Scientists have long been puzzled by the existence of so-called "buckyballs"—complex carbon molecules with a soccer-ball-like structure—throughout interstellar space. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Arizona has proposed a mechanism for their formation in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

A quick Google search for "What is driving migration from Central America?" reveals that nearly all of the top hits claim climate change as a major catalyst for the mass movement of people out of their home countries. University of Arizona climate researchers, however, have shown that the reality is much more nuanced.

Scientists say they were unable to confirm a highly publicized 2014 study that suggested banking culture can promote dishonesty.

An ancient Greek cup awarded as a prize to the marathon winner in the first modern Olympics of 1896 has been returned to Athens from a German university.

The ratio of carbon isotopes in three common species of tuna has changed substantially since 2000, suggesting major shifts are taking place in phytoplankton populations that form the base of the ocean's food web, a new international study finds.

What if you could cure cancer by re-engineering patients' cells to better target and destroy their own tumors? With the advent of powerful new cellular engineering technologies, this is no longer the stuff of science fiction.

Tropical Storm Fengshen continued to strengthen in the Northwestern Pacific Ocean as NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead. Infrared imagery from an instrument aboard Terra revealed very high, powerful storms with very cold cloud top temperatures circling the center.

Gravitational wave detectors are finding black hole mergers in the universe at the rate of one per week. If these mergers occur in empty space, researchers cannot see associated light that is needed to determine where they happened. However, a new study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York (CUNY),...

With only minutes until sunrise aboard the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut Nick Hague rushed to shut off the lights in the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM). Traveling 17,500 miles per hour, the space station orbits Earth 16 times in 24 hours, so every 90 minutes, the space station experiences a sunrise. For this sunrise, though, the speed of their approach was putting a time crunch on...

Synthetic compounds increasingly used in everyday products like shampoo and motor oil are finding their way into landfills and supercharging the biogas those landfills produce, researchers at the University of Michigan have found.

Chemotherapy has been the backbone of cancer treatment for decades, but it is notorious for its toxicity to healthy cells, severe side effects, and poor targeting of the intended tumors. Efforts to improve chemotherapy's efficacy and tolerability include packaging drugs into nanoparticles, which can protect them from degradation in the body, control their release pattern, and shield the patient...

In ancient Egypt, Sacred Ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a study released November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sally Wasef of Griffith University, Australia and colleagues.

Your characterization of the thermostat war going on in your house is likely to depend at least in part on whether you're a man or a woman, new research suggests.

Neighbor peer pressure may be linked to increases in yard fertilization and irrigation across several distinct climate regions of the US, according to a study published November 13, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dexter Locke from the USDA Forest Service, US, and colleagues.

Like a boat helping passengers cross a river, transporters move substances across cell membranes. This process is fundamental to the healthy functioning of cells in life forms from bacteria to humans. The function of these transporters previously had to be inferred from the behavior of hundreds or thousands of them working together. Published today in Nature, new techniques enable the study of one...

Charles Darwin suspected something in the "clear blue water" of the ocean that was even smaller than the protozoa he could see under the microscope. "Today we know that every liter of ocean water is swarming with hundreds of millions of microorganisms," explains marine researcher Rudolf Amann, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen. His colleague Tobias Erb from the...

Scientists have solved the structure of one of the key components of photosynthesis, a discovery that could lead to photosynthesis being 'redesigned' to achieve higher yields and meet urgent food security needs.

Could the profound mysteries of antimatter and dark matter be linked? Thinking that they might be, scientists from the international BASE collaboration, led by Stefan Ulmer of the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research, and collaborators have performed the first laboratory experiments to determine whether a slightly different way in which matter and antimatter interact with dark matter might be a...

By using ancient protein sequencing, researchers have retrieved genetic information from a 1.9 million year old extinct, giant primate that used to live in a subtropical area in southern China. The genetic information allows the researchers to uncover the evolutionary position of Gigantopithecus blacki, a three-meter tall and possibly 600 kg primate, revealing the orangutan as its closest living...

Aa team of scientists, led by Harvard researchers, has used a new method of DNA "re-barcoding" to track rapid evolution in yeast. The new approach, published in Nature, advances the field of organismic and evolutionary biology and holds promise for real-world results.

Urban development in the eastern United States results in an increase in flash flooding in nearby streams, but in the arid West, urbanization has just the opposite effect, according to a Penn State researcher, who suggests there may be lessons to be learned from the sharp contrast.

Next time you visit your hairdresser spare a thought for the pigeons.

An insoluble complex carbohydrate, chitin makes up fungal walls and plays a significant role in the interaction between fungal pathogens and their plant hosts. Plant cells harbor immune receptors that perceive chitin and work to stop fungal infection. However, fungal plant pathogens then release chitin-binding proteins that perturb the chitin-triggered immunity.

Old books give off a complex mélange of odors, ranging from pleasant (almonds, caramel and chocolate) to nasty (formaldehyde, old clothes and trash). Detecting early signs of paper degradation could help guide preservation efforts, but most techniques destroy the very paper historians want to save. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Sensors have developed an electronic nose that can...