Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have investigated more than 1000 planetary systems orbiting stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way, and have discovered a series of connections between planetary orbits, number of planets, occurrence and the distance to their stars. It turns out that our own solar system in some ways is very rare, and in others very ordinary.

The COVID-19 pandemic could result in net losses from $3.2 trillion and up to $4.8 trillion in U.S. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) over the course of two years, a new USC study finds.

Methane, the main component of natural gas, is the cleanest-burning of all the fossil fuels, but when emitted into the atmosphere it is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. By some estimates, seafloor methane contained in frozen formations along the continental margins may equal or exceed the total amount of coal, oil, and gas in all other reservoirs worldwide. Yet, the way...

Magnets often harbor hidden beauty. Take a simple fridge magnet: Somewhat counterintuitively, it is 'sticky' on one side but not the other. The secret lies in the way the magnetisation is arranged in a well-defined pattern within the material. More intricate magnetization textures are at the heart of many modern technologies, such as hard disk drives. Now, an international team of scientists at...

Research findings by a KAIST team provide insight into the complex mechanism of cellular senescence and present a potential therapeutic strategy for reducing age-related diseases associated with the accumulation of senescent cells.

Researchers created a new astronomical instrument that has successfully aided in estimating the abundance of metals in the early universe. The WINERED instrument allows for better observations of astronomical bodies like quasars in the early universe, billions of years ago. Researchers hope this deeper level of exploration could help answer questions about the origins not only of metals in the...

To develop effective therapeutics against pathogens, scientists need to first uncover how they attack host cells. An efficient way to conduct these investigations on an extensive scale is through high-speed screening tests called assays.

Portland State University researchers and their collaborators at the Quinault Indian Nation and Oregon State University found microplastics in Pacific razor clams on Washington's sparsely populated Olympic Coast—proof, they say, that even in more remote regions, coastal organisms can't escape plastic contamination.

As a complement to silicon-based photonic chips, lithium niobate thin film (LNOI) has become a research hotspot in the field of optoelectronic integration due to its outstanding nonlinear, electro-optic, acousto-optic, piezoelectric and other physical properties. On-chip integrated frequency multipliers, modulators, and filters based on lithium niobate thin films have been developed, but the...

Scientists examining the effects of a megathrust earthquake in the Pacific Northwest say tall buildings across Metro Vancouver will experience greater shaking than currently accounted for by Canada's national seismic hazard model.

Octopuses have the most flexible appendages known in nature, according to a new study in Scientific Reports. In addition to being soft and strong, each of the animal's eight arms can bend, twist, elongate and shorten in many combinations to produce diverse movements. But to what extent can they do so, and is each arm equally capable? Researchers at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) filmed 10...

Early populations shifted from quasi-egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies to communities governed by a centralized authority in the middle to late Holocene, but how the transition occurred still puzzles anthropologists. A University of Maine-led group of researchers contend that population size and density served as crucial drivers.

The alarming rate at which COVID-19 has killed Black Americans has highlighted the deeply embedded racial disparities in the U.S. health care system.

Researchers from the Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T) working with Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) have located the 'sweet spot' for positioning qubits in silicon to scale up atom-based quantum processors.

Music educator Martin J. Bergee thought that if he could just control his study for the myriad factors that might have influenced previous ones—race, income, education, etc.—he could disprove the notion of a link between students' musical and mathematical achievement.

Human activity endangers coral health around the world. A new algal threat is taking advantage of coral's already precarious situation in the Caribbean and making it even harder for reef ecosystems to grow.

An experimental vaccine developed in Europe to prevent infection by Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus (CCHFV) has protected cynomolgus macaques in a new collaborative study from National Institutes of Health scientists. The animals received the DNA-based candidate vaccine through intramuscular injection immediately followed by electroporation—a process in development for human vaccines that...

Most of the money for protecting and conserving wildlife and habitat comes from government programs, philanthropic organizations, or the public. But conserving Earth's ecosystems and species requires hundreds of billions dollars more than what is currently spent. Fortunately, there might be another way. A new report called Innovative Finance for Conservation: Roles for Ecologists and...

Swansea University research has provided a new insight into the behavior of nature's own UV sunscreens when they are exposed to other parts of the light spectrum.

When humans have low iron levels, they tend to feel weak, fatigued and dizzy. This fatigue prevents patients with iron-deficient anemia from exercising or exerting themselves in order to conserve energy.

Bees and humans are about as different organisms as one can imagine. Yet despite their many differences, surprising similarities in the ways that they interact socially have begun to be recognized in the last few years. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, building on their earlier studies, have experimentally measured the social networks of honey bees and how...

Human fingerprints have a self-regulating moisture mechanism that not only helps us to avoid dropping our smartphone, but could help scientists to develop better prosthetic limbs, robotic equipment and virtual reality environments, a new study reveals.

Hydrothermally-active submarine volcanoes account for much of Earth's volcanism and are mineral-rich biological hotspots, yet very little is known about the dynamics of microbial diversity in these systems. This week in PNAS, Reysenbach and colleagues, show that at one such volcano, Brothers submarine arc volcano, NE of New Zealand, the geological history and subsurface hydrothermal fluid paths...

In a major scientific advance, the latest version of DeepMind's AI system AlphaFold has been recognized as a solution to the 50-year-old grand challenge of protein structure prediction, often referred to as the 'protein folding problem', according to a rigorous independent assessment. This breakthrough could significantly accelerate biological research over the long term, unlocking new...