Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
As political campaigns increasingly use artificial intelligence to communicate with voters, questions arise about how the technology influences perceptions of election fairness and trust.
Aparna Shah teaches Virginia Tech students how the human eye turns light into sight. In May, she saw her dog lose his.
Evolutionary changes in a key protein synthesis enzyme, isoleucyl-tRNA synthetase (IleRS), may help bacteria fine-tune how quickly proteins are made, report researchers from Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan; the University of Zagreb Faculty of Science, Croatia; and ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
In eThekwini, researchers have harnessed machine learning and satellite data to spot the city's most landslide-prone zones. A new study published in Scientific Reports has found that urban development activities, including road construction, property development and vegetation loss, are significantly increasing landslide susceptibility across parts of eThekwini.
New research from Durham University highlights how insects have been part of human diets for thousands of years despite seeming unusual to many people.
Scientists at the University of New Mexico have played a key role in identifying a rare, 4.1-billion-year-old Martian meteorite that provides new evidence that the red planet may have once had a wetter, Earth-like environment.
Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms in which electrons can move with high mobility, making it promising for high-speed electronic components. Yet it is not very efficient at converting light into electricity. While light absorbed by graphene does excite electrons, leaving behind positively charged carriers called 'holes,' the absorbed light energy cannot be harnessed effectively unless electrons and holes are separated and directed to different contacts.
When the Baja California peninsula broke from mainland Mexico nearly 12 million years ago, it gave rise to the Gulf of California. New research suggests that this process of continental rifting was greatly accelerated due to tectonic forces on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.
Proteins perform essential functions in living organisms, from catalyzing biochemical reactions to supporting cellular energy metabolism. Their functions depend on their amino acid composition and three-dimensional structures. However, early proteins may have evolved when fewer amino acid types were available than those used by most modern proteins.
Chemical reactions are often understood as molecules crossing a high-energy saddle point, known as a transition state, before following a downhill pathway toward a product. Conventional quantum chemical calculations typically trace this single pathway to determine how a reaction proceeds.
When asteroids travel too close to white dwarfs, the dense remnants of stars that have exhausted their nuclear fuel, powerful gravitational forces can tear them apart. However, new research from Planetary Science Institute (PSI) suggests that these asteroids don't immediately break into dust. Instead, most of the mass initially remains in larger fragments, revealing a previously overlooked step in how debris forms around dying stars.
Why do some parents have more sexual difficulties than others after having a baby? Childhood trauma plays a significant role, amplifying the other factors at play.
A reaction on a single electrode can tell scientists a remarkable amount about the chemical nature and number of analytes involved. The challenge comes when they want to distinguish many reactions on the same electrode. After more than a decade of trying to overcome that limitation, Ravi Saraf and his Nebraska Engineering graduate students have demonstrated a way to quantify many reactions on the same electrode without sacrificing extraordinary sensitivity.
Decoding of messenger RNA (mRNA) occurs during translation, the vital cellular process that builds proteins. Errors in this process are known to lead to cancer growth. Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital identified how one factor involved in mRNA decoding can be altered, identifying potential cancer origins and new targets for KRAS-related treatment resistance. The results are published in Nature Cell Biology.
For more than 30 years, MBARI technology has recorded real-time data about Monterey Bay, from oceanographic conditions at the surface to biological surveys in the depths of Monterey Canyon. These data are integral to understanding our changing ocean and underpin the institute's efforts to monitor the impacts of the incoming El Niño, which has been predicted to be among the strongest since the beginning of modern oceanography.
Polynyas are one of Antarctica's great counterintuitive features: recurring areas of open water surrounded by vast expanses of sea ice. These unusual environments are hot spots for sea-ice production, ocean–atmosphere exchange and biological productivity. They are commonly maintained by powerful winds that push newly formed ice away from the coast, repeatedly exposing the ocean to the freezing Antarctic atmosphere.
Silicones are widely used in industry, medicine and everyday products due to their exceptional thermal and chemical stability. However, it is precisely these properties that have made recycling silicones extremely problematic in the past. Researchers at the Institute of Chemistry at TU Berlin have now succeeded in breaking down the polymer chains of silicone molecules into their basic building blocks. The resulting molecule dimethyldichlorosilane can then be reused as a starting material for the production of new silicone compounds.
Indonesia is battling one of its most severe wildfire seasons in over a decade, as intense El Niño conditions fuel widespread drought. Some of the most severely affected areas are on the island of Borneo. Peatlands across West, Central and South Kalimantan are smoldering underground, releasing smoke haze that threatens human health and the environment.
A new study has pieced together the evolutionary history of terrestrial animals on the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau (QTP), offering a comprehensive picture of how the distinctive fauna of the "Third Pole" took shape over millions of years.
More than 65% of approved medicines work by binding to proteins on the surface of human cells. Yet scientists developing new treatments face a fundamental problem: Major biological databases disagree about which proteins are actually found on cell surfaces.