Explore the latest scientific discoveries, science news, breakthroughs and developments from around the world.
Learning is often thought to require a brain. But learning is a broad concept that does not necessarily depend on neurons.
Dozens of glacial lakes have formed across northern India in the last three decades, while existing lakes have expanded rapidly, highlighting the need to monitor a landscape reshaped by climate change.
Editing a plant's genes is only half the battle. Before a new, improved trait can ever reach a farmer's field, scientists must be able to grow a whole plant from just a few edited cells—a process that can be slow, unreliable and, for some plant species, impossible.
A new report from Portland State University's Homelessness Research and Action Collaborative (HRAC) and the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health offers an in-depth examination of how individuals navigate, survive and attempt to exit homelessness in Multnomah County. Titled "Without a Map: A Lived Experience Study of the Paths People Create Through Homelessness," the publication serves as the second and final part of the Pathways study.
An international team of researchers, including CIIMAR, has developed a new tool that could help produce clams that are more resistant to disease and climate change while also strengthening the conservation of these species' genetic diversity. The study, published in the journal Aquaculture, represents a significant step forward for sustainable aquaculture and the management of two of the most economically important clam species: the Japanese clam (Ruditapes philippinarum) and the good clam (Ruditapes decussatus).
The nutritional value of aquatic invertebrates such as oysters, mussels and crabs has been significantly overlooked, according to a new study led by researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). The findings provide one of the most comprehensive assessments to date of the nutritional contribution of aquatic invertebrates, along with new evidence to better understand their role in human nutrition and help inform more sustainable fisheries, aquaculture and food-system planning.
Scientists led by the Universitat Politècnica de Barcelona and the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, have revealed the chemical reactions in nanoparticles that created a unique, shimmering effect in the painting on ninth-century Islamic ceramics. The results are published in Science Advances.
Allowing females to mate with multiple males, rather than just one, could help make species more resistant to extinction, University of East Anglia research shows. A new study reveals that when females have multiple males to mate with, their offspring inherit significantly fewer harmful genetic mutations. This, in turn, makes the entire population healthier and less likely to die out.
Kinesin is a molecular motor responsible for hauling essential cargoes within cells by walking step by step along filamentous tracks known as microtubules. To move efficiently and avoid falling off, the motor's two feet must coordinate their stepping in a precise direction. Scientists have known that a connecting segment called the neck region is crucial for coordinating this motion. However, its exact three-dimensional structure and how it physically interacts with the microtubule track have remained a mystery because of the limitations of current imaging techniques.
The historic droughts of 2023 and 2024 in the Amazon reduced river flows and altered the region's rainfall composition. Daily monitoring in Manaus, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, revealed these changes through the use of isotopes, which act as a kind of water "fingerprint." This method demonstrated how El Niño and warming in the North Atlantic affected the origin of moisture and precipitation dynamics.
On a mostly flat plain an hour north of Stockholm lies a collection of large burial mounds dating from an ancient culture at least 2,500 years old. These people were not Vikings; they were northern Germanic Goths, pagan polytheists worshiping the precursors of Odin, Freyr and Thor.
Research underway in the lab of Rebecca Alexander, a professor in Wake Forest University's Department of Chemistry, is shedding light on an unusual human bacterium, Mycoplasma penetrans. Alexander's work to understand how and why this unique pathogen acts as it does could one day lead to new classes of drugs that better target illnesses associated with this particular pathogen, as well as others that act similarly.