From writing papers to answering emails, it's common for office workers to juggle multiple tasks at once. But those constant interruptions can actually create sadness and fear and eventually, a tense working environment, according to a new study aimed at understanding what shapes the emotional culture of a workplace.

UK researchers have developed a cheap and simple way of creating biofuel and fertiliser from seaweed, whilst removing plastic from the oceans and cleaning up tourist beaches in the Caribbean and Central America.

Artificial insemination (AI), breeding value estimation, and genomic selection have allowed substantial increases in milk and component yields for Holstein cows. However, their widespread use has also led to challenges including declining fertility, emergence of recessive genetic conditions, and a loss of genetic diversity—more than 99 percent of Holstein bulls born using AI in the last decade...

Through a combination of lab and field experiments, researchers have developed a better understanding of the factors accounting for different wood decomposition rates among fungi. The new findings reveal how an understanding of fungal trait variation can improve the predictive ability of early and mid-stage wood decay, a critical driver of the global carbon cycle.

Quantitative biologists at CSHL have figured out how a fly brain learns to ignore overwhelmingly prevalent, mundane odors to focus on more important ones. It's an important step towards understanding how our senses work and how computer sensing could work better.

Bacterial canker of tomato is a disease that can lead to significant losses in greenhouse and field production systems. This disease is caused by the bacterial pathogen Clavibacter michiganensis. The best way to control bacterial canker is by securing clean tomato seed and enforcing good sanitation practices.

The oldest molecular fluids in the solar system could have supported the rapid formation and evolution of the building blocks of life, new research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals.

Flowering strips—pollinator-friendly rows of plants that increase foraging habitat for bees—can help offset pollinator decline but may also bring risks of higher pathogen infection rates for pollinators foraging in those strips.

Plant scientists have long known that crop yield is proportional to the dose of nitrogen fertilizer, but the increased use of fertilizers is costly and harmful to the environment. Until now, the underlying mechanisms by which plants adjust their growth according to the nitrogen dose has been unknown—a key finding that could help enhance plant growth and limit fertilizer use.

There is ongoing debate among policymakers and the general public about where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from. While researchers consider bats the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the origins of the virus are still unclear. On May 10 in the journal Current Biology, researchers describe a recently identified bat coronavirus that is SARS-CoV-2's closest relative in...

A Southwest Research Institute scientist modeled the atmosphere of Mars to help determine that salty pockets of water present on the Red Planet are likely not habitable by life as we know it on Earth. A team that also included scientists from Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and the University of Arkansas helped allay planetary protection concerns about contaminating potential...

A new study from researchers at North Carolina State University suggests that a material consisting of a polymer compound embedded with bismuth trioxide particles holds tremendous potential for replacing conventional radiation shielding materials, such as lead.

As civic leaders and urban planners work to make cities more sustainable and livable by investing in outdoor spaces and recreational activities such as biking and walking, Princeton researchers have identified the benefit of an activity largely overlooked by policymakers—home gardening.

New research has found that El Niño events are often associated with droughts in some of the world's more vulnerable tropical regions. Associated with warmer than average ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific, El Niños can in turn influence global weather patterns and tropical precipitation, and these changes can lead to massive plant die-offs if other extreme factors are also at play.

Researchers at Instituut voor Kern- en Stralingsfysica in Belgium and The University of Manchester, in collaboration with other institutes worldwide, have recently carried out a study aimed at measuring the size of the nucleus (i.e., nuclear charge radius) in neutron-rich copper isotopes. Their paper, published in Nature Physics, presents observations of a distinctive and interesting odd-even...

A microscopic algae ("microalgae") could provide a complete and sustainably sourced supplemental diet to boost the robustness of managed honey bees, according to research just published by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in the journal Apidologie .

How people vote in the Eurovision Song Contest may tell us more than just the musical tastes of a nation—according to new research.

Levels of two major air pollutants have been drastically reduced since lockdowns began in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a secondary pollutant—ground-level ozone—has increased in China, according to new research.

Superfluids, which form only at temperatures close to absolute zero, have unique and in some ways bizarre mechanical properties. Yvan Buggy of the Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and his co-workers have developed a new quantum mechanical model of some of these properties, which illustrates how these fluids will deform as they flow...

Supply chains collapse, companies are facing bankruptcy, and mass unemployment ensues. Covid-19 has triggered a global financial crisis and is forcing states to develop rescue packages on a scale not seen before. In addition, the crisis has called into question the US dollar's hegemony and could redefine the global monetary system. A team of researchers from the Institute for Advanced...

A new study by researchers from IIASA and China investigated the impacts of different levels of global warming on hydropower potential and found that this type of electricity generation benefits more from a 1.5°C than a 2°C climate scenario.

Plants and vegetation play a critical role in supporting life on Earth, but there is still a lot of uncertainty in our understanding of how exactly they affect the global carbon cycle and ecosystem services. A new IIASA-led study explored the most important organizing principles that control vegetation behavior and how they can be used to improve vegetation models.

Quantum spin liquids are candidates for potential use in future information technologies. So far, quantum spin liquids have usually only been found in one or two dimensional magnetic systems only. Now an international team led by HZB scientists has investigated crystals of PbCuTe2O6 with neutron experiments at ISIS, NIST and ILL.

Several hundred million years ago, two galaxy clusters collided and then passed through each other. This mighty event released a flood of hot gas from each galaxy cluster that formed an unusual bridge between the two objects. This bridge is now being pummeled by particles driven away from a supermassive black hole.