Using data from the world’s ecosystems and predictions of how climate change will impact them, scientists have produced a roadmap that ID's the world’s most and least vulnerable areas in the Age of Climate Change.
A multi-institutional team of engineers has developed a new approach to the fabrication of nanostructures for the semiconductor and magnetic storage industries. This approach combines advanced ink-jet printing technology with self-assembling block copolymers.
A new, environmentally-friendly electronic alloy consisting of 50 aluminum atoms bound to 50 atoms of antimony may be promising for building next-generation "phase-change" memory devices, which may be the data-storage technology of the future.
An expedition of international scientists to the far reaches of Antarctica’s remote Pine Island Glacier has yielded exact measurements of an undersea process glaciologists have long called the “biggest source of uncertainty in global sea level projections.”
NASA today announced that the Voyager 1 spacecraft has transited the heliopause (the theoretical boundary where the Sun's solar wind is separated by the interstellar wind) and has entered interstellar space. The NASA announcement is based on a new study published today in the journal Science.
Earlier this year, the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array telescope turned its gaze to NASA's famed Voyager 1 and captured an image of this iconic spacecraft's faint radio signal. The Green Bank Telescope also detected Voyager's signal, picking it out from the background radio noise in less than one second.
A new study led by Adelaide researchers has estimated, for the first time, the rates of evolution during the “Cambrian explosion” when most modern animal groups appeared between 540 and 520 million years ago.
How and why fish swim in schools has long fascinated biologists looking for clues to understand the complexities of social behavior. A new study by a team of researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center may help provide some insight.
Over time, the esoteric and sometimes downright strange quests of science have proven easy targets for politicians and others looking for perceived examples of waste in government — and a cheap headline.
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the largest known population of globular star clusters, an estimated 160,000, swarming like bees inside the crowded core of the giant grouping of galaxies Abell 1689. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy hosts about 150 such clusters.
Researchers at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. have pieced together startling new evidence that shows rapid 21st century warming may spell doom for tree species in Peruvian cloud forests, with species losing 53-96 percent of their populations.
An important discovery has been made concerning the possible inventory of molecules available to the early Earth. Scientists led by Sandra Pizzarello, a research professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, found that the Sutter’s Mill meteorite, which exploded in a blazing fireball over California last year, contains organic molecules not previously found in any meteorites.
As Earth’s temperature climbs, stony corals are in decline. Less discussed, however, is the plight of gorgonian corals — softer, flexible, tree-like species. Divers have noted that gorgonians seem to be proliferating in parts of the Caribbean, and a new study will look to quantify this phenomenon.
A device developed at The University of Alabama in Huntsville has become a valuable tool in researchers’ quest to determine how lightning is spawned, to map strikes and to better predict severe weather.
Researchers from Columbia Engineering and Brookhaven National Laboratory have identified a series of clues that particular arrangements of electrical charges known as “stripes” may play a role in superconductivity, using a method to detect fluctuating stripes of charge density in a material closely related to a superconductor.
A team of University of Montreal and McGill University researchers have devised a method to identify how signaling molecules orchestrate the sequential steps in cell division.
A team of researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden has designed a microplasma source capable of exciting matter in a controlled, efficient way. This miniature device may find use in a wide range of applications in harsh environments, but can also help revolutionize archaeology.
A University of Iowa researcher says that although microbes living in the so-called “dark ocean”—below a depth of some 600 feet where light doesn’t penetrate—may not absorb enough carbon to curtail global warming, they do absorb considerable amounts of carbon and merit further study.
A new study from researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that a subset of immune cells provide a niche where cancer stem cells survive.
University of Utah bioengineers discovered our understanding of language may depend more heavily on vision than previously thought: under the right conditions, what you see can override what you hear.
Once every 30 years or so, or roughly one Saturnian year, a monster storm rips across the northern hemisphere of the ringed planet.
In 2010, the most recent and only the sixth giant storm on Saturn observed by humans began stirring. It quickly grew to superstorm proportions, reaching 15,000 kilometers (more than 9,300 miles) in width and visible to amateur astronomers on Earth as a great white spot dancing across the surface of the planet.
Scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory used an indirect method to detect fluctuating "stripes" of charge density in a material closely related to a superconductor. The research identifies a key signature to look for in superconductors as scientists seek ways to better understand and engineer these materials for future energy-saving applications.
Ground-breaking new research from a team of evolutionary biologists at Indiana University shows for the first time how asexual lineages of a species are doomed not necessarily from a long, slow accumulation of new mutations, but rather from fast-paced gene conversion processes that simply unmask pre-existing deleterious recessive mutations.
By studying rare families in which a daughter shares the same Y chromosome as her father, Michael Weiss, MD, PhD, and his colleagues at the CWRU School of Medicine have determined that the pathway for male sexual development is not as consistent and robust as scientists have always assumed.
University of Iowa researchers say that the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is an ideal model to study hearing loss in humans caused by loud noise. The reason: The molecular underpinnings to its hearing are roughly the same as with people.
The origin of cosmic rays in the universe has confounded scientists for decades. But a study by researchers using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole reveals new information that may help unravel the longstanding mystery of exactly how and where they are produced.
Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken a major step in explaining why material around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is extraordinarily faint in X-rays. This discovery holds important implications for understanding black holes.
A team of neuroscientists has found a key to the reduction of forgetting. Their findings show that the better the coordination between two regions of the brain, the less likely we are to forget newly obtained information.
The light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust, seen in this Hubble photo, resembles a caterpillar on its way to a feast. Harsh winds from extremely bright stars are blasting ultraviolet radiation at this 'wanna-be' star and sculpting the gas and dust into its long shape.
Physicists have reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in a laboratory simulation of the Big Bang, using ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber at the University of Chicago.
When a beating heart slips into an irregular, rhythm, the treatment is electric current from a pacemaker or defibrillator. But the electricity itself can cause pain, tissue damage and other side-effects. Now, researchers want to replace jolts with a gentler remedy: light.
University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.
Like volunteers handing out cups of energy drinks to marathon runners, specially engineered “helper cells” transplanted along with stem cells can dole out growth factors to increase the stem cells’ endurance, at least briefly, Johns Hopkins researchers report. Their study, published in the September issue of Experimental Neurology, is believed to be the first to test the helper-cell tactic, which they hope will someday help to overcome a major barrier to successful stem cell transplants.
Scientists have detected magmatic water — water that originates from deep within the Moon's interior — on the surface of the Moon. These findings, published in the August 25 issue of Nature Geoscience, represent the first such remote detection of this type of lunar water, and were arrived at using data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3).
University of Michigan researchers and their University of Hawaii colleagues say they've solved the longstanding mystery of how mercury gets into open-ocean fish, and their findings suggest that levels of the toxin in Pacific Ocean fish will likely rise in coming decades.
Researchers at The Ohio State University report the first-ever theoretical explanation for some strange semiconductor behavior that was discovered in 2004.
New research from Washington University in St. Louis sheds light on the brain mechanisms that underlie a type of memory, known as prospective memory, revealing two distinct processes that support our ability to remember to remember.
Astronomers have assembled, from more than 13 years of observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a series of time-lapse movies showing a jet of superheated gas — 5,000 light-years long — as it is ejected from a supermassive black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M87.
New research from the Monell Center reveals that bubbles are not necessary to experience the unique ‘bite’ of carbonated beverages, which actually comes from carbonic acid. Bubbles do, however, enhance carbonation’s bite through the light physical feel of the bubbles picked up by our sense of touch.
The international Daya Bay Collaboration has announced new results about the transformations of neutrinos - elusive, ghostlike particles that carry invaluable clues about the makeup of the early universe. The latest findings include the collaboration's first data on how neutrino oscillation varies with neutrino energy, allowing the measurement of a key difference in neutrino masses known as "mass splitting."
Astronomers have found a clever new way to slice and dice the flickering light from a distant star in a way that reveals its surface gravity, one of the key properties that astronomers use to calculate a star’s physical properties and assess its evolutionary state.
A new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society says that the American alligator and a dozen other crocodile species enjoy an occasional taste of fruit along with their normal meat-heavy diets of mammals, birds, and fish.
While observing a newborn star, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope discovered twin jets of matter blasting out into space at record-breaking speed. These surprisingly forceful molecular "winds" could help refine our understanding of how stars impact their cloudy nurseries and shape their emerging solar systems.
On August 20, JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments will publish a technique accommodating two challenges inherent in brain-implantation technology: gauging the property changes that occur during implantation and measuring them on a micro-scale.
When enough raindrops fall over land instead of the ocean, they begin to add up. New research led by NCAR shows that three atmospheric patterns drove so much precipitation over Australia in 2010 and 2011 that the world’s ocean levels dropped measurably.
Virginia Tech researchers integrated a specific type of sensor into a typical construction helmet to allow continuous and noninvasive monitoring of construction workers’ blood gas saturation levels. The results of their study showed that a user of this helmet would be warned of impending carbon monoxide poisoning with a probability of greater than 99 percent, and won them a Best Paper award.
A study spearheaded by the Wildlife Conservation Society and the University of Minnesota has shown that the world's largest owl – and one of the rarest – is also a key indicator of the health of some of old-growth Russian forests.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have discovered a novel and complex visual circuit in a dragonfly's brain that could one day help to improve vision systems for robots.