Plastic is a major threat to the environment. Of particular ecological risk is its manifestation as microplastics (<5 mm in size) in the agricultural environment. Scientists addressed this issue in a recent study, looking into the levels, shapes, and sizes of microplastics in Korean agricultural soils. They reported new insights on the agricultural sources of microplastics, contributing to a...

Researchers have shown that they can facilitate walking, relieve dizziness and improve quality of life in patients with BVH by surgically implanting a stimulator that electrically bypasses malfunctioning areas of the inner ear and partially restores the sensation of balance.

The songs of fin whales can be used for seismic imaging of the oceanic crust, providing scientists a novel alternative to conventional surveying.

Physicists take a step toward building a fault-tolerant quantum computer. They have realized a novel type of QEC where the quantum errors are spontaneously corrected.

Subconsciously, our bodies keep time for us through an ancient means - the circadian clock. A new article reviews how the clock controls various aspects of homeostasis, and how organs coordinate their function over the course of a day.

A scientist has updated Mars chronology models to find that terrains shaped by ancient water activity on the planet's surface may be hundreds of millions of years older than previously thought. This new chronology for Mars, based on the latest dynamical models for the formation and evolution of the solar system, is particularly significant as the days count down until NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance...

Dengue virus is among growing number of mosquito-borne viruses that have adapted to spread in urban environments and are spreading with the increasing rate of urbanization. Now, researchers have identified tap water access in densely populated neighborhoods as a strong predictor of dengue risk in the city of Delhi.

A new genetic study of Native Hawaiians finds that people who have a greater proportion of Polynesian ancestry in their genomes face a higher risk of obesity, Type-2 diabetes and heart failure.

The majority of the population can produce neutralizing antibodies against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in severe cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), according to a new study. Moreover, the results support the use of combination antibody therapy to prevent and treat COVID-19.

A new computational analysis suggests that people under the age of 20 are about half as susceptible to COVID-19 infection as adults, and they are less likely to infect others.

Researchers discovered a single gene alteration that may help explain cognitive differences between modern humans and our predecessor, and used that information to develop Neanderthal-like brain organoids in the lab.

Scientists have challenged our current understanding of how galaxies form by unveiling pictures of a young galaxy in the early life of the Universe which appears surprisingly mature.

Researchers found people are more successful at identifying language associated with Republican speech than Democratic speech patterns.

In recent years, active, self-propelled particles have received growing interest amongst the scientific community. The 'swirlon' - a novel state of active matter - displayed a stunning behavior whereby instead of moving with acceleration, the quasi-particle groups moved with a constant velocity, proportional to the applied force and in the same direction of the force. This conduct seemingly...

A new largescale genetic analysis has found biological mechanisms that contribute to making people more susceptible to muscle weakness in later life, finding that diseases such as osteoarthritis and diabetes may play a large role in susceptibility.

Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a concentration of smaller black holes lurking there. New data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have led to the first measurement of the extent of a collection of black holes in a core-collapsed globular cluster.

Researchers developed a superconducting nanowire that could enable efficient, easy-to-make electronics. The advance could boost quantum computing, as well as magnetic sensors for applications in brain imaging and telescopes.

The golden-mantled ground squirrel is one of the most photographed animals in the Rocky Mountains. It's also joining many other species of rodents and shrews in Colorado that are making an ominous trek: They're climbing uphill to escape from climate change.

Fusing the neck's top two vertebrae can prevent repeat strokes in children with bow hunter syndrome, a rare condition that affects a handful of U.S. pediatric patients each year, researchers suggest in a recent study. The finding offers a new way to treat these children and protect them from potentially lifelong neurological consequences.

Researchers have mined and combined information from two databases to link pollen and key plant traits to generate confidence in the ability to reconstruct past ecosystem services. The approach can help understand how plants performed different benefits useful for humans over the past 21,000 years, and how these services responded to human and climate disturbances.

Understanding how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions is crucial to developing effective strategies for protecting important agricultural crops from a changing climate. New research reveals an important process by which plants switch between amplified and dampened stress responses.

Ebola is so pernicious because it pulls a fast one on the body, disguising itself as a dying cell. A study identifies a pathway that all filoviruses use to gain entry into our cells -- and shows how they can be stopped in their tracks by at least one FDA-approved drug.

A negative experience with food usually leaves us unable to stomach the thought of eating that particular dish again. Using sugar-loving snails as models, researchers believe these bad experiences could be causing a switch in our brains, which impacts our future eating habits.

New research shows that biodiversity is important not just at the traditional scale of short-term plot experiments -- in which ecologists monitor the health of a single meadow, forest grove, or pond after manipulating its species counts -- but when measured over decades and across regional landscapes as well. The findings can help guide conservation planning and enhance efforts to make human...