Stories of unique and sentient interactions between elephants and their dead are a familiar part of the species' lore, but a comprehensive study of these interactions has been lacking—until now. A recent review of documented field observations of elephants at carcasses reveals patterns of elephants' behavior toward their dead, regardless of the strength of former relationships with the deceased...

A new study on how and when the precursors to eggs and sperm are formed during development could help pave the way for generating egg and sperm cells in the lab to treat infertility.

The only known freshwater harbor seals in the U.S. should be listed as as threatened or endangered, an environmental group said Thursday in its second petition for the animals.

Photosensitizers are molecules that absorb sunlight and pass that energy along to generate electricity or drive chemical reactions. They're generally based on rare, expensive metals; so the discovery that iron carbenes, with plain old iron at their cores, can do this, too, triggered a wave of research over the past few years. But while ever more efficient iron carbenes are being discovered,...

Engineers with the University of Cincinnati have created a tiny portable lab that plugs into your phone, connecting it automatically to a doctor's office through a custom app UC developed.

Italian American organized crime may conjure images of classic gangster flicks, but as James B. Jacobs explores in the Crime and Justice article "The Rise and Fall of Organized Crime in the United States," its history is unexpectedly nuanced and mutable. The Cosa Nostra families—popularly known as the Mafia—operated, at the height of their power, in at least twenty-four American cities, with...

As the effects of climate change become more evident, more than half of U.S. adults (56%) say climate change is the most important issue facing society today, yet 4 in 10 have not made any changes in their behavior to reduce their contribution to climate change, according to a new poll by the American Psychological Association.

Forecasters use a variety of satellite imagery to understand what is happening in a storm, and sometimes just a visible picture can tell a lot. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided forecasters with a visible image of the Tropical Storm Francisco in the Southern Indian Ocean that showed wind shear was pushing clouds away from the storm's center.

The low-pressure area that formed off Australia's Kimberley coast and lingered there for a couple of days has moved west and developed into Tropical Cyclone Damien off the Pilbara coastline. NASA's Terra satellite passed over the Southern Indian Ocean and provided forecasters with a visible image of the new tropical storm.  The Pilbara Coast is also known as the northwest coast of Western...

A research team from the University of Delaware and the Indian Institute of Management took a deeper look into the newly emerging domain of "forward-looking" business strategies and found that firms have far more ability to actively influence the future of their markets than once thought.

In a recent study, University of Arkansas physics researchers found evidence of an inverse transition in ferroelectric ultrathin films, which could lead to advances in development of data storage, microelectronics and sensors.

To successfully combat a crop-threatening disease, it may be more important to educate growers about the effectiveness of control strategies than to emphasize the risk posed by the disease, according to new research by Alice Milne of Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, U.K., and colleagues. These findings appear in PLOS Computational Biology.

Clumps of proteins inside cells are a common thread in many neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease. These clumps, or solid aggregates of proteins, appear to be the result of an abnormality in the process known as liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), in which individual proteins come together to form a liquid-like droplet.

Scientists from the UNC School of Medicine, Columbia University, and Rockefeller University have revealed the inner workings of one of the most fundamental and important molecular machines in cells.

Methanol is a versatile and efficient chemical used as fuel in the production of countless products. Carbon dioxide (CO2), on the other hand, is a greenhouse gas that is the unwanted byproduct of many industrial processes.

When you were young, were you the type of child who would scour open fields looking for bumble bees? Today, it is much harder for kids to spot them, since bumble bees are drastically declining in North America and in Europe.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Russia and one in France has found a possible explanation for the creation of ice circles in Lake Baikal—the deepest lake in the world. In their paper published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography, the group describes their two-year study of the ice circles and what they learned about them.

Scientists from Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU, Vladivostok, Russia), together with colleagues from FEB RAS, China, Hong Kong, and Australia, manufactured ultra-compact bright sources based on IR-emitting mercury telluride (HgTe) quantum dots (QDs), the future functional elements of quantum computers and advanced sensors. A related article is published in Light: Science and Applications.

Colorado State University atmospheric chemist Delphine Farmer had spent her entire career probing the complexities of outdoor air—how gases and particles in the atmosphere move, interact and change, and how human activities perturb the air we breathe.

Organised cellulose fibres allow plants to grow, support themselves and store fixed carbon from the atmosphere. Wood and dietary fibre is largely made of cellulose, and coal is derived from cellulose synthesised millions of years ago.

Product reviews and ratings have a strong impact on consumer consideration. In restaurant reviews, new research upcoming in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research shows that location bias, based on the popularity difference between the reviewer's hometown and the distance to their destination, can affect a reviewers online rating by as much as 11%.

Azulene is a pretty neat substance. As the name suggests, it displays a peculiar blue color. First synthesized in the 1930s, azulene has been used in medicine for its bioactive properties. Now azulene derivatives are being studied for use in organic electronics such as n-type semiconductors, solar cells and non-linear optics. This is made possible by the functionalization of the azulene ring....

The only thing that appears to be unchanging in living cells is that they are constantly changing. However, scientists from the IPC PAS have managed to show that there is a certain parameter that does not change. It's their viscosity. This research, although basic, may contribute to the development of completely new diagnostic and therapeutic methods.

In a groundbreaking study, research carried out between the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL, Switzerland) has compiled data on homicide victims in Spain, disaggregated by gender, from 1910 to 2014. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on particular regions of the country or shorter time periods, this study gathers and analyses data corresponding to...