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As extreme heat becomes more frequent and intense across California, knowing which communities are struggling and what kind of help they need is increasingly important for protecting public health. A new UC Irvine study suggests that part of the answer may be hiding in everyday conversations on social media.

Plastic pollution is one of the most urgent environmental challenges of the 21st century. As larger plastic debris breaks down through mechanical, photochemical and biological processes, it forms microplastics that have been detected in water, soil, air and even the human body. Among these materials, polyamide microplastics are of particular concern because polyamide is widely used in textiles, fishing gear, packaging and engineering materials.

Some molecules come in two

Farmers and foresters manage around 80% of Germany

Candida auris and Candida albicans are microscopic fungi that cause life-threatening human infections, killing almost a million people globally every year. The World Health Organization lists both species among the top four most concerning fungal pathogens in existence, and while relatively uncommon in Australia, growing outbreaks in Europe and the United States have forced restrictions and even closures of intensive care units.

Metals, semiconductors and insulators are fundamental components of modern electronics. However, efforts to improve device performance have largely focused on semiconductor quality, while metal crystallinity has received far less attention.

Many plant species parasitize other plants by latching on and taking the nutrients their hosts need to survive. But sometimes, plants steal more than nutrients; they take genes.

Every spring, many monarch butterflies drift back into Florida on orange-and-black wings that have captivated scientists for generations. They arrive quietly, fluttering through fields and roadsides, stopping at nectar plants to feed and lay eggs on patches of milkweed. Soon, their offspring emerge and begin dispersing across the landscape.

With their charming waddles, heat-conserving huddles and tuxedo-like plumage, emperor penguins are among the world

A new set of modular components allows users to create reconfigurable smart devices with electrical connections that keep working no matter what shape the structure forms.

New research by SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) assistant professor of accounting Dr. Angelica Castro examines how changes to accounting standards have affected the way companies report revenue and the discretion managers have when making financial reporting decisions.

In the hunt for one of nature

Being prepared for an emergency is key to keeping people safe. This means more than just having supplies such as food, water and first-aid kits. Sometimes, the most important preparation is having the right data to help first responders and the community stay safe.

A new study examining tropical cyclone forecasts in the Atlantic Ocean suggests that artificial intelligence could provide valuable additional guidance for predicting when and where tropical disturbances may develop into tropical storms.

Legged robots, robotic systems with legs that typically resemble those of animals or humans, could be advantageous for completing tasks in home environments or populated, dynamic spaces. These robots may look like humans or animals, yet they often cannot reliably replicate complex whole-body movements in a short time.

Commercially farmed tomatoes taste sweeter when food and garden waste compost is added to their soil, a University of Queensland study has found. Researchers in the School of Agriculture and Food Sustainability grew tomatoes in southeast Queensland with and without the compost and put the resulting crops through chemical and sensory analysis.

When engineers look to nature for inspiration, they often turn to living systems. The flight of birds has influenced aircraft design, gecko feet inspired new adhesives and lotus leaves led to the development of self-cleaning surfaces.

A researcher from the University of North Carolina Asheville has published the first comprehensive checklist of the native terrestrial reptiles of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), drawing on 20 years of collaborative fieldwork to create a single illustrated reference for scientists, conservationists and nature enthusiasts.

We share our planet with millions of plants and animals. This variety of life is known as biodiversity, a term encompassing everything from microscopic genes to entire ecosystems, such as deserts and vibrant coral reefs.

Climate change was once something scientists warned us about, and now it

The deadly rabies virus was once common across Europe. A bite from an infected dog, wolf or fox could be fatal.

Special needs education for students with disabilities in Ontario is in crisis. However, the solution may not simply be more money or more oversight.

Envy plays a greater role when resources are allocated through majority voting than when we make decisions individually. This is shown by new research from Link

Physics is most readily applied to relatively simple systems: a pendulum, two electrons colliding or the structure of the solar system. But when systems become complicated

Companies led by overconfident chief executives are potentially more exposed to political and regulatory risks because they engage in significantly less corporate lobbying, according to University of Queensland research.

The cause of the deadly landslide and flood along the Nepal

From high in the hills around Las Vegas, tourist Choune Osterero gazes down at the line of chalky mineral deposits left on the rocks around Lake Mead as the level of America

Wednesday

Acting as armor, a scaffold and a communication platform in one, our cells

What does a clean room smell like? Many people say citrus, pine, or flowers because these fragrances are common in cleaning products. A research team led by Brandon Boor found that scent compounds in cleaning products

When the temperature heats up, so do emergency rooms, according to a massive study of Chicago hospital and urgent care records, which found increased accidental gunshot wounds, kidney complaints, skin problems, varicose veins and even mental health issues related to marijuana use.

A team of researchers from the University of Bonn, Heidelberg University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico has studied the critical behavior of light particles (photons) close to a phase transition. This critical scaling behavior, which sees thermodynamic quantities grow extremely large or diverge shortly prior to Bose-Einstein condensation, had never before been seen in photon gases until the researchers successfully secured precisely this proof.

A team of Weill Cornell Medicine investigators has developed a computer model that will help scientists more efficiently develop protein-destroying therapies, a newer type of treatment that is particularly promising for cancer. The study is published July 13 in Nature Communications.

Sea turtles are famous for being prodigious wanderers. Guided by Earth

Imagine a plume of brown sediment washed off the land into Queensland rivers and carried out to sea. Here, it can settle on seagrass and inshore corals, potentially smothering them. River water often also carries nitrogen from fertilizer residue, which can fuel algal growth and damage coral health.

A research team has uncovered fundamental molecular mechanisms governing the formation of tendons and ligaments, which are essential for musculoskeletal integration. Understanding these mechanisms could pave the way for the regeneration of tendons, ligaments and their attachment sites, known as entheses, which have limited capacity for functional repair after injury because of their poor vascularization.

Doubts about the standard model of cosmology are deepening after a new study identified fundamental problems in a recent analysis that defended the conventional view that the universe is currently undergoing accelerated expansion driven by dark energy.

For centuries, scientists have been fascinated by the remarkable coordinated movements of flocking birds, swarming insects and schooling fish. Researchers have studied these natural phenomena to understand the rules of interactions between individuals that can produce complex group-level behavior. A collaboration of physicists and neurobiologists at the University of California San Diego has been studying schools of micro glassfish (Danionella cerebrum) to understand how the interactive mental p

Scientists have been hard at work for more than 20 years to instruct biological systems, such as E. coli cells, to produce proteins they don

In micro- and nanotechnology, highly precise components with tall, narrow structures (high aspect ratios) made from semiconductor materials like silicon are important. A promising fabrication method is gas-phase metal-assisted chemical etching (MacEtch). In this plasma-free process, a thin metal layer defines the pattern on the silicon substrate. The etching step takes place in a chemical environment, where the reaction occurs only at the interface between the metal and silicon. The metal cataly

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has developed and demonstrated a step-by-step framework called Socratic Challenger that uses artificial intelligence to help undergraduate students cultivate critical thinking skills. Specifically, the framework uses AI as a collaborator to develop research questions that can be pursued in laboratory or classroom settings.

Bees are the most important pollinators of flowering plants, and approximately 10% of flowering plants are functionally specialized for buzz pollination. Buzz pollination is a mechanism in which pollen can be extracted from flowers only through the application of mechanical vibrations. Many important crops, such as tomatoes, eggplants and blueberries, are buzz-pollinated because they conceal their pollen in so-called poricidal anthers

Electrically charged raindrops, a naturally occurring phenomenon, can break down surfaces treated with protective coatings, according to new research published in Nature. This previously overlooked corrosion mechanism highlights the need for a new method of preserving metal objects like cars, ships, buildings and cultural heritage sites.

While quantum computing could be the future, it is currently plagued by finicky hardware. To make the technology practical, researchers must demonstrate that it consistently and continuously works and performs at scale. In a new study, published in Physical Review Letters, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Ion Storage Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, created a robust process for entangling trapped-ion qubits. The

All the forests in the world pale in comparison to the ocean when it comes to absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The ocean is the world

Imagine the Western Plains of North America, from Texas to Alaska, submerged under a broad, shallow seaway. To the west lay the ancestral Rocky Mountains. To the east were low-lying plains traversed by large, sluggish rivers.

Green spaces could play a key role in helping cities cope with the effects of climate change, yet they still play only a minor role in climate strategies. These were the findings of researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Justus Liebig University Giessen (JLU), who analyzed the climate strategies of 25 major European cities.

Researchers at the University of Eastern Finland and the University of Oulu have produced the first chromosome-level reference genome for the Saimaa ringed seal. The sequence of every chromosome in the seal

Artificial intelligence is often discussed with a simple safeguard in mind: Keep a human in the loop. But what happens when AI is already shaping the information, options and recommendations that inform a decision?

As climate change drives more frequent and intense heat waves, plants face growing challenges to survive and remain productive. Researchers at VIB, Ghent University, KU Leuven and their international collaborators have uncovered an evolutionary innovation that helps plants cope with high temperatures.