China has moved a rocket into position to launch a rover to Mars in one of three upcoming missions to the red planet, one from the U.S. and another by the United Arab Emirates.

Perched on a flowering shrub on a windy Andean mountainside, the tiny Ecuadorian Hillstar hummingbird chirps songs of seduction that only another bird of its kind can hear.

In 1872 the United States created Yellowstone, the first National Park in the world. Since then many more parks, monuments, preserves, wildernesses and other protected areas have been created in the USA. Protected areas, like Yellowstone, are invaluable, but are they actually effective at preserving endangered species? And if not, how can future protected areas do better?

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have identified a quicker and less expensive way to count sperm in lobsters that could help scientists looking at any animal better understand mating, a key aspect of species survival.

In a breakthrough for physics and engineering, researchers from the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY (CUNY ASRC) and from Georgia Tech have presented the first demonstration of topological order based on time modulations. This advancement allows the researchers to propagate sound waves along the boundaries of topological metamaterials...

Through the investigation of insect surfaces, Penn State researchers have detailed a previously unidentified nanostructure that can be used to engineer stronger, more resilient water repellent coatings.

Shell-bearing microgastropods are snails whose size is less than five millimeters. They represent one of the least studied groups of metazoan living organisms in the oceans. Ivan Nekhaev is a senior research associate at the Department of Applied Ecology at St Petersburg University, and Ekaterina Krol is a doctoral student. They have summarized and analyzed the currently known information on the...

As beautiful as the surrounding space may be, the sparkling galaxy in the foreground of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope undeniably steals the show.

A Siamese crocodile that was released into the wild in 2018 has been recorded nesting in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. The female crocodile was identified by her tail scute markings as one that had previously been cared for at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center and this finding provides evidence that released Siamese crocodiles are not only surviving in the wild, but are also able to nest.

In low precipitation periods, where and how is the limited available water distributed, and what possibilities are there for improving retention in the soil and the landscape? Dörthe Tetzlaff and her team from the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) have discovered that vegetation has a major influence on this. The researchers are investigating the storage,...

A citizen science collaboration, of which the University of Aberdeen is part of, launched a new tool this week to help members of the public learn more about bumblebees.

Every time a gun fires, lead leaches into the air. A scientific advancement could provide a comparable replacement for lead-based explosive materials found in ammunition, protecting soldiers and the environment from potential toxic effects.

By applying a machine-learning algorithm, scientists at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have developed a method to classify all gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), rapid highly energetic explosions in distant galaxies, without needing to find an afterglow—by which GRBs are presently categorized. This breakthrough, initiated by first-year B.Sc. students, may prove key in finally...

Researchers of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the Italian National Research Council and of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice analyzed fragrances deriving from personal care products and consumer goods in an ice core from Mt. Elbrus, Caucasus. The concentration profile of such fragrances from the 1930s to 2005 follows the trend of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that originate from...

NUS researchers have demonstrated that the charge density wave (CDW) phase in H-phase tantalum disulfide (TaS2) bilayers can be stabilized at room temperature by interfacial interactions with a hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) substrate.

A team of researchers from MIT and Northwestern University has demonstrated the ability to fine-tune the electronic properties of hybrid perovskite materials, which have drawn enormous interest as potential next-generation optoelectronic materials for devices such as solar cells and light sources.

Researchers have been using passive acoustic recordings of whale calls to track their movements. They have found that four of the six baleen whale species found in the western North Atlantic Ocean—humpback, sei, fin and blue whales—have changed their distribution patterns in the past decade. The recordings were made over 10 years by devices moored to the seafloor at nearly 300 locations from...

First spotted in the United States in 2014, bacterial leaf streak of corn is an emerging disease of corn that has now spread to ten states, including the top three corn-producing states of Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska.

Magnetically separating waste particles makes it possible to reclaim a variety of raw materials from waste. Using a magnetic fluid, a waste flow can be separated into multiple segments in a single step. Researchers from Utrecht and Nijmegen have now succeeded in creating a magnetic fluid that remains stable in extremely strong magnetic fields, which makes it possible to separate materials with a...

As school districts nationwide grapple with how and when to safely reopen in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey of 1,275 social workers across the United States shows the immensity of the challenge ahead.

Dr. Te Huia, with Māori language researchers Dr. Mauren Muller and Tai Ahu, conducted interviews with 57 Māori language speakers and learners across 12 regions nationally, as well as conducting an indepth survey during the national kapa haka festival Te Matatini, held in Wellington in February 2019, with the support of the 'Te Mitatini' reo Māori campaign.

Do education regulations sometimes harm those they were intended to help? A recent study by University of Arkansas Education Reform professor Robert Maranto and former doctoral student Ian Kingsbury, now at Johns Hopkins University, says yes.

Honeybee colonies are bioindicators of environmental contamination in the area, since they get coated in everything that there is in the environment, including pollutants, and they end up taking it all back to their bee hives.

Coordinated international action on energy-efficient, climate-friendly cooling could avoid as much as 460 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions—roughly equal to eight years of global emissions at 2018 levels—over the next four decades, according to the Cooling Emissions and Policy Synthesis Report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Energy Agency...