Stay informed about scientific discoveries, research developments and new findings from around the world.
A South Korean research team has developed an environmentally friendly ammonia synthesis process that reduces carbon emissions using a membrane that selectively transports hydrogen.
Strike a bell, and it rings with a pitch and a fading that tell you about the bell: its size, its shape, the metal it is made of. Black holes ring too. When two merge, the newborn black hole shivers and sheds gravitational waves in a brief, dying chord, and since 2015, gravitational-wave detectors have been listening. The notes of that chord, which physicists call quasinormal modes, depend only on the black hole's mass and spin and on the law of gravity itself. Change the law, and the chord changes.
A modeling study involving researchers from Sultan Qaboos University found that sea surface temperature and Oman's terrain influenced simulations of Tropical Cyclone Shaheen through different mechanisms, affecting its intensity, track and rainfall distribution. The researchers chose Tropical Cyclone Shaheen, which directly affected northern Oman in October 2021, as a case study to examine how changes in environmental and surface conditions influence regional weather model simulations.
In her doctoral dissertation, M.Sc.Admin. Liisa Varumo examines the environmental justice of market-based and place-based conservation approaches and how these approaches can contribute to just sustainability transformations in biodiversity conservation.
When landfills and wastewater treatment plants create methane as a byproduct, much of it is simply burned and its value is lost. But the gas is an energy-rich resource that could be recycled as a fuel, chemical feedstock or bioproduct. Capturing and converting waste methane offers an opportunity to recover energy and create useful products from an otherwise wasted gas stream.
Archaeologists have unearthed a monumental 2,700-year-old tomb at Vulci, an important ancient Etruscan town north of Rome. Despite repeated attempts by tomb robbers to loot this burial over the centuries, the tomb still contained a massive collection of grave goods, including weapons, gold and bronze plates, chariot parts, a rare pair of women's shoes, and a complete banquet set.The burial, nicknamed the Tomb of the Stone Chamber, was excavated this summer, according to a translated statement from the Italian Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Province of Viterbo and Southern Etruria (SABAP-VT-EM). But the discovery builds on work that French archaeologists carri...
A cell's ability to repair its damaged DNA is one of the most fundamental processes in biology, helping protect us from diseases like cancer. Over the years, researchers have unraveled many of the mechanisms cells use to repair DNA, ultimately leading to precision cancer treatments.
New research from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law suggests that public sentiment associated with "tough on crime" politics may be tied to increases in the number of people admitted to state prisons during election years.
Biochemists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison are using AI to tackle one of modern medicine's most pressing challenges: the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Using data collected in their lab, biochemistry professor Vatsan Raman and his team built an AI model to identify new possibilities for fighting bacteria with one of their natural enemies. Their findings, published in the journal Cell Systems, could help accelerate the development of alternatives to traditional antibiotic drugs.
A new post office policy that might sound like a technicality—one truck per day to rural post offices instead of two—could result in the rejection of tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in November, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution.
Researchers at the College of Veterinary Medicine and the Baker Institute of Animal Health have published the first molecular characterization of Marfan syndrome in domestic cats in a paper in the Sept. 19 issue of Scientific Reports.
Tiny insects called aphids inject hundreds of mysterious proteins into plants, hijacking the plants' own genomes to build galls: structures made of plant tissue but constructed to the insects' specifications to house and feed their offspring.
During NASA's SpaceX Crew-13 mission aboard the International Space Station, astronauts will support a series of biomedical and human performance investigations, including a new collaborative effort to study how spaceflight affects blood flow and clotting. NASA also is testing crew members' manual piloting skills, evaluating methods to counter vision and brain changes, gathering essential health data to inform future missions, and measuring forces astronauts experience during their return to Earth to help refine re-entry hardware and procedures.
Superconductors can carry electrical current without resistance, but only up to a maximum value known as the critical current. The critical current is a crucial figure of merit for applications, and materials science has long been focused on increasing this limit. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have now shown that, in type-II superconductors, this conventional limit can be exceeded when the current is applied for only a few picoseconds.
New analyses of ancient cattle, sheep and goat bones on Madagascar suggest the rapid spread of introduced livestock on the island 1,200 years ago coincided with forest loss and population declines of large native herbivores.
Rocket launches are among the most violent ways humans have devised to travel. They generate millions of pounds of thrust and subject passengers to intense g-forces. Humans must undergo serious training to withstand those forces, while machines must be designed to survive them. If a delicate mirror or solder joint cracks before a multibillion-dollar satellite even begins its mission, the years of effort that went into its design and assembly could be lost. Now, researchers in Switzerland have come up with an ingenious way to make that less likely.
On the surface, the arid expanses of the Mojave Desert may seem inhospitable and largely removed from the global carbon cycle. But beneath the surface, its mineral-rich soils are running a carbon cycle of their own—one that could account for a surprisingly large share of the planet's annual carbon exchange.
In a win for pollinator conservation, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a machine learning-based method to identify chemical compounds that can safely repel honey bees from pesticide-treated crops. The research offers a potential solution to one of agriculture's most urgent ecological challenges: the ongoing decline in honey bee populations, driven in part by pesticide exposure. The paper is published in the journal eLife.
Gut microbiota influence multiple aspects of host physiology, including metabolic and immune functions. Many metabolites produced by gut bacteria can cross the intestinal epithelium (which the bacteria may not be able to cross) and enter host tissues, providing a pathway through which microbial activity can influence host physiology. However, determining the specific contribution of individual gut bacterial metabolites to host lifespan has remained challenging.
Quantum materials do things ordinary materials cannot. They carry current without any loss, or conduct only along their outer edge while the inside insulates. Future quantum computers and quantum sensors will run on materials like these. To improve them, researchers need to see exactly where currents and magnetic fields run at the nanoscale.
Work & Economy Who’ll win AI race? U.S.? China? Maybe no one. Economist Jason Furman says being first will likely matter only in some areas, but risks of systems going rogue will be shared problem Jacob Sweet Harvard Staff Writer September 24, 2026 7 min read Harvard file photo The U.S. and China are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence as political and business leaders frame the technology’s development as a race between world powers. But Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and in the Department of Economics, doesn’t think the race has a finish line. In this edited conversation with the Gazette, F...
Most colon cancer deaths are caused by the spread of tumor cells beyond the colon, usually to the liver. In a new study, MIT biologists identified a cellular pathway necessary for colorectal cancer metastasis.The pathway they identified, controlled by a protein known as YAP1, is normally involved in tissue repair. When activated in cancer cells, it promotes cell proliferation and migration. The researchers also found that a high-fat diet is more likely to turn on this pathway, through the production of fatty molecules called ceramides.Drugs that block ceramide production could offer a new way to help prevent metastasis in patients diagnosed with colon cancer, the researchers say.“We’ve found...
A dog being prepared for an EEG measurement by researcher Boglárka MorvaiSarolta Szilágyi When dogs hear their owners speak, they are listening for consonants in words rather than vowels, a new study suggests, apparently mimicking a similar human bias that is found across many languages. Although dogs don’t have language, they live in a speech-rich environment, says Attila Andics at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary. “We knew from our previous studies that dogs care about what we speak and how we speak, but until now there was no evidence that dogs’ experience with speech can actually shape how their brains function,” says Andics. Advertisement if( window?.adverts?.addToArray ) { window.ad...
A Sumatran orangutan mother uses a stick tool to extract honey from a large tree holeGuilhem Duvot, SUAQ Project Young orangutans who spend little time working out for themselves how to build a broad diet can partly compensate by watching how other orangutans choose what to eat. The findings suggest that orangutans have different strategies for developing broad survival skills, says Revathe Thillaikumar at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany. Young orangutans acquire a substantial body of knowledge before they can survive independently, which they must do by the time they are 8.5 years old. This includes understanding what foods are safe to eat, where to find them and how ...