Nearly a year and a half into its mission, Parker Solar Probe has returned gigabytes of data on the Sun and its atmosphere. Following the release of the very first science from the mission, five researchers presented additional new findings from Parker Solar Probe at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Dec. 11, 2019. Research from these teams hints at the processes behind both...

New evidence gleaned from Antarctic seashells confirms that Earth was already unstable before the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

In the last decade, scientists have made tremendous progress in understanding that groups of bacteria and viruses that naturally coexist throughout the human body play an important role in some vital functions like digestion, metabolism and even fighting off diseases. But understanding just how they do it remains a question.

What could Azteca ants in coffee farms in Mexico have in common with leopards' spots and zebras' stripes?

Accurately reconstructing the relationships between different species requires analyzing the sequences of a judiciously selected, and preferably large, sample of different genes. Hybrid capture with high-throughput sequencing, or Hyb-Seq, is a powerful tool for obtaining those gene sequences, but must be calibrated for each group analyzed to ensure an informative sample of genes are sequenced....

Blue Origin, the space company owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, launched the 12th crewless test of its New Shepard rocket on Wednesday, pushing the first flights with passengers to 2020.

Tropical glaciers in Africa and South America began their retreat simultaneously at the end of the last ice age about 20,000 years ago, according to a Dartmouth study.

The number of malnourished people is increasing worldwide. More than two billion people suffer from a lack of micronutrients. Infant mortality rates are unacceptably high. Against this background, there is a need for the global pooling of research efforts, more research funding and an international body for food security and agriculture that prepares policy decisions. This is what Prof. Joachim...

A new study in the journal PLOS One says Glacier National Park's iconic mountain goats are in dire need of air conditioning.

Botanists from Trinity College Dublin have discovered that "penny-pinching" evergreen species such as Christmas favourites, holly and ivy, are more climate-ready in the face of warming temperatures than deciduous "big-spending" water consumers like birch and oak. As such, they are more likely to prosper in the near future—with this pattern set to be felt more strongly in cooler climates, such as...

A newly described fossil whale represents a new species and an important step in the evolution of whale locomotion, according to a University of Michigan paleontologist and his colleagues.

QUT researchers have used a combination of virtual reality (VR), aerial thermal-imaging and ground surveys to build a better statistical model for predicting the location of koalas and, ultimately, protecting their habitat.

Researchers at the Babraham Institute, EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), CRUK Cambridge Institute and the Wellcome—MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute have provided the first single-cell epigenomic analysis of gastrulation, a crucial process in early embryo development. The researchers analysed over 1,000 cells from mouse embryos to understand the epigenetic priming events...

An international team co-led by an Oregon State University chemistry researcher has uncovered a better way to scrub carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions, which could be a key to mitigating global climate change.

If you use a vacuum-insulated thermos to help keep your coffee hot, you may know it's a good insulator because heat energy has a hard time moving through empty space. Vibrations of atoms or molecules, which carry thermal energy, simply can't travel if there are no atoms or molecules around.

On Dec. 11, 2019, a general framework for incorporating and correcting for nonclassical electromagnetic phenomena in nanoscale systems will be presented in the journal Nature.