Most of the plastic bottles washing up on the rocky shores of Inaccessible Island, aptly named for its sheer cliffs rising from the middle of the South Atlantic, probably come from Chinese merchant ships, a study published Monday said.

As one descends a mountain, the temperature steadily increases. A new study by a team including Andrew Nottingham, a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh, took advantage of this principle to predict what would happen as tropical soils warm. The team discovered that warmer tropical soils released more...

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust full of bubbles, which are inflated by wind and radiation from young, massive stars. Each bubble is filled with hundreds to thousands of stars, which form from dense clouds of gas and dust.

While most people imagine alligators and crocodiles as being much the same now as they were during the age of dinosaurs, digging into the fossil record shows much more diverse species through time. Semiaquatic ambush predators resembling modern alligators and crocodiles are seen in fossil relatives going back to the Jurassic period, but the group also includes oceangoing crocs with flippers and...

The stereotype of the "strong black woman" is more than just a cultural trope: Many black women in America report feeling pressured to act like superwomen, projecting themselves as strong, self-sacrificing, and free of emotion to cope with the stress of race- and gender-based discrimination in their daily lives.

Researchers have developed a new variant of the gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9 that has the potential to increase precision during gene therapy in humans. The new variant reduced unintended changes in DNA compared to its wildtype, suggesting it could play a role in gene therapies that require high precision. The study by researchers from Karolinska Institutet's Ming Wai Lau Centre of...

As temperatures rise, desert birds need more water to cool off at the same time as deserts are becoming drier, setting some species up for a severe crash, if not extinction, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley.

A triple drug combination has been used to extend the lifespan of fruit flies by 48% in a new study led by UCL and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing.

As close evolutionary relatives, you could say that great apes and humans look somewhat similar. And the more we learn about our great ape cousins, the more we find that we're alike.

A preventive treatment developed by Stanford researchers could greatly reduce the incidence and severity of wildfires. The approach, outlined Sept. 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involves an environmentally benign gel-like fluid that helps common wildland fire retardants last longer on vegetation.

A study of over 94,000 cafeteria meal choices has found that doubling the vegetarian options—from one in four to two in four—reduced the proportion of meat-rich purchases by between 40-80% without affecting overall food sales.

The World Economic Forum lists water crises among the top 10 most likely and impactful global risks. Most water metrics to date have only focused on water quality or water availability at national and regional scales. There has been a critical gap, though, in the ability to identify which households experience issues with reliably accessing safe water in sufficient quantities for all household...

Santa Barbara County residents love their coastline, from the small-town beaches of Carpinteria to Santa Barbara's waterfront to camping hotspots like Jalama Beach and dramatic Guadalupe Dunes. But drastic changes are in store in coming decades as temperatures and sea levels rise, bringing massive impacts to local ecology and human systems.

Negative perception of a regulatory authority like the EU diminishes the honesty of those regulated, for example, that of fishermen. This is the conclusion drawn by researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Leipzig University, the University of Hamburg, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy from a game of chance experiment with EU-sceptic...

Hurricane Dorian is the latest example of a frightening trend. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, more severe and more widespread as a consequence of climate change. New research from Washington University in St. Louis provides important new insights into how different species may fare under this new normal.

RUDN University mathematicians created a model of maximum efficiency of data centers. It is based on a nontrivial Markov chain. In addition to the obvious practical applications of the results for the organization of servers and data centers, the theoretical part will be useful for the theory of queues and queuing, as well as for working with big data and neural networks. The study is published in...

RUDN University chemists have developed a simple and convenient method for producing derivatives of the natural polymer chitosan. These derivatives are non-toxic and have a pronounced antibacterial activity at the level of modern antibiotics. These substances can be used in the production of antibacterial protective films for food. The article is published in the journal Food Chemistry.

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Narda along Mexico's west coast in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Satellite data revealed the potential for heavy rainfall within Narda, and warnings are in effect for portions of western Mexico.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have shown through a multi-year study that cowbirds (Molothrus ater) conform to Bateman's Principle, which holds that reproductive success is greater in males than in females when they have more mates. Cowbirds are distinct from 99% of other bird species in that they are brood parasites and lay their eggs in nests of birds of other species for them to...

NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Typhoon Mitag's cloud-filled eye, located east of Taiwan.

Silently and without pause, the giant African snail has been invading Cuba.

Silicon semiconductor technology has done marvels for the advancement of our society, which has benefited tremendously from its versatile use and amazing capabilities. The development of electronics, automation, computers, digital cameras and recent smartphones based on this material and its underpinning technology has skyrocketed, downscaling the physical size of devices and wires to the...

As their Latin name indicates, pineapples are truly "excellent fruits"—and thanks to a freshly completed genome sequencing project, researchers have gained a new understanding of how human agriculture has shaped the evolution of this and other crops.

Rising ocean temperatures have long been linked to negative impacts for marine life, but a Florida State University team has found that the long-term outlook for many marine species is much more complex—and possibly bleaker—than scientists previously believed.