A variety of researchers have highlighted the potential to leverage nature to combat climate change, by planting trees or growing crops to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But a bleak new report from the UN’s climate panel stresses that relying heavily on these approaches could present real risks as well. The nearly 4,000-page analysis, released on Monday, warns that more than 3...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday released the second part of its sixth major assessment report.

Scientists demonstrate an optical trapping technique using nanotextured black silicon that can efficiently trap polymer chains. By adjusting the laser intensity, these 'optical tweezers' can control the florescence color emitted through a local concentration of a perylene-modified polymer solution. From a low intensity blue to high intensity orange, this reversible and fully remote technology can...

Labelling of plastic products needs a drastic overhaul including a new 'sustainability scale' to help consumers, researchers say.

A new, highly sensitive system for detecting the production of hydrogen gas may play an important role in the quest to develop hydrogen as an environmentally friendly and economical alternative to fossil fuels.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, can create custom parts for electromagnetic devices on-demand and at a low cost. These devices are highly sensitive, and each component requires precise fabrication. Until recently, though, the only way to diagnose printing errors was to make, measure and test a device or to use in-line simulation, both of which are computationally expensive and inefficient....

A clinical trial has shown that the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab increased survival rates for head and neck cancer patients with intermediate risk.

Kids who experience bullying are victims of injury or discomfort from peer teasing, harassment, and physical abuse. While some costs of bullying—school absenteeism, suicidal thoughts and actions—have been documented, little research has been done on the two-way relationship between bullying and skill accumulation in children.

Oxygen is critical for life, but what promoted the first rise in atmospheric oxygen on Earth and precisely when it happened have been challenging scientists for the last 70 years.

A team of Brazilian and British scientists has discovered that extreme wind and water deficiency are the main causes of tree death in the southern Amazon.

The U.S. fusion community has actively called for an immediate design effort for a cost-effective pilot plant to generate electricity in the 2040s. This effort and related community recommendations are documented in the 2020 report of the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee entitled "Powering the Future: Fusion & Plasmas."

The only references we have for "life" are the forms we know on Earth. Astrobiologists suspect that the search for alien life, and even for the origins of life on Earth, may require a broader scope. A NASA-funded team of researchers is developing tools to predict the features of life as we don't know it. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team...

Researchers from two independent research teams have discovered how the mislocalization of a protein, known as TDP-43, alters the genetic instructions for UNC13A, providing a possible therapeutic target that could also have implications in treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and other forms of dementia. ALS and FTD are two neurodegenerative disorders in...

A team of researchers is developing tools to predict the features of life as we don't know it.

A new paper co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign expert who studies the intersection of labor unions and politics has found that political parties whose manifestos contained greater percentages of pro-worker ideas were more appealing to voters.

NASA is exploring ways to keep the International Space Station in orbit without Russian help, but doesn't see any immediate signs Moscow is withdrawing from the collaboration following the invasion of Ukraine, a senior official said Monday.

A divided US Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday in an environmental regulation case with potentially far-reaching implications for the Biden administration's fight against climate change.

The launch of a joint Europe-Russian mission to Mars this year is now "very unlikely" due to sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine, the European Space Agency said Monday.

Ukraine is not the only theater of conflict in the current war between Russia and the former Soviet republic. The 30 nations of NATO are coordinating sanctions, sending supplies, and moving troops and weaponry into position to defend the alliance from a wider war. All 193 member countries of the United Nations are involved too, as the U.N. scheduled an emergency meeting of the General...

Labeling of plastic products needs a drastic overhaul, including a new "sustainability scale" to help consumers, researchers say.

Physicists have experimentally observed a quirky behavior of the quantum world: a 'quantum boomerang' effect that occurs when particles in a disordered system are kicked out of their locations. Instead of landing elsewhere as one might expect, they turn around and come back to where they started and stop there.