"Hot and dry" are the watchwords for large fires. In just seconds, a spark in hot and dry conditions can set off an inferno consuming thick, dried-out vegetation and almost everything else in its path. While every fire needs a spark to ignite and fuel to burn, hot and dry conditions in the atmosphere play a significant role in determining the likelihood of a fire starting, its intensity and the...

A new way of measuring how relationships in a network change over time can reveal important details about the network, according to researchers at Penn State and the Korean Rural Economic Institute. For example, when applied to the world economy, the method detected the greatest amount of network change during 2008-2009, the time of the global financial crisis.

Homelessness is a persistent and significant public policy and public health challenge, disproportionately affecting veterans. However, the fiscal year 2020 budget negotiated between President Donald Trump and Speaker Nancy Pelosi includes no growth in funding for the Housing and Urban Development-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) voucher program.

The Trump administration is expanding hunting and fishing in 77 national wildlife refuges in what it says is a bonus for hunters and anglers but what critics contend is deferring management to states with potential harm to wildlife.

On trucks, drones and airplanes, 10 promising technologies for finding natural gas leaks swiftly and cheaply competed in the Mobile Monitoring Challenge, the first independent assessment of moving gas leak detectors at well sites. The organizers of the contest—Stanford University's Natural Gas Initiative and the Environmental Defense Fund—describe the outcomes in a study published Sept. 10 in...

Small gestures of kindness by employers can have big impacts on employees' health and work performance, according to an international team of researchers. The team specifically examined the effects of employers enhancing the lunches of bus drivers in China with fresh fruit and found that it reduced depression among the drivers and increased their confidence in their own work performance.

If you live in an industrial-era urban setting, chances are that soil in your vicinity is contaminated with lead, arsenic, or other heavy metals. With support from the National Science Foundation, a team of researchers is developing a "citizen science" soil research project in Troy, New York and Tierra Amarilla, Chile that engages residents in greater understanding of contaminants in their midst...

Golf ball-size clods of weathered crude oil originating from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe could remain buried in sandy Gulf Coast beaches for decades, according to a new study by ecologists at Florida State University.

By area, tidal flats make up more than 50 percent of Willapa Bay in southwest Washington state, making this more than 142-square-mile estuary an ideal location for oyster farming. On some parts of these flats, oysters grow well, filling their shells with delicacies for discerning diners. But according to experienced oyster farmers, oysters raised in other parts of Willapa Bay don't yield as much...

The Atlantic Ocean's Gabrielle has made a second transition and the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core satellite provided information about the rate in which rain was falling within the now extra-tropical storm.

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Northwestern Pacific Ocean from its orbit in space and took an image that showed vertical wind shear was weakening Faxai and the storm had become extra-tropical.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a mathematical model that shows how bias distorts results when measuring bacterial communities through metagenomic sequencing. The proof-of-concept model could be the first step toward developing calibration methods that could make metagenomic measurements more accurate.

Looking like a cross between a frog and a lizard, the gray cheek salamander has thin, smooth skin and no lungs. The amphibian breathes through its skin, and to survive it must keep its skin moist. As environmental conditions grow hotter or drier, scientists want to know whether and how these animals can acclimate.

Next to CO2, methane is the greenhouse gas that contributes most to the man-made greenhouse effect. Of the methane sources caused by human activity, rice fields and cattle are among the most important. Furthermore, methane is released from swamp areas on land, melting permafrost in the Arctic tundra, and from areas with oxygen depletion in the oceans.

Japan's top government spokesman slapped down the environment minister on Tuesday after he said there was "no other option" but to release radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant into the ocean.

In the version of evolutionary theory most of us are familiar with, randomly occurring variation in traits, caused by mutations in our DNA, can be fixed in a population through natural selection. However, writing in Epigenetics journal, a team of Swedish researchers from Linköping University suggests that mutations that can be caused by environmental changes, not just random chance, might be...

New findings from University of Kansas experimental nuclear physicists Daniel Tapia Takaki and Aleksandr (Sasha) Bylinkin were just published in the European Physical Journal C. The paper centers on work at the Compact Muon Solenoid, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, to better understand the behavior of gluons.

Among our two closest phylogenetic relatives, chimpanzees remain by far the more thoroughly-studied and widely-recognized species, known for their high levels of cooperation especially among males, which includes sharing food, supporting each other in aggressive conflicts and defending their territories against other communities. In contrast, insights into the social dynamics of wild bonobos are...

Semiconductors are substances that have a conductivity between that of conductors and insulators. Due to their unique properties of conducting current only in specific conditions, they can be controlled or modified to suit our needs. Nowhere is the application of semiconductors more extensive or important than in electrical and electronic devices, such as diodes, transistors, solar cells, and...

Researchers at the University of Bradford have shown a link between the diet of Roman Britons and their mortality rates for the first time, overturning a previously-held belief about the quality of the Roman diet.

If you've ever looked closely at a 3-D sand or sediment dune within a river or coastal area, did you wonder how it formed?

Most people have experienced the hair-raising effect of rubbing a balloon on their head or the subtle spark caused by dragging socked feet across the carpet. Although these experiences are common, a detailed understanding of how they occur has eluded scientists for more than 2,500 years.

Researchers have found the earliest direct evidence of milk consumption anywhere in the world in the teeth of prehistoric British farmers.

California is close to adopting strict Obama-era federal environmental and worker safety rules that the Trump administration is dismantling. But as the legislative session draws to a close, the proposal faces fierce opposition from the state's largest water agencies.