Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
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 increasing production. But what about postharvest losses? Globally, about one-third of food produced for human consumption is estimated to be lost or wasted.
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 researchers are working to develop a battery that could function in the brutal cold of the moon's south pole, where nighttime temperatures plunge to minus 328 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 200 degrees Celsius).
A groundbreaking study suggests that 2.22 million Indigenous Australians lived on the continent before European colonization, far more than previously believed. Researchers estimate that 93% of this population was lost within 73 years, revealing a demographic catastrophe on a scale that dramatically changes our understanding of Australian history.
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 plots. Yet hunger is common: in the 2024 census, about a third of Busoga households reported going whole days without food.
Fine particulate matter consists of tiny particles with diameters in the nanometer range. They are produced, for example, by fuel combustion, remain suspended in the air and can penetrate deep into the respiratory tract. There, they can trigger oxidative stress, a process that promotes inflammation and, over the long term, can lead to serious health problems such as respiratory or cardiovascular diseases. Scientists call this harmful property the particles' oxidative potential.
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 rotation rate of 15 degrees per hour, could eventually be useful for precision navigation and orientation systems, particularly where GPS is unavailable.
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 weightlessness. Scientists already know both can have a profound impact on the human body, but the extent of that impact and how long it can last remain a mystery.
A 120-million-year-old fossil forgotten in a museum for nearly a century has revealed a terrifying new dinosaur that may have been more dangerous to humans than a T. rex. The tiger-sized predator also provides the first evidence of megaraptorans in Europe, helping explain how these mysterious dinosaurs eventually became gigantic hunters.
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 tropics, a pattern known as the latitudinal diversity gradient.
Sometimes it can be hard for parents to agree on how to raise children. One parent might insist their child's homework has to be finished before they're allowed to use devices. The other may think a bit of screen time before studying is perfectly reasonable. Rules and consequences might be the preferred strategy of one parent, while the other favors a more flexible approach.
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 Anastasiia Naryshkina, Paul Schweng and Robert Woodward at the University of Vienna have converted several types of plastic waste into water-attracting polymer networks that take up water even in dry climates and release it again under moderate heating, for example, using sunlight. The study, published in Chem Circularity, offers a route to give plastic waste a second life as an adsorbent for atmospheric water harvesting.
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 mixed together by the drifting currents.
A major study found that several cancers are rising faster among younger adults in England, even as smoking, diet, and other established risk factors have generally improved. Excess weight explains only part of the increase, leaving scientists searching for other possible causes, including changes in the gut microbiome and early-life exposures.
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 supporting advances in agriculture, conservation and medicine. This increase will be facilitated by a new specialized workflow developed by F1000 and the Wellcome Sanger Institute for Wellcome Open Research.
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 single carbon atom.
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 with numerous functions in the body. Gut bacteria compete for the limited nutrients available in their environment, while also interacting with each other in ways that can influence the stability of the microbial community.
American audiences will be able to watch an English-dubbed version of "Ramayana," a Hindi film based on a South Asian epic tradition, in theaters in November 2026.
A new study examining how tropical cyclone activity near Hawai'i could change in a warmer future finds a shift toward stronger storms, even though substantial uncertainty remains about whether the total number of storms near the islands will increase.
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 grasslands or ancient forests, in worryingly low numbers.
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 suspected, according to a study published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. The findings highlight an underrecognized threat to Antarctic wildlife and the importance of comprehensive disease investigations, particularly as H5N1 continues to raise concerns for seabird and marine mammal populations.