Signals can be amplified by an optimum amount of noise, but stochastic resonance is a fragile phenomenon. Researchers at AMOLF were the first to investigate the role of memory for this phenomenon in an oil-filled optical microcavity. The effects of slow non-linearity (i.e. memory) on stochastic resonance were never considered before, but these experiments suggest that stochastic resonance becomes...

Wearing soot-smudged, fire-resistant clothing and helmets, several wildland firefighters armed with hoes moved through a stand of ponderosa pines as flames tore through the underbrush.

The launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying 36 UK telecommunication and internet satellites has been postponed until Friday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

Although insect larvae may seem harmless to humans, they can be extremely dangerous to the plant species that many of them feed on, and some of those plant species are important as agricultural crops. Although plants cannot simply flee from danger like animals typically would, many have nonetheless evolved ingenious strategies to defend themselves from herbivores. Herbivorous insect larvae will...

Materials engineers don't like to see line defects in functional materials.

Although it is not spread through human contact, Francisella tularensis is one of the most infectious pathogenic bacteria known to science—so virulent, in fact, that it is considered a serious potential bioterrorist threat. It is thought that humans can contract respiratory tularemia, or rabbit fever—a rare and deadly disease—by inhaling as few as 10 airborne organisms.

A stranded beluga whale found dead in the mudflats near Potter Marsh on Tuesday will likely help scientists untangle more information about the critically endangered Cook Inlet beluga population.

A study led by research groups of Prof. Fu Qiaomei from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Zhang Hucai from Yunnan University covers the largest temporal transect of population dynamics in East Asia so far and offers a clearer picture of the deep population history of northern East Asia.

Oysters' exposure to plastics is concerning, particularly because these materials can accumulate and release metals which are then absorbed by the mollusks. According to a recent study published in the journal Chemosphere, the combined presence of nanoplastics and arsenic affects the biological functions of oysters. This study was conducted by the Institut national de la recherche scientifique...

A total investment in nature of $8.1 trillion is required between now and 2050—while annual investment should reach $536 billion annually by 2050—in order to successfully tackle the interlinked climate, biodiversity, and land degradation crises, according to the State of Finance for Nature report released today.

Nicola Marzari, head of the Theory and Simulation of Materials laboratory at EFPL and director of NCCR MARVEL, has just published a review of electronic-structure methods as part of a special edition Insight on Computational Materials Design, published by Nature Materials. The article, written with Andrea Ferretti of CNR–Instituto Nanoscienze and Chris Wolverton of Northwestern University,...

As reported in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology, a newly-discovered bacterium named Candidatus phytoplasma dypsidis has been found to cause a fatal wilt disease.

Astronauts have been going to space since 1961, but they still don't have a refrigerator to use for keeping food cold on long missions to the moon or Mars.

Researchers from the Single-Cell Center at the Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology (QIBEBT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a technique to sort and sequence the genome of bacteria in soil one bacterial cell at a time, while also identifying what its function is in the soil environment.

Climate skeptics who aren't persuaded by the existing evidence from climate change are unlikely to change their minds for many years, according to a newly published quantitative study by a University of Oregon environmental economist.

Immunosensors are widely used in immunoassays to detect antigens. One such immunosensor is a quenchbody (Q-body), which contains a modified antibody fragment with a quenched fluorescent dye. When an antigen binds to the Q-body, the dye leaves the antibody and the fluorescence intensifies. The change in fluorescence intensity is easy to measure, making Q-body-based antigen detection systems...

In the perpetual arms races between bacteria and human-made antibiotics, there is a new tool to give human medicine the edge, in part by revealing bacterial weaknesses and potentially by leading to more targeted or new treatments for bacterial infections.

Australian researchers recently reported a sharp decline in the abundance of coral along the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists are seeing similar declines in coral colonies throughout the world, including reefs off of Hawaii, the Florida Keys and in the Indo-Pacific region.

How materials behave depends on the interactions between countless atoms. You could see this as a giant group chat in which atoms are continuously exchanging quantum information. Researchers from Delft University of Technology in collaboration with RWTH Aachen University and the Research Center Jülich have now been able to intercept a chat between two atoms. They present their findings in Science...

One hundred fifty years ago, Dmitri Mendeleev created the periodic table, a system for classifying atoms based on the properties of their nuclei. This week, a team of biologists studying the tree of life has unveiled a new classification system for cell nuclei and discovered a method for transmuting one type of cell nucleus into another.

A new paper, published recently in PLOS Computational Biology by a team including UMass Amherst researchers, seeks to help scientists structure their lab-group meetings so that they are more inclusive, more productive and, ultimately, lead to better science.

Many seabirds in the Northern Hemisphere are struggling to breed—and in the Southern Hemisphere, they may not be far behind. These are the conclusions of a study, published May 28 in Science, analyzing more than 50 years of breeding records for 67 seabird species worldwide.

The launching of thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit by tech billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX threatens the "de-facto monopolisation" of space, the head of competitor Arianespace Stephane Israel has warned.

A Penn State scientist studying crystal structures has developed a new mathematical formula that may solve a decades-old problem in understanding spacetime, the fabric of the universe proposed in Einstein's theories of relativity.