Flies predict changes in their visual environment in order to execute evasive maneuvers, according to new research from the University of Chicago. This reliance on predictive information to guide behavior suggests that prediction may be a general feature of animal nervous systems in supporting quick behavioral changes. The study was published on May 20 in PLOS Computational Biology.

Researchers have long been interested in finding ways to use simple hydrocarbons, chemicals made of a small number of carbon and hydrogen atoms, to create value-added chemicals, ones used in fuels, plastics, and other complex materials. Methane, a major component of natural gas, is one such chemical that scientists would like to find to ways to use more effectively, since there is currently no...

It's always good when your hard work reflects well on you.

Oysters live and grow in saltwater. However, the saltiness of their habitat can change dramatically, especially where the mighty Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana oysters from the northern Gulf of Mexico may experience some of the lowest salinity in the world due to the influx of fresh water from the Mississippi River. In addition, increased rainfall and large-scale river...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have traced the locations of five brief, powerful radio blasts to the spiral arms of five distant galaxies.

Building more homes and buildings with wood has been on the radar for years as a way to offset carbon emissions, though construction companies have been hesitant to take the material in broader use. A study at Aalto University in Finland is now the first to show that building with wood can be a sound investment.

Cornell University engineers and plant scientists have teamed up to develop a low-cost system that allows grape growers to predict their yields much earlier in the season and more accurately than costly traditional methods.

To deliver real-time feedback to support employee development and rapid innovation, many companies are replacing formal, review-based performance management with systems that enable frequent and continuous employee evaluation. New research in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research examines the role of these applications to understand the effects on employee performance appraisals.

In a recent study, conducted in Poland in 2020 and published in the peer-reviewed journal Social Psychological Bulletin, scientists concluded it was the government and the system that most of the participants attributed responsibility to for the COVID-19 incidence rates. Furthermore, political views and party preferences are reported to play an incomparably more significant role in their responses...

The Atlantic hurricane season will be busier than normal, but it's unlikely to be as crazy as 2020's record-shattering year, meteorologists said Thursday.

Comets that circle the Sun in very elongated orbits spread their debris so thin along their orbit or eject it out of the solar system altogether so that their meteor showers are hard to detect. From a new meteor shower survey published in the journal Icarus, researchers now report that they can detect showers from the debris in the path of comets that pass close to Earth orbit and are known to...

A new study published in the journal Science highlights the opportunity to complement current climate mitigation scenarios with scenarios that capture the interdependence among investors' perception of future climate risk, the credibility of climate policies, and the allocation of investments across low- and high-carbon assets in the economy.

Carbon exists in various forms. In addition to diamond and graphite, there are recently discovered forms with astonishing properties. For example graphene, with a thickness of just one atomic layer, is the thinnest known material, and its unusual properties make it an extremely exciting candidate for applications like future electronics and high-tech engineering. In graphene, each carbon atom is...

Analyzing data obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers found a galaxy with a spiral morphology by only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang. This is the most ancient galaxy of its kind ever observed. The discovery of a galaxy with a spiral structure at such an early stage is an important clue to solving the classic questions of astronomy: "How and when...

450 million years ago, the first plants left aquatic life. Researchers from the CNRS and the Université de Toulouse III—Paul Sabatier, in collaboration with INRAE, have succeeded in demonstrating that this colonization of land by plants was made possible by a partnership between plants and fungi. Validating this 40-year-old hypothesis allows us to understand a stage that was crucial to the...

Ancient pollen samples and a new statistical approach may shed light on the global rate of change of vegetation and eventually on how much climate change and humans have played a part in altering landscapes, according to an international team of researchers.

A large-scale research project at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has revealed insight into the relationship between surface debris on glaciers and the rate at which they melt.

A team of researchers at the University of Ottawa has found a way to use visible light to transform carbon dioxide gas, or CO2, into solid carbon forms that emit light. This development creates a new, low-energy CO2 reduction pathway to solid carbon that will have implications across many fields.

Our reliance on fossil fuels as a primary energy source has pushed air pollution to an all-time high, resulting in several environmental and health concerns. Among the major pollutants, nitrogen oxide (NOx) accumulation can cause severe respiratory diseases and imbalance in the Earth's nitrogen cycle. Reducing NOx accumulation is, therefore, an issue of utmost importance.

Passports are a tangible way of showing where one has traveled, as the stamps provide a chronological order that traces an individual's journey across international borders. When an object's origins are not readily apparent, a variety of sources can be relied upon to learn more, which might include labels, sales receipts, foreign translations, oral histories, GPS coordinates and itemized personal...

The study sought to describe and explain gender pay differences in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services between 2010 and 2018. HHS comprises a quarter of the country's governmental public health workers, with over 80,000 employees.

Passing down a healthy genome is a critical part of creating viable offspring. But what happens when you have harmful modifications in your genome that you don't want to pass down? Baby plants have evolved a method to wipe the slate clean and reinstall only the modifications that they need to grow and develop. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Professor & HHMI Investigator Rob Martienssen and...

As first pointed out by the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild, black holes bend space-time to an extreme degree due to their extraordinary concentration of mass, and heat up the matter in their vicinity so that it begins to glow. New Zealand physicist Roy Kerr showed rotation can change the black hole's size and the geometry of its surroundings. The 'edge' of a black hole is known as the event...

Juvenile salmon migrating to the sea in the Sacramento River face a gauntlet of hazards in an environment drastically modified by humans, especially with respect to historical patterns of stream flow. Many studies have shown that survival rates of juvenile salmon improve as the amount of water flowing downstream increases, but 'more is better' is not a useful guideline for agencies managing...