California is experiencing one of the driest starts to spring in decades, data showed Friday, and absent a heavy dose of April and May showers the state's drought will deepen and that could lead to stricter rules on water use and another devastating wildfire season.

A first-of-its-kind article coauthored by scholars at Resources for the Future (RFF) and Columbia University in the journal American Economic Review finds that the loss of a hectare of wetlands (roughly the size of two and a half football fields) costs society an average of $1,900 in flood damages per year. In developed areas, that figure jumps to more than $8,000.

California is a wildfire hot spot: each year, homes, businesses, and ecosystems are destroyed by fires exacerbated by climate change. But even after the blazes subside, wildfires can still threaten community wellbeing. A new paper by scholars Yanjun (Penny) Liao and Carolyn Kousky, published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (JAERE), finds that wildfires...

Many people try to make society change for the better. The real challenge is how to get good solutions to scale up for major change. New research suggests that social change may depend on the relationship between beneficial behaviors and policies.

University of Montana Assistant Professor Will Rice is a self-avowed "campground nerd."

The western United States this century is facing a greatly heightened risk of heavy rains inundating areas that were recently scarred by wildfires, new research warns. Such events can cause significant destruction, including debris flows, mudslides, and flash floods, because the denuded landscape cannot easily contain the drenching moisture.

The concept of a "person" or "people" is, despite its definition, not gender-neutral when it comes to how we use these terms. In fact, we tend to prioritize men when referring to people in general, shows a new study by a team of psychology and linguistics researchers.

NASA on Friday begins a critical two-day-long test of its giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket complete with a mock countdown, as the agency gears up to return humans to the Moon.

Small farms and agricultural firms in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia are facing a billion dollar cash black hole for climate change adaptation, a report says.

Was there life on Mars? This is the question that the European Space Agency (ESA) is setting out to answer with its ExoMars mission. The mission, in which Russia is a participant, is scheduled to launch this fall, although recent political developments have raised questions as to whether this will be possible. Part of the mission is an exciting analytical system that was designed to operate in...

Higher unemployment insurance benefits not only lowers the likelihood that an unemployed person will become self-employed, but it also extends the length of time before they transition to self-employment, according to new research published in the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

The traditional trial-and-error method in material research cannot meet the growing demand of various high performance materials, so developing a new effective paradigm of material science is extremely urgent. A study led by Dr. Xiao-Ming Jiang and Prof. Guo-Cong Guo (Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences) proposes a new research paradigm for material...

In work published online recently in National Science Review, a team led by Prof. Hua Lu from the College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Peking University reported a surprising finding. In the process of studying the ROP of ProNCA, a type of reaction that would otherwise have been performed in a dry box, the team discovered ultrafast and controlled polymerization in aqueous solutions.

Even in our cosmic backyard, the solar system, many questions remain open. On Venus there are formations similar to volcanoes, but it is not known if they are active. The surface of Mars suggests that there was once a vast ocean, but how it disappeared remains unclear. On the other hand, recent detections of chemical compounds that may indicate the presence of biological activity on Mars and...

You would never drive your car using only your rear-view mirror, but according to Scott Stewart, MBA '83, Ph.D. '85, that's exactly how many professional investors make key investment decisions.

Individuals in the U.S. showed greater financial generosity when under threat from COVID-19, according to new research published in Scientific Reports.

Chiral coordination cages have potential applications in enantioselective recognition, sensing and symmetric catalysis. In general, chiral coordination cages can be synthesized either by starting from enantiopure ligands/metal-organic precursors or post assembly resolution/modification with chiral auxiliaries. Due to the paucity of structures and their limited cavities, host-guest chemical...

Less known than Attila's Huns, the Avars were their more successful successors. They ruled much of Central and Eastern Europe for almost 250 years. We know that they came from Central Asia in the sixth century CE, but ancient authors as well as modern historians have long debated their provenance.

Stressed by high temperatures and a record run of dry weather over the last three months, the Sierra Nevada snowpack, the source of 30% of the state's water supply, has hit one of its lowest levels for the end of winter in generations.

An international team of investigators, including several researchers in biological sciences from the U of A, have published a paper that reports the discovery of a developmental gene linked to touch in the tentacles of sea anemones as well as hearing in humans. The gene, called pou-iv (pronounced "pow four"), is important for the development of auditory cells in the human inner ear.

Just like flash floods, flash droughts come on fast—drying out soil in a matter of days to weeks. These events can wipe out crops and cause huge economic losses. And according to scientists, the speed at which they dry out the landscape has increased.

How is the activity of genes regulated by the packaging of DNA? To answer this question, a technique to measure both gene expression and DNA packaging at the same time was developed by Franka Rang and Kim de Luca, researchers from the group of Jop Kind (group leader at the Hubrecht Institute and Oncode Investigator). This method, EpiDamID, determines the location of modified proteins around which...

A common problem in the geosciences is the need to deduce unseen physical structure based on limited observations. For instance, a ground-penetrating radar observation attempts to infer underground structure without any in situ measurements. This class of problems is called inversion, in which an assumed physical model is repeatedly adjusted until it is consistent with observations.

What do cosmetics, car finishes, passports, bank notes, tropical insects, and oysters have in common? The color is formed through a specific microscopic organization of the matter making up the material, often called "iridescent" or "holographic," both referring to the flashy, rainbow-like colored appearance. Chemical engineer Jeroen Sol explored how liquid crystals could be used as a versatile...