Oxygen is life, in or out of the water, raising concerns that declining ocean oxygen stores are adding an additional environmental stress to already highly vulnerable coral reef ecosystems. While the twin effects of ocean warming and acidification are well studied, until now there has been limited understanding of how the growing threat of ocean deoxygenation may impact the ability of corals to...

Biochar—a charcoal-like substance made primarily from agricultural waste products—holds promise for removing emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals from treated wastewater.

Whether it is ants forming a trail or individuals crossing the street, the exchange of information is key in making everyday decisions. But new Florida State University research shows that the group decision-making process may work best when members process information a bit differently.

Social insects like honeybees and hornets evolved from solitary bees and wasps, respectively. A common trait of many social insects is age-specific behavior: when they emerge from the pupa, workers typically specialize in around-the-clock tasks inside the darkness of the nest, starting with brood care. But they gradually shift towards more cyclic tasks away from center of the nest as they get...

First introduced into wide use in the middle of the 20th century, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has since become an indispensable technique for examining materials down to their atoms, revealing molecular structure and other details without interfering with the material itself.

The old ethics rules are no longer offering adequate protection to field research subjects, according to two leading social scientists from Brown and Pennsylvania State Universities—and as a result, individual people and even entire societies are being left vulnerable to financial ruin, emotional manipulation and more.

The history of the world is carefully documented and kept in a freezer at Ohio State University.

Meadows in the Sierra Nevada mountains are critical components of watersheds. In addition to supplying water to over 25 million people in California and Nevada, meadows contain large quantities of carbon belowground. While it has been known for some time that meadows have large quantities of soil carbon, whether meadow soils are gaining or losing carbon has remained unclear.

Residents of a small town that injected an unapproved chemical into their drinking water for 10 years want the chemical manufacturer and South Carolina health regulators to pay for exposing them to the unauthorized water additive.

A group of astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin has found that a telescope idea shelved by NASA a decade ago can solve a problem that no other telescope can: It would be able to study the first stars in the universe. The team, led by NASA Hubble Fellow Anna Schauer, will publish their results in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Media outlets, governments, academics, and NGOs are increasingly recognizing and documenting seafood fraud. Policies are being designed and revamped in an attempt to reduce seafood mislabeling. And, more and more groups are testing products for mislabeling. Despite the increased attention, however, we still know very little about the consequences of seafood mislabeling. Evidence for negative...

Researchers at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), together with national and international collaborators, have developed statistical methods that allows mapping and forecasting of wildlife populations across borders.

The sinking carcasses of fish from near-surface waters deliver toxic mercury pollution to the most remote and inaccessible parts of the world's oceans, including the deepest spot of them all: the 36,000-foot-deep Mariana Trench in the northwest Pacific.

Parents, you might know the feeling. When kids get pushy and demanding, it's a tempting fantasy to shove them out of the house and let them survive on their own. Of course, we'd never put our babies in harm's way, but according to new research from the University of Illinois, many songbird parents give nestlings the boot well before they're ready.

Climate change is an emotionally charged topic that can stir political arguments and inspire people to take action. How people talk about it, especially news media and organizations dedicated to combating the issue, can influence how people think about climate change, a University of Kansas researcher shows in a pair of new studies.

Dairy cows, exposed for a few years to drinking water contaminated with heavy metals, carry more pathogens loaded with antimicrobial-resistance genes able to tolerate and survive various antibiotics.

Quantum sensors can measure extremely small changes in an environment by taking advantage of quantum phenomena like entanglement, where entangled particles can affect each other, even when separated by great distances.

An astrophysicist at the University of Bologna and a neurosurgeon at the University of Verona compared the network of neuronal cells in the human brain with the cosmic network of galaxies... and surprising similarities emerged

In a study published today in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, Senckenberg scientist Mónica Solórzano-Kraemer defines specific time periods for the terms amber, copal, and resin. Together with researchers from the Universitat de Barcelona, the Instituto Geológico y Minero de España, and the University of Kansas, she also advocates the introduction of the term "defaunation resin." These...

Children with hearing loss often fail to pick up on nuances in other people's emotional responses. As a result, they do not always understand what is going on. Yung-Ting Tsou, a Ph.D. student at Leiden University, found that having more knowledge of emotions and social conventions can help them in their everyday interactions. The doctoral defense will take place on 11 November.

What does the defense against bacterial infections have in common with hearing or fertilization? Key players in these and many other crucial biological processes belong to a large family of extracellular proteins using a common polymerization engine known as "zona pellucida (ZP) module." Detailed information on how ZP module proteins look like in their functional polymeric state has so far...

A simple method developed at KAUST uses laser beams to create graphene electrodes that have better performance than those produced through older methods.

Two hundred years ago, on November 17, Connecticut ship captain Nathaniel Palmer spotted the Antarctic continent, one of three parties to do so in 1820. Unlike explorers Edward Bransfield and Fabian von Bellingshausen, Palmer was a sealer who quickly saw economic opportunity in the rich sealing grounds on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Researchers have discovered how to engineer bacteria that normally attack human cells so that they kill other pathogens instead.