Former Florida senator Bill Nelson was sworn in Monday as head of NASA, hailing a "new day" for space exploration as the United States seeks to return to the Moon.

Throughout the history of the West, human actions have often rushed the desert—and their actions backfired. In the 1920s, the Colorado River Compact notoriously overallocated water still used today by several western states because water measurements were taken during a wet period.

Businesses sometimes align themselves with important values such as a clean environment, feminism, or racial justice, thinking it's a win-win: the value gets boosted along with the company's bottom line.

An abnormal build up of carbohydrates—sugars and starches—in the kernels and leaves of a mutant line of corn can be traced to one misregulated gene, and that discovery offers clues about how the plant deals with stress.

A new study found overlooked tsunami hazards related to undersea, near-shore strike-slip faults, especially for coastal cities adjacent to faults that traverse inland bays. Several areas around the world may fall into this category, including the San Francisco Bay area, Izmit Bay in Turkey and the Gulf of Al-Aqaba in Egypt.

New work from a Stanford University-led team of researchers including Carnegie's Arthur Grossman and Tingting Xiang unravels a longstanding mystery about the relationship between form and function in the genetic material of a diverse group of algae called dinoflagellates.

From radio to television to the internet, telecommunications transmissions are simply information carried on light waves and converted to electrical signals.

A research team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory bioengineered a microbe to efficiently turn waste into itaconic acid, an industrial chemical used in plastics and paints.

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, most of the coral reef ecosystems on our planet—whether in Australia, the Maldives or the Caribbean—will have disappeared or be in very bad shape by the end of this century. That's because global warming is pushing ocean temperatures above the limit that single-cell algae, which are corals' main allies, can withstand. These algae live inside coral...

Researchers from NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Genomics and Systems Biology have successfully sequenced the genome of previously extinct date palm varieties that lived more than 2,000 years ago. They did so using date palm seeds that were recovered from archaeological sites in the southern Levant region and radiocarbon-dated from the 4th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. The seeds were germinated to...

A new Cornell University-led study examines how temperature affects fishing behavior and catches among inland fisher households in Cambodia, with important implications for understanding climate change.

In the first Biden administration rule aimed at combating climate change, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to phase down production and use of hydrofluorocarbons, highly potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners.

Biologists at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU in Munich) have significantly enhanced the tolerance of blue-green algae to high light levels—with the aid of artificial evolution in the laboratory. 

In the aftermath of George Floyd's 2020 murder by former police officer Derek Chauvin, many families may find themselves actively engaging in—or uncomfortably fumbling around—discussions about race. For white parents looking to clearly communicate antiracist ideologies with their preadolescent children, a new study offers some insight.

A giant saber-toothed cat lived in North America between 5 million and 9 million years ago, weighing up to 900 pounds and hunting prey that likely weighed 1,000 to 2,000 pounds, scientists reported today in a new study.

Belief in conspiracies about the COVID-19 pandemic increased through the early months of the U.S. outbreak among people who reported being heavy users of conservative and social media, a study by Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) researchers has found.

Ever look at a flatfish like a flounder or sole, with two eyes on one side of its head, and think, "How did that happen?"

Living materials, which are made by housing biological cells within a non-living matrix, have gained popularity in recent years as scientists recognize that often the most robust materials are those that mimic nature.

The human world is, increasingly, an urban one—and that means elevators. Hong Kong, the hometown of physicist Zhijie Feng (Boston University), adds new elevators at the rate of roughly 1500 every year...making vertical transport an alluring topic for quantitative research.

In recent decades, Spain has undergone rapid social changes in terms of gender equality, despite, as a result of the Franco dictatorship, starting from a more backward position than most European countries. This process is hampered by the economic downturn that began in 2008, underlining the importance of the economic context in the development of gender inequality levels. Little attention has...

California clean tech innovator Bloom Energy, with its noncombustion, low-emission fuel cells, is hardly taking the same approach to powering the planet as oil giant Chevron, but one thing the companies have in common are slick promotional campaigns defining them as environmental pioneers.

The Bornean subspecies of Rajah scops owl (Otus brookii brookii), documented in the wild for the first time since 1892, may be its own unique species and deserving of a conservation designation. Published April 28 in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center ecologist Andy Boyce reported the rediscovery and photographed this elusive subspecies in the mountainous forests...

Separately and to the untrained eye, they are not particularly distinguished rocks—the backdrop to several holes at the Forest Park Golf Course, part of an excavation to improve the water system at Lake Ashburton, or left behind in abandoned quarries and mines around the area.

Two of the most destructive forces of nature—earthquakes and tsunamis—might actually be more of a threat than current estimates according to new research conducted by scientists at The University of New Mexico and the Nanyang Technological University published today in Nature Geoscience.