…
A trip to Mars could come at a heartbreaking cost
When astronauts first travel to Mars or anywhere else in deep space, they will have to contend with two problems that our planet protects us from on its surface—radiation and weig…
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…
Waste plastics become molecular sponges that capture water from air
Discarded plastic packaging materials, old CDs and even LEGO bricks can be transformed into materials that capture significant amounts of moisture from the air. Materials chemists…
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…
Isaias Made It To Birmingham. The Consequences Were Deadly.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—It’s hard to forget Uncle Bobo. And on this humid October day, his nephew says it’s hard to remember him, too. Devolin “Bobo” Webster, 66, died unexpectedly in …
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…
A single carbon atom stitches flat molecules into 3D structures
Flat is fine for a sheet of paper, but many of the most useful molecules need depth. Now, researchers from Japan have found a way to give them that depth using nothing more than a…
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…
Planetary genealogy: Milky Way worlds belong to 1 of 2 ‘families,’ scientists find
Scientists have performed a cosmic genealogy on planetary systems in the Milky Way, finding two distinct families that influence the evolution and fate of these systems.
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 …
New framework links magnetic phase boundaries to string-like defects in spin ice
A research team led by Haruki Watanabe, a professor in the Department of Physics and the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at The Hong Kong University of Science and …
New York Candidates for Governor Clash Over Energy Policy
Incumbent New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman clashed over high energy costs in the state’s only gubernatorial debate, offering sharply different v…
NASA to Host News Conference Previewing US Spacewalks 100, 101
NASA will preview two upcoming spacewalks to complete solar array installation and power augmentation of the International Space Station during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Tu…
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…
'Dungeon Crawler Carl' author Matt Dinniman talks inspirations, success, and the upcoming Peacock TV series (interview)
'Luckily I’m still in love with this story, and I am in love with writing it.'
Rare particle decays hint at deviations from Standard Model predictions
Studying rare processes is part and parcel of particle physics, providing stringent tests of the Standard Model. At the recent International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICH…