Latest science news, discoveries and scientific developments.
To most consumers, canned food is an everyday convenience, but to John Coupland, professor of food science at Penn State, each can represents more than two centuries of invention, experimentation and problem-solving.
Researchers have developed a revolutionary microscope that uses an incredibly powerful laser to make previously invisible cellular structures easier to see. The technology dramatically improves image clarity, allowing scientists to examine small proteins that conventional electron microscopes struggle to capture. It could eventually reveal how tiny molecular machines interact inside cells, providing an unprecedented look at the hidden workings of life.
A generous parental leave reform was introduced in Estonia in 2004. This increased the likelihood of a second or third child being born into the family and also shortened the interval between births, according to Sanan Abdullayev's doctoral thesis, defended at Tallinn University. At the same time, taking shared parental leave did not necessarily mean that the father took time off work and assumed primary responsibility for the children while receiving the benefit.
Honeybees are aggressively pushing wild pollinators away from flowers, with scientists documenting how they chase off rivals and dominate valuable food sources. New research warns that rising temperatures and increasing honeybee populations could intensify this competition, threatening wild bees and other important pollinators.
Researchers fed fusion data to a new chip to see whether it could spot signs that superhot plasma is about to go haywire
NASA’s Curiosity rover has revealed a spectacular new view of mysterious, wind-carved cliffs on Mars that may hold evidence of ancient volcanic activity. With the rover approaching these unusual formations, scientists hope to uncover the secrets behind their strange appearance in 2027.
For years, pilots have observed strong and unusual currents in the 2.4-kilometer-long (1.5-mile-long), 300-meter-wide (984-foot-wide) canal connecting Lake Varna with the Black Sea. Maarja Kruusmaa, an academician and professor at Tallinn University of Technology, and researcher Laura Piho, working with the Port of Varna, undertook detailed measurements to determine the causes of the phenomenon.
Semiconductors with wider bandgaps could pave the way for smaller, more efficient electronics that can handle far higher voltages, but the wider this gap becomes, the harder it is to control how well a material conducts electricity. Now, a team led by Darrell Schlom at Cornell University has shown that adding silicon to thin films of aluminum gallium oxide can keep this control intact at bandgaps wider than any semiconductor before it. Their research has been published in Nature.
Your morning coffee may be packing more calories than you realize, and sugar isn't the biggest reason. A study of 30,000 Americans found that non-dairy creamer has overtaken sugar and milk as the leading source of added coffee calories, helping drive a nearly 40% increase between 2003 and 2018.
Ancient Egypt’s first female ruler lived centuries before Nefertiti or Cleopatra
Newly accessible vulnerabilities in a common computer language are in urgent need of fixingROB ENGELAAR/EPA/Shutterstock Cybersecurity experts around the globe are racing to update systems and prevent the most disruptive AI-enabled hack yet discovered. A flaw uncovered in widely used code has made 70 per cent of websites worldwide vulnerable to data theft and defacement. Government websites in France, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands were taken offline as a precaution when the news emerged. Read more Will physics be the next field to be turned upside down by AI? PHP is a computer language commonly used to power interactive websites, such as the content management system WordPress, which ...
Scientists have discovered why common marmosets have unusually small, smooth brains despite starting development much like other primates. The secret lies in subtle changes to brain-building cells that slow neuron production, revealing new clues about how the large, folded human brain evolved.
Climate change is making Earth progressively rounder, new research finds. The findings are a signal of human-caused climate change, however, and tracking the shape of the Earth can help reveal just how much impact people are having on its ice caps. Our planet is not a perfect sphere. Because of its rotation, it is a bit flatter at the poles and bulges in the middle. But the new study reveals that Earth is getting rounder at an accelerated rate, largely due to shifts caused by the melting polar ice caps. This finding applies only to the solid parts of the planet; the ocean continues to bulge outward at the equator. The study, published Sept. 9 in the journal JGR Solid Earth, used direct measu...
Tiny underwater algae sway gently in the current. All of a sudden, a light shines on them and they form robotlike arms that start to pick up small rocks and put them in floating baskets. Sounds like science fiction, but researchers from Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands) have created a small soft robot arm covered with minuscule algae that can grasp and lift objects. And it's powered by light. This next step in biotechnology has been published in Nature Communications.
Western states that were thought to be resistant to prolonged drought may be more vulnerable than scientists previously believed, a new analysis of groundwater reserves in the Colorado River Basin finds.Researchers revealed the four states that together make up the Upper Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — lost almost twice as much groundwater as the Lower Basin did during an intense drought in the southwestern U.S. between 2020 and 2022. The finding was unexpected and might signal a turning point for the region, because the Upper Basin has long been seen as more resilient to dry spells than the Lower Basin, said Esther Oyedele, a doctoral student in geosciences at Virginia Tech...
India began annual measures on Thursday to tackle toxic air pollution in New Delhi, a megacity of 30 million people regularly ranked among the world's most polluted capitals.
Losing more ground in the fight against climate change, humanity is heading for a hotter world than experts projected last year—and the United States is a big reason for that, a new United Nations report says.
A powerful typhoon headed toward Taiwan on Thursday, triggering the cancellation of dozens of flights and prompting warnings for locals to prepare for heavy rain, strong winds and giant waves.
Giant manta rays can grow up to nine meters (30 feet) long with a disk size of seven meters (23 feet) across and weigh up to 2,000 kg (4,400 pounds). This size leaves them with very few natural enemies once they reach adulthood at around eight to 10 years old. But giant manta ray babies, called pups, cannot rely on their size to protect them from predators that live in the open ocean, including several species of shark and orcas.
Reclaiming the label "witch" has become an act of feminist solidarity. But are we recovering the women themselves, or a posthumous identity built from accusation rather than fact?