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Heat waves and wildfires combined with human-caused emissions this year to expose one-third of the world

The hunt is over: After trawling through dozens of applications, an Australian animal welfare group has found a successor to a hero hound credited with saving more than 100 koalas from fires.

While insects provide an essential food source for many vertebrate species, they

Storms routinely wash marine material ashore, providing food for land animals and other organisms. This is known as marine subsidization (MS). Today, MS is particularly common in coastal ecosystems and is especially important to animals when land ecosystems produce less food than usual, such as during droughts. A new Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution study has shown that dinos and their prey, too, may have eaten seafood washed onto beaches.

In materials chemistry, identifying common parameters that can organize magnetic ground states across complex intermetallic compounds remains a central challenge. Researchers have long used chemically tunable parameters to control magnetic properties. One is valence-electron concentration, commonly discussed as the electron-per-atom (e/a) ratio. The e/a ratio has been widely used to classify magnetic ground states in metallic systems such as Heusler alloys and approximant crystals.

Research into bird collisions with offshore wind turbines has taken an important step forward. A yearlong pilot study at an offshore wind turbine has shown that thermal cameras and artificial intelligence can be used to directly observe potential collisions at sea. The technology proved effective under challenging conditions while also generating rare real-world data on bird movements around a wind turbine.

Software created by University of Queensland scientists could help AI platforms overcome a blind spot limiting their value in plant research. UQ Ph.D. student Tianqi Wei said even advanced vision-language models (VLMs) had difficulty interpreting images of microscopic plant details.

Birds are not only beautiful to look at and listen to; they also play important roles in nature. They eat pests and disperse seeds. They are generally considered indicators of a healthy environment. When birds thrive, soil and water quality often benefit as well. A new study published in the journal Landscape Ecology shows that growing a variety of crops in small field patches creates better habitats for birds.

Researchers have coated mitochondria with innovative materials without compromising their function, according to a study by IRCCS Fondazione Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta (FINCB) and Politecnico di Milano. The research was conducted as part of the BraiNs joint laboratory, inaugurated in 2023.

More than half of New York City

Urban heat is more than a matter of temperature. It can affect how people sleep, work, travel through the city and dress, and even how safe or comfortable they feel in public spaces. Yet these everyday consequences often remain invisible in conventional assessments of urban heat.

This summer, exoplanet science

Fish have

Isaac Newton is typically portrayed as a solitary scientist with intense focus who was obsessed with power and deeply egotistical. But a new book by Caltech historians Jed Buchwald and Mordechai Feingold takes a deeper look at Newton

Conflicts with our colleagues, loved ones or team members can quickly stifle communication, heighten tensions and undermine relationships. However, a decision or compromise is not always enough to restore cooperation

Liquid hydrogen (LH

A new textile used to cover strawberry plants more than tripled fruit yields in tunnel field tests without harming plant health. The technology could also significantly reduce water and pesticide use in strawberry fields.

Modern tomatoes are a breeding success story. Generations of selection have made them bigger, firmer, more productive and easier to ship. But that progress came at a cost. Domestication and breeding reduced much of the crop

Pharmaceuticals, fine chemicals, and agrochemicals are produced industrially using a wide range of chemical reactions. These processes need to become more efficient, less expensive, and more sustainable.

For centuries, the Romans turned to amulets to protect themselves or their surroundings. Research by Ph.D. candidate Patricia Kret shows that this tradition continued into the early days of Christianity.

A new Irish-language tool developed by researchers at Trinity College Dublin is allowing autistic children from Irish-language communities to participate more fully in school and their communities.

Enzymes are often described as molecular machines that recognize and process specific molecules. However, they are not rigid structures. Their shapes can change, affecting how molecules enter, interact with and remain within their active sites.

A new technique for controlling optical components with light could help usher in a generation of high-efficiency signal-processing technology that could drive futuristic applications such as holographic video.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to discover new materials, but conventional data-driven approaches can struggle to explain their predictions, work reliably beyond their training data and remain consistent with physical laws. A new perspective proposes a framework called Physics-Grounded Materials AI (PhysMat AI), which integrates fundamental physical knowledge into the materials discovery process. The research is published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Spiny lobster larvae spend six to nine months drifting in the open ocean, feeding within the plankton community, before eventually settling into shallow-water habitats such as mangroves, seagrass beds or coral reefs. This means the number of young lobsters reaching Bermuda is strongly influenced by ocean conditions across the wider North Atlantic and Caribbean region.

Cell division is a complex process. At the heart of this complexity is a membraneless organelle called the centrosome, which is made up of more than 200 components. It is responsible for clustering mitotic spindles, threadlike structures needed to separate genetic material. It has long remained unclear which parts of the centrosome are necessary and sufficient for spindle assembly.

A team at the University of C

Plants cannot run away when the wind picks up, rain lashes down or a hungry herbivore begins chewing on their leaves. Instead, they must sense their surroundings and adapt. Now, researchers have uncovered an important piece of the puzzle of what happens inside plants when they are exposed to touch, injury or other physical stimuli.

Researchers at AIST have developed a device that measures the absolute surface profile of curved optical elements with high precision without touching them.

A Baylor College of Medicine-led team has developed a strategy that combines the analysis of thousands of proteins with artificial intelligence to accelerate the discovery of small molecules called molecular glues to treat disease. Their approach, published in Nature Communications, has uncovered a new class of molecular glues that could neutralize harmful proteins linked to blood cancers and autoimmune diseases. The work also shows how AI-based structural modeling can help chemists optimize com

A newly described feathered dinosaur found in northeastern China adds evidence supporting the theory that flight-related features evolved differently in various bird-like dinosaur groups. The findings, reported in Nature Communications, are based on an analysis of an exceptionally well-preserved fossil of a microraptorine (a small dinosaur with feathers and wings) found in a geological formation estimated to be between 145 and 100 million years old.

Photos taken using a microscope reveal the colorful, kaleidoscope-like crystal structure of a new NASA-made material that could be used for manufacturing during future space missions. Developed at NASA

Communities across the country are debating the role mobile crisis response programs can play in emergency response. These programs typically take calls from 911 dispatchers involving mental health, substance use, welfare checks and other situations that do not require a law enforcement response.

Artificial intelligence promises to transform food safety by helping companies identify risks earlier, predict outbreaks and learn from patterns too rare for any one company to detect alone. But AI depends on one thing: large, diverse datasets.

We have long known every tonne of carbon dioxide matters to the climate. But governments keep approving new fossil fuel projects

Researchers at Oregon State University have developed a new family of materials that use light to produce hydrogen from water, opening the door to new ways of converting the sun

From the air, Wainwright, Alaska, looks like a perfectly stable band of homes and roads between the Chukchi Sea and a vast, flat tundra. But just below the surface, the frozen ground on which this town was built contains large bodies of ice. Along the eroding coastal bluffs, that hidden ice is becoming exposed and melting away.

For centuries, a life-size petroglyph has stood over the rocky landscape of Miseeda in northern Sudan. Exactly who the figure carved into a granite hill represents remains uncertain, but researchers suspect it may depict an ancient Kushite ruler. In the 7th century CE, local builders constructed a Christian church directly around it.

A team of African researchers has published the first comprehensive review of seagrass restoration activities across Africa

When political leaders disclose mental health challenges

New research led by the University of Michigan is helping set the stage for future observatories to characterize rocky planets outside our solar system, planets that could prove life isn

You might be among the 46 million people who

While not quite a fatal attraction, the gravitational pull of the moon and sun creates tiny stresses on Earth that can trigger events known as slow earthquakes. These are movements along fault lines (fault slips) that release their energy gradually over much longer periods than ordinary quakes. Although they have been observed, exactly how these celestial bodies trigger them has been a relatively tough nut to crack.

Scientists have helped solve a longstanding mystery about how Earth remained habitable after oxygen first accumulated in its atmosphere more than 2 billion years ago, providing evidence that ancient ocean chemistry sustained life-friendly conditions.

Researchers at the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment (CAFE) have discovered that a fungus living inside a common Kentucky woodland grass produces a rare combination of chemicals that likely helps protect the plant from hungry insects.

Since its launch in 1998, Google, the world

Over the last several years, invasive plant and insect species have found their way into more and more social media feeds. From the tree of heaven to Bradford pear trees and the ubiquitous spotted lanternfly, home gardeners are spreading the word about problematic species to their networks.

A commercial mission to boost NASA

Plastic pollution is a growing threat to marine environments, with discarded waste reaching from coastlines to the deepest parts of the ocean. Now, a six-year study has revealed how quickly debris can accumulate on a beach in Ecuador, with one monitoring site collecting about 570 grams (1.25 pounds) of debris every week.

How do we know when an animal virus might pose a risk to humans? Canada confirmed a human case of H5N1 avian influenza (often called