Explore the latest scientific discoveries, science news, breakthroughs and developments from around the world.
Morocco spent most of the last decade drying out. Between 2019 and 2024, the country recorded six consecutive years of below-average rainfall, the longest on record. The 2023–24 hydrological year was the driest in more than six decades, with a national total of just 106.4 mm.
From targeted cancer treatments to self-healing materials and microscopic robots, many emerging technologies depend on molecules that can be controlled with light. Researchers at Tohoku University have now developed a way to make these light-responsive molecules much more sensitive to visible light by using a molecular antenna. The breakthrough gives scientists better control over molecular photoswitches remotely and potentially expands their use in medicine and advanced materials. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
An international team led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has developed an innovative method to identify stars that have consumed the planets around them. The technique detects variations in the abundance of beryllium, a relatively rare chemical element, and could open a new window into studying the evolution of planetary systems.
Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have seen before. Astronomers suggest these newly spotted objects in other galaxies may help solve not one, but two long-standing questions in astrophysics.
Love it or hate it, artificial intelligence is likely here to stay. Its ravenous need for computational power has overwhelmed chip manufacturers and power companies alike. While our current AI obsession is likely a bubble ready to burst, we won't simply stop using computers. Since their first invention, computers have continued to grow more powerful, and our civilization has grown ever more dependent on them. Computation defines our civilization. Perhaps computational power is what defines any advanced civilization. If that's the case, then the most advanced civilizations in the universe would push computing to its most powerful and efficient state.
Chemists in a new study led by the University of Iowa report they have isolated and described in detail an atypical state of the rare-earth metal terbium, an advance that could expand its use in quantum technologies, including computing and advanced sensors. The study, "Structural and spectroscopic characterization of a Tb(IV) polyoxometalate," is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Cadmium is a naturally occurring, toxic heavy metal found in many soils across Latin America and the Caribbean, where cacao trees are widely cultivated. It makes its way into cocoa seeds, called beans, that are roasted and made into chocolate, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—but some cacao varieties take up less of the toxic element than others. An international team of researchers, including Penn State scientists, found genetic differences in how two varieties managed cadmium uptake and facilitated the metal's movement throughout the plant.
Researchers have discovered a system that helps seeds survive when there is too much salt in the soil. The system helps young germinating embryos keep the right balance of sodium and potassium as they begin to grow. Understanding how it works could eventually help scientists develop crops that grow better in salty soils.
The human body fights staph infections by starving it of essential nutrients. Staph, it turns out, is remarkably good at changing what's on the menu. Staphylococcus aureus—the infamous agent behind MRSA and most staph infections—needs sulfur to build proteins and other materials essential for survival. In a new Michigan State University study, published in the Journal of Bacteriology, researchers found the bacterium can adjust its diet depending on what sources remain available.
University of Missouri researchers are paving the way as artificial intelligence transforms biomedical research. A team from the College of Engineering and collaborators recently published one of the most comprehensive reviews to date of an emerging AI approach for biology known as flow matching. The work, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, provides scientists around the world with a roadmap for applying the technology to accelerate drug discovery, precision medicine and other biomedical advances.
Drawing on 14 years of data, we examined whether access to broadband internet could improve Americans' use of time and found that a 10% increase in broadband adoption across a community corresponds to a 1.19% reduction in waiting time.
A forest can look intact from the roadside and still have lost much of its capacity to bounce back. That gap between appearance and function is at the center of a new policy brief published by eLTER, the European research infrastructure for long-term ecosystem, critical zone and socio-ecological research.