Stay informed about scientific discoveries, research developments and new findings from around the world.
Most sensors can measure only one thing at a time, like a thermometer for temperature or a pressure gauge for pressure. Measuring two properties accurately from the same surface at the same moment usually means using two separate instruments—adding cost and complexity to the process.
East Germany's espionage activities in the West boosted the country's economic output by 7.4%. Value added in manufacturing alone increased by 22.3% through industrial espionage, equivalent to 20.2 billion East German marks or approximately 4.1 billion euros at 2020 prices.
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) has shown for the first time that it can detect the faint glow of hydrogen gas from deep in the universe's past using only its own data.
Analyzing more than 43,000 English-language newspaper articles, a new study reveals a highly stratified narrative about AI in which the news media allocate authority unequally, reinforcing the technology's prominent role in contemporary life.
The assembly pathway behind refractile-body proteins may have finally been resolved, researchers from Science Tokyo report. Using genetic engineering and several techniques for analyzing protein structure, they investigated how four proteins work together to produce the correct architecture of these complex, pH-responsive protein machines, from the nanoscale to the microscale. The findings could help establish new frameworks for engineering dynamic protein systems as biotechnological tools.
At the southwest tip of Sweden, the Falsterbo Peninsula stretches into the Baltic Sea, creating a natural bottleneck for hundreds of millions of birds traveling south for the winter each year. Falsterbo is particularly known for raptor migration. One autumn morning, I stood with a group of others by the lighthouse, watching birds gather to cross the open sea—a sight to take your breath away.
The quality of European rivers has improved in recent years, but not at the pace required to meet the environmental targets set for 2030. This is one of the main conclusions of a study led by researchers María Pachés Giner and Remedios Martínez from the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), published in Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
To build the ultrafast computers of the future, scientists are looking beyond the electrical charge of electrons to another property: their spin. While conventional hardware relies on the movement of charge to process data, tapping into this intrinsic quantum property could enable researchers to reinvent how information travels through a circuit.
Researchers at the Nano Life Science Institute (WPI-NanoLSI) at Kanazawa University have directly visualized how enzymes find and break DNA molecules in real time. Using high-speed atomic force microscopy, the team followed individual enzymes as they moved along DNA and found that they repeatedly returned to vulnerable regions before breaking them apart. The findings reveal how the structure of DNA influences its vulnerability to enzymatic breakdown. The research was led by Richard Wong and his team: Jingge Yang, Yujia Qiu, Keesiang Lim and Toshio Ando. The work is published in Nature Communications.
Evaluating the difficulty of English texts used in educational materials and language assessments is a central concern in English language education. Traditionally, researchers have relied on objective measures of text difficulty based on linguistic features, including characteristics of words and sentences. However, learners can differ substantially in how difficult they perceive the same text to be. To examine the relationship between objective and subjective text difficulty, the researchers investigated the extent to which objective estimates correspond with learners' perceptions. The work is published in the journal Reading and Writing.
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have rewritten a small part of Oklahoma's geologic history with global implications for ancient life. Below the surface of the small town of Ames, Oklahoma, a meteor impact site spans miles. The crater is buried by sedimentary strata in the subsurface, but it remains an important marker of Oklahoma's ancient past and present-day economy; the Ames impact structure is a major oil and gas producer.
Chemicals affect biological species in different ways, posing a major challenge for assessing environmental chemical risks. However, the mechanisms behind these differences have remained largely unknown.
One of biology's fundamental questions is how our genes shape who we are. Adrian Serohijos and Stephen Michnick, professors in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at Université de Montréal's Faculty of Medicine, are studying the relationship between genotype and phenotype—that is, how DNA becomes RNA, then protein, and ultimately gives rise to observable characteristics in an individual or any other living organism. "We're trying to unravel the mechanisms of the genome, specifically how the information it encodes is processed inside the cell," Serohijos says.
Changes in rainfall can trigger increases in rodent populations and subsequent spikes in infection, new research has found, revealing how a changing climate could have consequences for human health.
Olefin metathesis is one of the most important reactions in organic chemistry for forming carbon–carbon bonds—for example, in the production of pharmaceuticals, plastics and complex natural products. However, previous ruthenium catalysts that enable this reaction have faced a major challenge: They rapidly degrade in aqueous or biological environments, making their use in natural systems such as cells or blood extremely difficult.
At the end of the last ice age, early humans crisscrossed the Americas following seasons, rivers and game, often with a trusty spear in hand. Nearly 13,000 years later, archaeologists are using those spearheads to study how America's first inhabitants understood risk.
A spore is a bacterium's survival capsule: dried almost solid and wrapped in protein armor, with its chemical processes shut down. Bacteria enter this state of hibernation when environmental conditions are unfavorable. What's left is close to indestructible: It can survive boiling, desiccation, radiation and the vacuum of space. NASA once bolted Bacillus spores to the outside of a satellite and left them in orbit for nearly six years; the ones shielded from sunlight were able to come back to life upon returning to Earth.
Who, really, is the best player in baseball? Ask five sports media outlets and you may get five different answers. Rankings can vary dramatically from one source to another, change from year to year and leave out different players altogether, making it difficult to determine where there is genuine consensus and where opinions diverge.
Countless employees across the country are experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline workflows and increase productivity. Yet many are keeping these solutions to themselves.
When the Islamic Society of Santa Barbara welcomed its community to its newly built mosque in 2019, nearly 19 years had passed since it purchased the property. The city's permitting process alone took 10 years. The project faced delays during 16 public hearings, at which residents of the suburban town of Goleta raised concerns, particularly about where worshippers would park their cars.
More than two-thirds of newly flooded coastlines worldwide could become suitable habitat for 122 non-native marine species—including Chinese mitten crabs, Pacific oysters and Asian tiger shrimp—by the middle and end of this century. The research, published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, identifies coastal regions at heightened risk, including the eastern United States, the Gulf of Mexico, coastlines bordering the North Sea, southeastern China and northern Australia.
Maya Mangala-Munuma '25 first noticed it in her hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. When she walked from an affluent neighborhood to a more impoverished one, it wasn't just the houses and demographics that changed. The trees did, too.
A pregnant female Ormia ochracea fly has a challenging problem to solve. She must listen for the song of a male cricket, locate him in the dark and use him as a host for her developing offspring.
California's iconic coast redwoods are used to growing in cool, coastal areas where the average temperature is around 59 degrees F (15 degrees Celsius). But as average yearly temperatures rise and heat waves push temperatures above 100 degrees F (38 degrees Celsius), the trees are responding by slowing the very process that nourishes them, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.