Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
Researchers at AIST have developed a device that measures the absolute surface profile of curved optical elements with high precision without touching them.
Fueled by record-breaking drought and unusually high temperatures, Canada's 2023 wildfire season was the worst in the country's history, with more than 15 million hectares (37 million acres) charred. Smoke blanketed the eastern seaboard, with health alerts keeping people indoors as skies turned an eerie orange.
A Baylor College of Medicine-led team has developed a strategy that combines the analysis of thousands of proteins with artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of small molecules called molecular glues to treat disease. Their approach, published in Nature Communications, has uncovered a new class of molecular glues that could neutralize harmful proteins linked to blood cancers and autoimmune diseases. The work also shows how AI-based structural modeling can help chemists optimize compounds well before experiments reveal how they work.
A newly described feathered dinosaur found in northeastern China adds evidence supporting the theory that flight-related features evolved differently in various bird-like dinosaur groups. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, are based on an analysis of an exceptionally well-preserved fossil of a microraptorine (a small dinosaur with feathers and wings) found in a geological formation estimated to be between 145 and 100 million years old.
Photos taken using a microscope reveal the colorful, kaleidoscope-like crystal structure of a new NASA-made material that could be used for manufacturing during future space missions. Developed at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, the material could be created directly on the moon or Mars, allowing NASA to pack fewer supplies—saving weight and reducing launch costs.
Communities across the country are debating the role mobile crisis response programs can play in emergency response. These programs typically take calls from 911 dispatchers involving mental health, substance use, welfare checks and other situations that do not require a law enforcement response.
Artificial intelligence promises to transform food safety by helping companies identify risks earlier, predict outbreaks and learn from patterns too rare for any one company to detect alone. But AI depends on one thing: large, diverse datasets.
We have long known every tonne of carbon dioxide matters to the climate. But governments keep approving new fossil fuel projects—even as climate change worsens.
Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a new family of materials that use light to produce hydrogen from water, opening the door to new ways of converting the sun's rays into clean energy.
From the air, Wainwright, Alaska, looks like a perfectly stable band of homes and roads between the Chukchi Sea and a vast, flat tundra. But just below the surface, the frozen ground on which this town was built contains large bodies of ice. Along the eroding coastal bluffs, that hidden ice is becoming exposed and melting away.
Disorder, exotic shapes and great uncertainty: while mathematicians understand phenomena in low and high dimensions very well, the 4D world raises many questions
Earth's life-support systems are in peril — and they're getting worse — but although the window for action is closing, we still have a chance to give our planet a sustainable future, a new report finds. The report, called "Planetary Health Check 2026," was written by more than 60 scientists and assessed the state of interconnected natural systems, or planetary boundaries, upon which Earth's stability and resilience depend. When these boundaries are crossed, researchers say there's an increasing risk of serious and irreversible harm.According to the report, seven of the nine identified planetary boundaries have already been breached, including climate change, ocean acidification and biosphere...
An artist's reconstruction of what the newly described bird-like dinosaur (Norellraptor barsboldi) would have looked like. (Image credit: Mr. Zhao Chuang)A predatory bird-like dinosaur with four wings discovered in China adds evidence to the idea that flight evolved several times in different dinosaur groups.The exceptionally well-preserved feathered dinosaur, which has been named Norellraptor barsboldi, was 3 years old when it died and measured just 21 inches (57 centimeters) long. It was found in the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation in northeastern China, which dates to between 145 million and 100 million years ago.N. barsboldi had the sharply curved predatory teeth and claws you'd exp...
The 10th century treatment called Bald’s eyesalve attacks microbes in multiple ways. Molecule mixtures from it may inspire modern medicine.
The largest defensive wall at Oued Beht. Archaeologists think its base was constructed about 4,000 years ago. (Image credit: G. Lucarini, Oued Beht Archaeological Project)Archaeologists have unearthed 4,000-year-old defensive walls in Morocco that are the oldest structures of their kind in North Africa outside the Nile Valley.The discovery expands what's known about the human development of this region of northwestern Mediterranean Africa, known as the Maghreb, particularly about the adoption of agriculture."For more than a century, the Maghreb was treated as a blank space in the story of Mediterranean later prehistory," Giulio Lucarini, an archaeologist at Italy's National Research Council,...
Juice is on its way to study Jupiter’s moons, with a little assist from Earth’s gravity
Elusive, satellite-stalking spacecraft could unleash space war—or help keep orbital peace
Gaps in early warning systems and community preparedness contributed to the high death toll from Nepal’s debris flow.
Scientists are developing a possible alternative to LASIK that reshapes the cornea without cutting it or using a laser. The technique uses a small electric potential and a specially shaped platinum lens to temporarily soften the cornea, allowing it to be molded in about a minute.
Depression may change which emotional faces children notice most, but the pattern appears to depend on family history. Children at higher familial risk became increasingly focused on sad faces, while lower-risk children with rising symptoms paid less attention to happy ones.