Sci/Tech

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is showing off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this peculiar planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras are also revealing the ice giant in a whole new light. Most striking about Webb’s new […]

Researchers have discovered a 380-million-year-old heart – the oldest ever found – alongside a separate fossilised stomach, intestine and liver in an ancient jawed fish, shedding new light on the evolution of our own bodies. The new research, published today in Science, found that the position of the organs in the body of arthrodires – an […]

Rings appear to be common around planets in the solar system, but the dramatic rings of Saturn have long puzzled astronomers, as has the steep tilt of the rings and the planet’s rotation axis relative to its orbit around the sun. Scientists now show that the rings and the tilt are intimately linked, and that […]

We’re all capable of slowing down the effects of a warming Earth, and it could be as simple as how we stock our pantries. An international team of scientists has evaluated the environmental impacts of more than 57,000 food products – the stuff you typically find as you wander the aisles of your local grocery. […]

September 6, 2022 – Exposure to air pollution in the first six months of life impacts a child’s inner world of gut bacteria, or microbiome, in ways that could increase risk of allergies, obesity and diabetes, and even influence brain development, suggests new CU Boulder research. The study, published this month in the journal Gut Microbes, is the […]

For the first time, astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of an exoplanet. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable. The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture […]

Geneva, 31 August 2022 – It is likely that the protracted La Niña event will last until at least the end of the year, becoming this century’s first “triple-dip“ La Niña, spanning three consecutive northern hemisphere winters (southern hemisphere summers), according to a new update from the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO El Niño/La Niña […]

New images of the spectacular Phantom Galaxy, M74, showcase the power of space observatories working together in multiple wavelengths. In this case, data from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope compliment each other to provide a comprehensive view of the galaxy. The Phantom Galaxy is around 32 million light-years […]

Using machine learning to sift through a decade’s worth of seismic data, researchers have identified hundreds of thousands of microearthquakes along some previously unknown fault structures in Oklahoma and Kansas. The newly identified microearthquakes allowed the seismologists to map and measure earthquake clusters in the region, which has experienced unusual levels of seismicity due to […]

Physicists and mathematicians of the Ural Federal University (UrFU) have calculated how external factors affect the behavior of El Niño – atmospheric and oceanic processes in the Pacific region. In the mathematical model, they accounted for wind, humidity, temperature, ocean currents, and other parameters that can lead to unpredictable El Niño results. This is a […]

A wildfire followed by an intense rainstorm is often a recipe for disaster. Without vegetation to cushion rainfall, water runoff can turn into a fast-moving, highly destructive landslide, called a “debris flow,” which often has the power to wipe out cars, homes and highways — sometimes resulting in casualties. Northwestern University researchers supported by the U.S. National […]

LA JOLLA (August 16, 2022)—Salk scientists have uncovered a molecular pathway that distills threatening sights, sounds and smells into a single message: Be afraid. A molecule called CGRP enables neurons in two separate areas of the brain to bundle threatening sensory cues into a unified signal, tag it as negative and convey it to the […]

Climate change is a complicated phenomenon with a variety of both abrupt and gradual effects that scientists are working hard to uncover. Emerging findings on how various ecosystems are responding to a changing climate, stemming from long-term research conducted through the National Science Foundation’s 40-year-old Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, have now been published in […]

In late May of 2021, 172 runners set out to tackle a 100-kilometer (62-mile) ultramarathon in northwestern China. By midday, as the runners made their way through a rugged, high-elevation part of the course, temperatures plunged, strong winds whipped around the hillslopes and freezing rain and hail pummeled the runners. By the next day, the […]

Excessively hot nights caused by climate change are predicted to increase the mortality rate around the world by up to 60% by the end of the century, according to a new international study that features research from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Ambient heat during the night may interrupt the normal physiology […]

The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in […]

Researchers call for a new “Climate Endgame” agenda and say far too little work has gone into understanding the mechanisms by which rising temperatures might pose a “catastrophic” risk to society and humanity: For instance, if temperature rises are worse than many predict or cause cascades of events we have yet to consider, or indeed […]

A collaboration led by scientists at Nagoya University in Japan has investigated the nature of dark matter surrounding galaxies seen as they were 12 billion years ago, billions of years further back in time than ever before. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, offer the tantalizing possibility that the fundamental rules of cosmology may differ […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified for the first time in domestic environmental samples the bacteria that causes a rare and serious disease called melioidosis. The bacteria, Burkholderia pseudomallei or B. pseudomallei, was identified through sampling of soil and water in the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi. It is unclear how […]

July 27, 2022 – While children receiving chemotherapy routinely undergo hearing tests, adults don’t, and a new study by UC San Francisco reports for the first time that significant hearing issues often occur among adult survivors of the most common forms of cancer. The researchers found that more than half the survivors in their study […]