Artificial intelligence has turbocharged state efforts to crack down on internet freedoms over the past year.  Governments and political actors around the world, in both democracies and autocracies, are using AI to generate texts, images, and video to manipulate public opinion in their favor and to automatically censor critical online content. In a new report released by Freedom House, a...

The nation has reeled from disaster to disaster in recent years, as it feels the effects of climate change.

Parrots are exceptional talkers. They can learn new sounds during their entire lives, amassing an almost unlimited vocal repertoire. At the same time, parrots produce calls so they can be individually recognized by members of their flock—raising the question of how their calls can be very variable while also uniquely identifiable.

In a breakthrough for environmentally friendly chemical production, researchers have developed an economical way to make succinic acid, an important industrial chemical, from sugarcane. The team has created a cost-effective, end-to-end pipeline for this valuable organic acid by engineering a tough, acid-tolerant yeast as the fermenting agent, avoiding costly steps in downstream processing....

Agriculture in Syria started with a bang 12,800 years ago as a fragmented comet slammed into the Earth’s atmosphere. The explosion and subsequent environmental changes forced hunter-gatherers in the prehistoric settlement of Abu Hureyra to adopt agricultural practices to boost their chances for survival.

As the internet quickly fills with viral videos of futuristic robots darting and racing around like the animals they’re built to mimic, researchers say that there’s an element of their movement’s programming that should not be overlooked: rhythm.

The increasingly urgent climate crisis has led to a boom in commercial tree plantations in an attempt to offset excess carbon emissions. However, authors argue that these carbon-offset plantations might come with costs for biodiversity and other ecosystem functions. Instead, the authors say we should prioritize conserving and restoring intact ecosystems.

Scientists have developed a device smaller than a toddler's shoebox -- called Lattice --that can simulate any human disease in up to eight organs (cell cultures from a human organ) or test new drugs without ever entering -- or harming -- the body. It is a major advancement from current in vitro systems, which can only study two cell cultures simultaneously.

A new compound potentially could offer an alternative to injections for the millions of people who suffer from an eye condition that causes blindness.

Even as the world slowly begins to decarbonize industrial processes, achieving lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon requires technologies that remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — rather than just prevent the creation of it.

Researchers developed the first AI to date that can intelligently design robots from scratch by compressing billions of years of evolution into mere seconds. It's not only fast but also runs on a lightweight computer and designs wholly novel structures from scratch — without human-labeled, bias-filled datasets.

Cancer-related fatigue is a debilitating yet all-too-common condition, which can severely affect quality of life for patients undergoing treatment. For those struggling with CRF, there have been no effective pharmaceutical treatments for the constellation of symptoms that together define the syndrome. Researchers found that a metabolism-targeting drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) helped alleviate...

As chronic wasting disease (CWD) ravaged deer populations across the country in recent years, studies have primarily focused on how CWD can jump from farmed herds to wild deer, with little attention given to how transmission may occur from wild deer to those living on farms.

In a new PNAS study co-authored by Boston University biomedical engineer Dr. Chris Chen, researchers say they're getting closer to understanding the mysteries of lymphedema—a condition characterized by the buildup of fluid in the body due to a malfunctioning lymphatic system. Until now, the reasons behind this disorder have remained elusive.

In a breakthrough for environmentally friendly chemical production, researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) have developed an economical way to make succinic acid, an important industrial chemical, from sugarcane.

A small and once-prominent species of turtle, endangered by invasive bullfrogs, human development and climate change, might soon see a boost in efforts to rebuild its populations throughout the West.

In an unusual reversal, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has decided North America’s monarch butterfly is not “endangered.” Instead, the insect is only “vulnerable” to extinction, the group said last week—adding that it could lower the alarm still further, changing the listing to “near threatened” if an upcoming census suggests the population is...

Barack Obama. Meghan Markle. Trevor Noah. Depending on your race, you might consider these and other Multiracial people as Black, White, or somewhere in-between, according to new research by psychologists at Duke University and the University of Chicago.

Dr. Weihsueh Chiu, a professor at the Texas A&M School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, helped create a new tool that provides communities and policymakers with actionable data about long-term vulnerabilities tied to climate change.

Diseases are among the major causes of tree mortality in both forests and urban areas. New diseases are continually being introduced, and pathogens are continually jumping to new hosts, threatening more and more tree species. When exposed to novel hosts, emerging diseases can cause mortality previously unseen in the native range.

While on a recent visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden, Ann Harness spotted a creature she'd never seen before. The tall brown bird with a long bill looked like a cross between a rail and a heron.

The University of Cincinnati's Jiajie Diao and Yujie Sun have a simple approach to research: Keep an open mind, and follow the data wherever it leads.

When life gets tough, nature usually finds a way to help the little guys.

When it comes to feeding a growing population at a time of conflict and climate change, Mother Earth has a lot on her plate. To build a sustainable future we'll need to return to a farm-to-table model, and that's opening up vast and exciting avenues of research for scientists in an array of fields. In this special report, we explore some of the developments taking place in research labs and out on...

The ever-increasing problem of plastic pollution has prompted widespread efforts to combat it through innovative clean-up technologies. These advancements, however, often seen as the silver bullet to solve our plastic crisis, sometimes do more harm than good.

Breast is best, or so the campaign launched by the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.

How do farmers decide which cows to breed and which to put out to pasture?

Estonia's next satellite will fly aboard Europe's Vega VV23 launcher later this week. While largely designed and built by undergraduate students, the shoebox-sized ESTCube-2 has ambitious goals in mind, including surveys of Estonian vegetation and the first successful in-orbit demonstration of "plasma brake" technology. Deployment of a charged microtether will slow the CubeSat's orbit, proving the...

The large-scale international survey SCANS-IV has estimated there are more than 1.4 million whales, dolphins and porpoises in the European Atlantic.

Females may infer what makes a male attractive by observing the choices of more experienced females, and the context of those choices matters, according to a mathematical model published October 3rd in the open access journal PLOS Biology. Rather than simply copying their peers, females might learn to prefer rare traits that set successful males apart from others, Emily DuVal at Florida State...

Already the world's hottest coastal environment in the summer, the shallow sea between the Arabian peninsula and southwestern Iran continues to heat at a breathtaking pace.

Once a week for the past year, Kylee Brevick could be found at two particular spots on the Willamette and Columbia rivers, taking samples of water for testing. The undergraduate biochemistry major (and environmental science minor) was undertaking an independent research project with support from PSU's BUILD EXITO program, which helps students gain biomedical research experience and skills.

Race and gender inequities in faculty representation and support have been widely acknowledged, but a new University of Michigan study reveals a previously underexplored contributor to disparities in pay and employment conditions: negotiation behavior.

Hundreds of small tremors have shaken a densely populated volcanic area west of the Italian city of Naples in recent weeks, pushing the government to quickly redraft mass evacuation plans, even though experts don't see an imminent risk of eruption.

Banks reporting high profits in good times could be taking greater risks with their portfolios that lead to bigger trouble in a future downturn, according to a study co-authored by a University of Michigan researcher and others with past affiliations to the school.

Solar parks and agriculture do not have to be placed on separate fields. It is possible to combine both functions on the same field, researchers from Wageningen University & Research and Renergize Consultancy write in their position paper "Producing food and electricity on the same square meter." Researchers see a future for agricultural solar parks, but also challenges. This new concept provides...

New research from the Cairngorms Connect Partnership demonstrates the use of controlled deer culling for forest regeneration across Scotland. The work has been published in the Journal of Applied Ecology.