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Growing backlogs in Education, Health and Care Needs Assessments (EHCNAs) are making it difficult for educational psychologists to prioritize early intervention because they are weighed down by statutory assessments.

Only two complete dodo skulls are known to exist anywhere in the world: one at the Natural History Museum Denmark and one at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The specimen housed in Copenhagen has been preserved in the museum's collections for centuries and has now contributed to an international study led by researchers at the University of Lethbridge in Canada investigating a question that has puzzled researchers for generations: How did the dodo experience the world around it?

In early 2025, special signals wended their way through a fiber-optic highway strung above the streets and sidewalks of the Maryland suburbs. The arrival of those signals at their destination marks a significant step toward a long-held dream of building a quantum network. Researchers believe that this emerging technology could someday link quantum devices in ways that supercharge scientific research, enable ultrasecure communications and boost the power of future quantum computers.

Dark matter's existence is all but certainastronomers believe it makes up about a quarter of the universe's total energy contentyet its true identity has eluded us for decades. Two of the leading candidates for dark matter are the hypothetical particles ultralight axions and dark photons, which in the range studied here would be some 19 to 21 orders of magnitude lighter than the electron.

Using satellite data, researchers at TUM have identified an unprecedented loss of aboveground biomass in Europe's forests since 2018. Unlike previous studies that focused solely on changes in tree cover, this study provides the first Europewide assessment of changes in forest biomass.

Astronomers have speculated about the mysterious little red dots seen through the James Webb Space Telescope's images of the early universe: They could be galaxies, black holes, quasi-stars, starbursts ... or something else entirely.

Using observations from multiple powerful telescopes, a team of astronomers studied a red quasar nicknamed he Hatchling at redshift 3.7. They may have identified one of the clearest examples yet of a quasar caught in transition between a heavily obscured and fully exposed phase.

Zoos offer people the opportunity to experience animals and engage with the natural world. Alongside recreation, they also play important roles in species conservation and scientific research. Education is another core mission of modern zoos, with many programs designed to foster a stronger sense of connection to nature. But how effective are these initiatives? And which visitors benefit most from guided tours, workshops or multi-day educational programs?

Watersheds that are flatter, drier and warmer are generally more vulnerable to increases in flooding after trees are harvested. Those with greater variation in elevation spread runoff out over time, reducing flood peaks.

Babies start out life helpless and stay that way for a long time. They cannot walk, feed themselves or survive without an adult's continued care. Our dependency timeline has no clear parallel elsewhere in the animal kingdom.

Cells can switch off genes by tightly packaging DNA around proteins called histones. However, scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered that under certain conditions, this packaging acts more like molasses than a solid, allowing a specially designed chemical adapter to shuttle gene-activating proteins through the packaging to the silenced gene inside. In addition, the researchers showed that this process reactivates the gene frataxin, which is abnormally silenced in the

Virginia Tech chemist and chemical engineer Guoliang Greg Liu and his lab have developed a process that converts the plastic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) into polyalphaolefin, a key component in lubricants such as engine oil. Published Aug. 5 in the journal Nature, the research could help address two environmental challenges: recycling one of the world's most difficult plastics and producing a valuable industrial material.

Researchers from the U.S. National Science Foundation National Solar Observatory (NSF NSO), the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, and the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) in the U.S. have made a discovery in solar physics. New images of the sun's surface taken with the world's largest solar telescope, the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, built and operated by the NSO in Hawaii, along with sophisticated computer simulations, reveal tiny plasma vortices that had

A rare fossil discovered near South America's largest known meteorite crater has been named a new species. Initially mistaken for a frog by locals, Leolepis matogrossensis is actually a species of ancient ray-finned fishthe group that includes 96% of all bony fishes living today, including tuna, salmon and cod. It's a fairly primitive member of the group and lived around 254 million years ago.

Dinosaurs are famous for being big, from the towering Tyrannosaurus rex to the colossal Apatosaurus. But a new study published today in the journal Evolution by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and Princeton University suggests that one of the greatest mysteries of dinosaur evolution isn't how some species became giantsit's why even the smallest dinosaurs never became truly tiny.

The effects of climate change extend far beyond rising temperatures. As forests and other vegetation respond to a warming world, they also change the amount of biogenic emissions released into the atmosphere, influencing the formation of ozone (O3) and fine particulate pollution. Yet many atmospheric chemistry models still estimate these emissions using vegetation data from 2003, despite major ecological changes across East Asia over the past two decades.

The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has now spread from migratory birds to infect resident Australian birds. Clusters of dead birds have been found in several locations. The virus will inevitably infect other wildlife, most notably mammals.

Australia is now confronting an outbreak of a deadly bird flu strain. As of Monday, the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus had been detected in 78 wild birds across mainland Australia. Until now, there had been no evidence of a large-scale outbreak.

Venus may be overwhelmingly inhospitable today, but many planetary scientists believe that it wasn't always this way. Billions of years ago, some observational evidence suggested that our planetary neighbor may have looked far more like Earth, complete with oceans potentially capable of harboring life.

In the late 1990s, Malaysia created a new way for corporations to raise money by issuing bonds that comply with Islamic law, which prohibits the payment or collection of interest.

Scientists plan to use a total solar eclipse that will be visible in Spain next week as a rare chance to learn more about the stormy, unpredictable nature of our star.

Suddenly, the world is plunged into an eerie, violet darkness. The temperature drops. Birds and other animals, bewildered by unforeseen night, start behaving strangely. Stars and planets appear in the sky next to the blotted-out sun.

Wildfires are burning in North America and Europe. Deadly heat waves have parked over cities and the world's oceans are the hottest ever recorded for this time of year. A strengthening El Nio is forecast to be off-the-charts, spiking global temperatures and warping weather all over.

People who experience greater hardship throughout their lives may become more susceptible to conspiracy theories when those experiences lead them to see the world as fundamentally unfair, according to new research.

A trove of recent articles bemoan the collapse in recreational reading among younger Americans, with COVID-related reading declines, artificial intelligence and social media often described as causes.

East Africa's shrinking mountain glaciers on three peaks in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania will soon be no more. The 2025 State of the Climate in Africa report (page 13) estimates that the ice areas on Mount Kenya, the continent's second-highest peak, have shrunk 96% in the past 115 years. The ice cap will cease to exist in three to five years, says the report. Rainer Prinz, who studies climate-glacier relationships, explains the intricate processes behind the retreat and what the consequences will

A study published in the Journal of Political Economy provides the first causal evidence that improving sleep can directly enhance academic performance.

A research team led by Professor Dong-Yeun Koh of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, in collaboration with Professor T. Alan Hatton's group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), developed an electrochemical dissolved ocean carbon removal (e-DOC) technology that converts carbon dioxide dissolved in seawater into calcium carbonate (CaCO), a stable mineral form that enables virtually permanent carbon storage.

Using continuous imagery from NASA's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, scientists predicted the near-Earth arrival of a solar eruption to within 30 minutes in an initial proof-of-concept test. The results, presented Tuesday at the Committee on Space Research Scientific Meeting and under review at the journal Space Weather, could revolutionize the way Earth-impacting storms are forecast.

Sudden, hard-to-explain market gyrations involving billions of dollars are often triggered by a lack of transparency, new academic research suggests.

Deep in the forests of North Sumatra, Indonesia, lives the Tapanuli orangutan (Pongo tapanuliensis), the world's rarest great ape. Fewer than 800 individuals remain, confined to the Batang Toru ecosystem, a landscape that is also home to other rare species like Sumatran tigers, Sunda pangolins, agile gibbons and helmeted hornbills.

A new study from the University of Kansas complicates the picture of primates living in North America some 55 million years ago during the Eocene, a warm period that allowed mammals to diversify quickly.

Snakes are seemingly simple in structure: a head attached to a long, unremarkable noodle. They do have some pretty cool features at the front end, with venomous fangs and the ability to stretch their mouths and swallow large prey whole, but their bodies are not just the simple tubes we once thought.

A flowering plant has been confirmed as a new carnivorous lineage, according to research published in Nature Communications. The findings show that Saxifraga candelabrum can attract, trap, digest and absorb nitrogen from insects, supporting a prediction made by Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago.

When academic research has explored the impact of school summer vacations, it has often focused on the costs to parents and children's learning and health.

When Northeastern University industrial engineering student Sierre Ternoey started her research position in Aachen, Germany, she was challenged to fix an issue that frustrates chemical engineers worldwide.

A multidisciplinary team of JCU scientists published research in the journal Minerals Engineering, describing the extent of Queensland's rare earth element resources and exploring more sustainable methods of rare earth element (REE) extraction.

How readily a cell divides and how well it survives are fundamental to life, shaping everything from organ size to the body's ability to withstand disease. That combination, known as cell fitness, isn't the same for everyone. Differences in genetics and environment can tip the scales toward developmental disorders, tissue degeneration and cancer.

In March 2026, the Einstein Probe detected a brief flash of soft X-rays emitted from a galaxy about 500 million light-years away. The flash, dubbed EP260321a, immediately triggered a worldwide observing campaign. Within an hour, ground-based telescopes began monitoring the source, revealing a rapidly brightening supernova, later designated SN 2026gzf. Two teams of scientists used several NSF NOIRLab facilities to observe the event and monitor its evolving light profile.

The processes that capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it on the seabed are crucial for climate balance. However, assessing these mechanisms is often complicated because it requires measurements ranging from the surface to the deep ocean.

Salty water flowing through Antarctica's Blood Falls contains a distinct community of marine-specific microorganisms, providing evidence that the brine system beneath the glacier has a marine origin, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience. The findings offer new insights into how microbial communities can persist through major environmental transitions.

Researchers at Flinders University have discovered an unexpected way light can control tiny electronic structures inside advanced materials, a development that could help pave the way for more energy-efficient memory devices, sensors and future computing technologies.

It is six months since the main road into the village of Torcross, in South Devon, collapsed after a series of storms caused extensive damage to the community's sea defenses. Residents are still coming to terms with the devastation and isolation caused by the storms and awaiting the results of a 20 million investment that will see huge quantities of rock placed on the beach at Slapton Sands to bolster those defenses.

In southeastern Madagascar, patches of forest that were once cut down to make way for farms are slowly regenerating naturally after being left to lie fallow. But recovering a native forest needs more than just gaining tree cover. The animals that once lived in these forests also need to make their way back so that the forest can function the way it used to.

People often talk about getting out into nature as if all green spaces offer the same experience.

At first glance, it looks exactly like a seahorse. It has the same horse-shaped head tilted down from the body, the same curled, grasping tail and, in the males, a fully enclosed pouch for brooding the young.

Risso's dolphins around the British Isles are part of a single populationgenetically distinct from those elsewhere in the Atlantic, new research shows. Scientists studied the DNA of dolphins that stranded in England, Scotland and Wales from 1992 to 2016.

An international team of scientists has described seven new species of Madagascar's elusive diamond frogs (Rhombophryne), revealing that one of the island's most mysterious groups of amphibians is even more diverse than previously thought. The research is published in the journal Vertebrate Zoology.

People might be more inclined to keep their community clean if they believe it benefits them personally, according to new research from the University of Georgia published in Environment and Behavior. The study found that focusing on how volunteering can benefit participants, such as by providing a new way to meet people or stay active, may encourage people to grab a trash bag and get to work.

Pluto is on an icy march away from the sun. In 2114, it will turn back, but until then, its elliptical orbit will carry it to colder and darker parts of the outer solar system. This is Pluto's first time entering the outer solar system since its 1930 discovery, and along this journey, its atmosphere could slowly freeze out.