A brutal start to the wildfire season in the western United States and Canada worsened Thursday as a massive Oregon blaze exploded in dry, windy conditions and a new California blaze threatened communities devastated by the 2018 Camp Fire.

The Biden administration said Thursday that it is ending large-scale, old-growth timber sales in the country's largest national forest—the Tongass National Forest in Alaska—and will focus on forest restoration, recreation and other noncommercial uses.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) and nitrogen water pollution from agriculture are top environmental priorities in the United States. Key to achieving climate goals is helping producers navigate carbon markets, while also helping the environment and improving farm income.

Corn growers can choose from a wide array of products to make the most of their crop, but the latest could bring seaweed extract to a field near you. The marine product is just one class in a growing market of crop biostimulants marketed for corn.

Concern has grown about prison systems' use of extended solitary confinement as a way to manage violent and disruptive incarcerated people. A new study identified groups that are more likely to be placed in extended solitary management (ESM). The study found that individuals sent to ESM differed considerably from the rest of the prison population in terms of mental health, education, language,...

Jumping spiders can distinguish living from non-living objects in their peripheral vision using the same cues used by humans and other vertebrate animals, according to a study publishing 15th July 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Massimo De Agrò of Harvard University in the United States.

Ph.D.-trained scientists are essential contributors to the workforce in diverse employment sectors that include academia, industry, government, and non-profit organizations. Therefore, best practices for training the future biomedical workforce are of national concern. To complement coursework and laboratory research training, many institutions—including UNC-Chapel Hill—now offer professional...

Cells, like many of us, fend off germs with cleaning products.

Scientists have waited months for access to highly accurate protein structure prediction since DeepMind presented remarkable progress in this area at the 2020 Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction, or CASP14, conference. The wait is now over.

Electronic circuits that compute and store information contain millions of tiny switches that control the flow of electric current. A deeper understanding of how these tiny switches work could help researchers push the frontiers of modern computing.

Hyenas are a highly social species, living in groups that can number more than 100. But within their clans, there is order: A specific matrilineal hierarchy governs societies in this species where females are dominant to males.

A collaborative research team, led by the University of Liverpool, has discovered a new inorganic material with the lowest thermal conductivity ever reported. This discovery paves the way for the development of new thermoelectric materials that will be critical for a sustainable society.

A research team at the Humboldt University Berlin and the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) developed an agent-based computer model to simulate the journey of sperm cells through the female genital tract. Key factors for a successful transit could be identified without the use of animal experiments and were published in the scientific journal PLoS Computational Biology.

Dutch Queen Maxima teamed up with a small robot Thursday to unveil a steel 3D-printed pedestrian bridge over a canal in the heart of Amsterdam's red light district.

When the titans of space—galaxy clusters—collide, extraordinary things can happen. A new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory examines the repercussions after two galaxy clusters clashed.

What are the fundamental skills that young children need to develop at the start of school for future academic success? While a large body of research shows strong links between cognitive skills (attention, memory, etc.) and academic skills on the one hand, and emotional skills on the other, in students from primary school to university, few studies have explored these links in children aged 3 to...

Two-dimensional 'nanosheets' made of bonds between metal atoms and organic molecules are attractive candidates for photoelectric conversion, but get corroded easily. In a new study, scientists from Japan and Taiwan present a new nanosheet design using iron and benzene hexathiol that exhibits record stability to air exposure for 60 days, signaling the commercial optoelectronic applications of these...

Two fossil teeth from a distant relative of North American gophers have scientists rethinking how some mammals reached the Caribbean Islands.

PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), a class of conserved non-coding small RNAs, are essential for sex determination, defense against viruses, maintaining genome integrity of diverse animal species. However, many piRNA clusters reside within or close to the heterochromatin, a transcriptional silencing loci. How piRNAs are transcribed remains unknown.

Blue Origin said Thursday an 18-year-old paying customer will fly to space on board the company's maiden crewed spaceflight on July 20, becoming the youngest ever astronaut.

A small regulatory RNA found in many problematic bacteria, including Escherichia coli, appears to be responsible for managing the response of these bacteria to environmental stresses. Professor Charles Dozois from Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) and doctoral student Hicham Bessaiah see a promising avenue for more effective treatment of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their...

Residents of the German town of Mayen stood stunned and helpless on Thursday as the worst flooding in years submerged their homes and sent torrents flowing down the streets.

New research seeks to understand what drives decisions in data analyses and the process through which academics test a hypothesis by comparing the analyses of different researchers who tested the same hypotheses on the same dataset. Analysts reported radically different analyses and dispersed empirical outcomes, including, in some cases, significant effects in opposite directions from each other....

The business world is familiar with Peter Drucker's assertion that "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." For the sake of environmental sustainability and food security, there is an urgent need for agriculture to improve its use of nitrogen fertilizers, but can we properly measure it?