Born in food web ecology, the concept of trophic levels—the hierarchy of who eats who in the natural world—is an elegant way to understand how biomass and energy move through a natural system. It's only natural that the idea found its way into the realm of aquaculture, where marine and freshwater farmers try to maximize their product with efficient inputs.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of man-made chemical compounds and a current, emerging concern to environmental health. PFAS substances have unique characteristics-resistance to heat, water, oil and stains-that make them useful in a variety of industrial applications and popular in consumer goods. Many PFAS are stable and long-lasting in the environment, acquiring the name...

The sunshine is back and the ice has melted. But more than a week after a deep freeze across the South, many communities are still grappling with getting clean water to their residents.

Food waste is a major problem in the U.S., and young adults are among the worst culprits. Many of them attend college or university and live on campus, making dining halls a prime target for waste reduction efforts. And a simple intervention can make a big difference, a University of Illinois study shows.

As climate change increases the occurrence of catastrophic natural disasters around the world, international organizations are looking for ways to reduce the risk of such disasters. One approach under exploration is the humanitarian community's forecast-based early action (FbA), which seeks to enable pre-emptive actions based on forecasts of extreme events.

Southern California can now expect to see post-wildfire landslides occurring almost every year, with major events expected roughly every ten years, a new study finds. The results show Californians are now facing a double whammy of increased wildfire and landslide risk caused by climate change-induced shifts in the state's wet and dry seasons, according to researchers who mapped landslide...

An international team of scientists has developed a system that can generate random numbers over a hundred times faster than current technologies, paving the way towards faster, cheaper, and more secure data encryption in today's digitally connected world.

As COVID-19 impacts lives around the world—a new skeleton study is reconstructing ancient pandemics to assess human's evolutionary ability to fight off leprosy, tuberculosis and treponematoses with help from declining rates of transmission when the germs became widespread.

Graphene is incredibly strong, lightweight, conductive ... the list of its superlative properties goes on.

A new theory by Rice University scientists could boost the growing field of spintronics, devices that depend on the state of an electron as much as the brute electrical force required to push it.

Large carnivores are generally sensitive to ecosystem changes because their specialized diet and position at the top of the trophic pyramid is associated with small population sizes. This in turn leads to lower genetic diversity in top predators compared to animals lower down the food chain. Genetic diversity is very important for a species' ability to survive and adapt to future changes.

After traveling several billion miles toward the Sun, a wayward young comet-like object orbiting among the giant planets has found a temporary parking place along the way. The object has settled near a family of captured ancient asteroids, called Trojans, that are orbiting the Sun alongside Jupiter. This is the first time a comet-like object has been spotted near the Trojan population.

The mechanism by which the plant hormone cytokinin controls cell division has been discovered—a breakthrough that significantly improves our understanding of how plants grow.

Paleo-ecologists from The University of New Mexico and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have demonstrated that the offspring of enormous carnivorous dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus rex may have fundamentally re-shaped their communities by out-competing smaller rival species.

On a low-lying island in the Caribbean, the future of the critically endangered Bahama Oriole just got a shade brighter. A new study led by researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) estimates the population of these striking black and yellow birds at somewhere between 1300 and 2800 individuals in the region they surveyed, suggesting the overall population is likely several...

When building a nest, previous experience raising chicks will influence the choices birds make, according to a new study by University of Alberta scientists.

In many cases, unions in Europe have helped nonunionized workers whose jobs are precarious, according to new Cornell University research.

Short notice versus no advance notice makes a huge difference when it comes to employee scheduling in the restaurant industry. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds checks for parties handled by servers who were asked (with no advance notice) to stay longer than their scheduled shift dropped by 4.4%, on average.

A widespread field search for a rare Australian native bee not recorded for almost a century has found it's been there all along—but is probably under increasing pressure to survive.

One thing that makes SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, elusive to the immune system is that it is covered in sugars called glycans. Once SARS-CoV-2 infects someone's body, it becomes covered in that person's unique glycans, making it difficult for the immune system to recognize the virus as something it needs to fight. Those glycans also play an important role in activating the virus....

Fiber-optic cables run underneath nearly all city grids across the United States and provide internet and cable TV to millions, but what if those systems could also provide valuable information related to hazardous events such as earthquakes and flooding? A team of researchers at Penn State have found they can do just that.

Sea turtles are witnesses and victims of the high level of plastic pollution of the Adriatic Sea. A group of researchers at the University of Bologna analyzed 45 turtles hospitalized at Fondazione Cetacea in Riccione and found plastic debris in their feces. Besides confirming the role of turtles as ideal sentinels to monitor plastic pollution in the sea, the results of their analysis—published...

The exfoliation of graphite into graphene layers inspired the investigation of thousands of layered materials: amongst them transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). These semiconductors can be used to make conductive inks to manufacture printed electronic and optoelectronic devices. However, defects in their structure may hinder their performance. Now, Graphene Flagship researchers have overcome...

Antarctica's northern George VI Ice Shelf experienced record melting during the 2019-2020 summer season compared to 31 previous summers of dramatically lower melt, a University of Colorado Boulder-led study found. The extreme melt coincided with record-setting stretches when local surface air temperatures were at or above the freezing point.