Birds build nests to keep eggs and baby nestlings warm during cool weather, but also make adjustments in nest insulation in such a way the little ones can keep cool in very hot conditions. Mammals, such as rabbits or groundhogs, sleep or hibernate in underground burrows that provide stable, moderate temperatures and avoid above-ground conditions that often are far more extreme outside the burrow.

Threats of heavy wind and rain from a tropical weather system spinning Friday in the Gulf of Mexico prompted the closure of Louisiana coastal oyster beds, forced postponement of weekend Juneteenth celebrations in Mississippi and Alabama and could tamp down Father's Day tourism on the northern Gulf Coast.

A Connecticut aquarium plans to auction off the chance to name three of its five recently arrived beluga whales to raise money for their care and to offset the cost of transporting them from Canada.

After graduating or leaving college, many students face a difficult choice: Try to pay off their student loans as fast as possible to save on interest, or enroll in an income-based repayment plan, which offers affordable payments based on their income and forgives any balance remaining after 20 or 25 years.

A new study paves the way for the development of next generation therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), the most frequent cause of healthcare-acquired gastrointestinal infections and death in developed countries.

An international team led by researchers at Princeton University has uncovered a new pattern of ordering of electric charge in a novel superconducting material.

Various automobile companies are preparing to shift from internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs). However, due to higher cost, EVs are not as easily accessible to consumers; hence, several governments are subsidizing EVs to promote sales. For EV costs to compete with those of IC engine vehicles, their batteries, which account for about 30% of their cost, must be more...

A new paper in Scientific Reports led by researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science challenges increased salinity and seawater temperatures as the established explanation for a decades-long increase in the prevalence and deadliness of a major oyster disease in the coastal waters of the mid-Atlantic.

Geologic activity on Earth appears to follow a 27.5-million-year cycle, giving the planet a 'pulse,' according to a new study published in the journal Geoscience Frontiers.

Professor Konstantin Arutyunov of the HSE Tikhonov Moscow Institute of Electronics and Mathematics (MIEM HSE), together with Chinese researchers, has developed a graphene-based mechanical resonator, in which coherent emission of sound energy quanta, or phonons, has been induced. Such devices, called phonon lasers, have wide potential for application in information processing, as well as classical...

Climate warming plays a larger role than plant genes in influencing the number and identity of fungal species on oak leaves, especially in autumn. Recently published in the journal New Phytologist, this research by ecologists sheds light on how warming and tree genes affect the dynamics of fungal communities across the season.

COVID-19 has changed the world in unimaginable ways. Some have even been positive, with new vaccines developed in record time. Even the extraordinary lockdowns, which have had severe effects on movement and commerce, have had beneficial effects on the environment and therefore, ironically, on health. Studies from all around the world, including China, Europe and India, have found major drops in...

In October of 2024, NASA's Artemis Program will return astronauts to the surface of the moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. In the years and decades that follow, multiple space agencies and commercial partners plan to build the infrastructure that will allow for a long-term human presence on the moon. An important part of these efforts involves building habitats that can ensure the...

Food has become one of the major challenges of the 21st century. According to a study carried out by CNRS scientists, an organic, sustainable, biodiversity-friendly agro-food system, could be implemented in Europe and would allow a balanced coexistence between agriculture and the environment.

Scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys have gained a deeper insight into the intricacies of autophagy, the process in which cells degrade and recycle cellular components. The findings, published in Current Biology, describe how the "trash bags" in a cell—called autophagosomes—are tagged to direct their movement to the cellular "recycling plants" where waste is processed. The research opens new...

Honey bees are the most economically important agricultural pollinators on Earth, but their populations have been in decline for decades. At Indiana University, researchers are investigating how to use the honey bee's natural microbiome to keep them healthy, which has implications for food security and the agricultural industry.

Professor Alexander Szameit and his group of physicists from the University of Rostock, in collaboration with Professor Stefano Longhi from the Polytechnic University of Milan, discovered a novel and paradoxical behavior of light waves: Despite being tightly confined in a microscopic volume, a new kind of disorder allows optical signals to suddenly show up at far away regions. Such abrupt...

Light-driven molecular motors have been around for over 20 years. These motors typically take microseconds to nanoseconds for one revolution. Thomas Jansen, associate professor of physics at the University of Groningen, and Master's student Atreya Majumdar have now designed an even faster molecular motor. The new design is driven by light only and can make a full turn in picoseconds using the...

Charles Darwin was a careful scientist. In the middle of the 19th century, while he was collecting evidence for his theory that species evolve by natural selection, he noticed it didn't explain the fancy tails of male peacocks, the antlers paraded by male deer, or why some the males of some species are far larger then their female counterparts.

After being developed via a virtual learning experience, more than 70 experiments built by university students across the United States are ready for flight on NASA suborbital flight vehicles.

Many employees have come to prefer working from home after being forced to do so more than a year ago when the pandemic started. By some estimates, at least one-quarter of employees will still be working remotely multiple days a week at the end of 2021.

An Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) expert has warned that the effects of climate change overseas could have a potentially devastating impact on the economy here in the UK.

Quantum computers developed to date have been one-of-a-kind devices that fill entire laboratories. Now, physicists at the University of Innsbruck have built a prototype of an ion trap quantum computer that can be used in industry. It fits into two 19-inch server racks like those found in data centers throughout the world. The compact, self-sustained device demonstrates how this technology will...

Alpha-actinin can cross-link actin filaments and anchor them to the Z-disk in sarcomeres. Sarcomeres are a structural unit of myofibril in striated muscle. The FATZ (filamin, α-actinin- and telethonin-binding protein of the Z-disk) protein can interact with α-actinin and other core Z-disk proteins that contribute to myofibril assembly and maintenance. In a new report now on Science Advances,...