Barcelona prosecutors are suing energy giant Endesa for the deaths of hundreds of birds electrocuted by its high-wire power lines, court documents show.

In an article published in the April 8 issue of Nature, the National Institutes of Health's Somatic Cell Gene Editing Consortium provided a detailed update on the progress of their nationwide effort to develop safer and more effective methods to edit the genomes of disease-relevant somatic cells and reduce the burden of disease caused by genetic changes.

Within multicellular organisms, cells build connections with each other forming cell layers that cover the surfaces of tissues and organs and separate structures in the body. For example, the skin forms a mantle around the entire organism, and the layer of cells lining the blood vessels creates a boundary between the bloodstream and tissues.

Teaching people to become entrepreneurs requires more than just passing on entrepreneurial skills, according to a team of Penn State Berks-led researchers. Would-be entrepreneurs also need to understand—and negotiate—the barriers that they might face.

How many species of birds are there in the world? It depends on whose count you go by. The number could be as low as 10,000 or as high as 18,000. It's tough to standardize lists of species because the concept of a "species" itself is a little bit fuzzy.

Ants react to social isolation in a similar way as do humans and other social mammals. A study by an Israeli-German research team has revealed alterations to the social and hygienic behavior of ants that had been isolated from their group. The research team was particularly surprised by the fact that immune and stress genes were downregulated in the brains of the isolated ants. "This makes the...

While studying genetic diversity in bumblebees in the Rocky Mountains, U.S., researchers from Uppsala University discovered a new species. They named it Bombus incognitus and present their findings in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Long before NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18, one of its highest-level mission goals was already established: to seek out signs of ancient life on the Martian surface. In fact, the techniques used by one of the science instruments aboard the rover could have applications on Saturn's moons Enceladus and Titan as well Jupiter's moon Europa.

The hormone auxin is of central importance for the development of plants. Scientists at the University of Bayreuth and the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen have now developed a novel sensor that makes the spatial distribution of auxin in the cells of living plants visible in real time. The sensor opens up completely new insights into the inner workings of plants for...

You might not think an animal made out of stone would have much to worry about in the way of predators, and that's largely what scientists had thought about coral. Although corallivores like parrotfish and pufferfish are well known to biologists, their impact on coral growth and survival was believed to be small compared to factors like heatwaves, ocean acidification and competition from algae.

Engineers working on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have successfully folded and packed its sunshield for its upcoming million-mile (roughly 1.5 million kilometer) journey, which begins later this year.

Scientists are testing our fundamental understanding of the universe, and there's much more to discover.

In a new paper published in the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, the University of Maryland teamed up with local researchers to examine green infrastructure adoption and leadership in Tucson, Arizona, an interesting case study where grassroots efforts have helped to drive policy change in a growing urban area surrounded by water-constrained desert. Green infrastructure (any installation...

If, as the saying goes, less is more, why do we humans overdo so much?

Paleontologists have discovered two new species of mammal-like, burrowing animals that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China. The new species, described today in the journal Nature, are distantly related but independently evolved traits to support their digging lifestyle. They represent the first "scratch-diggers" discovered in this ecosystem.

India's prime minister on Wednesday told U.S. Special Presidential Envoy on Climate John Kerry that New Delhi is committed to meeting its pledges under the 2015 Paris climate change agreement and that it is on track to meet them.

A natural brilliant blue coloring has been discovered by an international team of researchers including chemists at the University of California, Davis. The new cyan blue, obtained from red cabbage, could be an alternative to synthetic blue food colorings such as the widely used FD&C Blue No. 1. The work is published April 7 in Science Advances.

Around the world, a huge amount of research and development work is currently being done on carbon-containing, or organic, molecules that emit colored light after appropriate excitation. This research field is driven by the display industry and the development of biomedical imaging techniques. While precise color tuning in organic fluorescent dyes has so far usually been achieved by mixing...

A team of researchers led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory microscopist Miaofang Chi and Vanderbilt theoretical physicist Sokrates Pantelides has used a new Scanning Transmission Electron Microscope technique to image the electron distribution in ionic compounds known as electrides— especially the electrons that float loosely within pockets and appear separate from the atomic network.

The images capture drama billions of years ago in the early Universe—glinting galaxies, glowing with stars that have exploded into supernovas and blazing jets fired from black holes.

As the number of weed populations resistant to multiple herbicides continues to soar, it is clear that better tools are needed to help growers rapidly diagnose resistance issues. With more timely access to information, they can take earlier, proactive steps to keep resistant weeds from spreading.

Using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have identified the three fastest-spinning brown dwarfs ever found. More massive than most planets but not quite heavy enough to ignite like stars, brown dwarfs are cosmic in-betweeners. And though they aren't as well known as stars and planets to most people, they are thought to number in the billions in our galaxy.

Most materials go from being solids to liquids when they are heated. One rare counter-example is helium-3, which can solidify upon heating. This counterintuitive and exotic effect, known as the Pomeranchuk effect, may now have found its electronic analog in a material known as magic-angle graphene, says a team of researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science led by Prof. Shahal Ilani, in...

With the help of machine-learning techniques, a team of astronomers has discovered a dozen quasars that have been warped by a naturally occurring cosmic "lens" and split into four similar images. Quasars are extremely luminous cores of distant galaxies that are powered by supermassive black holes.