A child's tooth at least 130,000 years old found in a Laos cave could help scientists uncover more information about an early human cousin, a study said on Tuesday.

In a major advance for rational drug design, a Texas A&M AgriLife team has described several protein structures of a crucial player in cellular processes. The advance could bring new ideas for treatments of diseases such as Alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer and others.

Plasmids have extensive use in basic and applied biology. These small, circular DNA molecules are used by scientists to introduce new genes into a target organism. Well known for their applications in the production of therapeutic proteins like insulin, plasmids are broadly used in the large-scale production of many bioproducts.

Dusty solar panels and darker skies are expected to bring the Mars lander mission to a close around the end of this year.

This newly revised NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Hickson Compact Group 31 (HCG 31) of galaxies highlights streams of star-formation as four dwarf galaxies interact. The bright, distorted clump of young blue-white stars (top-right of center) is NGC 1741. Although it appears to be a single galaxy, NGC 1741 is actually a pair of colliding dwarf galaxies. Another dwarf, cigar-shaped galaxy...

In the Temple of Khnum at Esna, Upper Egypt, German and Egyptian researchers have uncovered a series of vibrantly-colored ceiling frescoes. The relief images in the central section of the ceiling, Professor Christian Leitz from the University of Tübingen reports, make up a total of 46 depictions of the Upper-Egyptian vulture goddess Nekhbet and the Lower-Egyptian serpent goddess Wadjet. Both are...

Vibrant coral reefs teeming with marine life are diminishing throughout the Caribbean as global temperatures rise. Coral reefs are habitats that support the seafood industry, are barriers for coastal communities from storms, flooding and sea level rise, and are attractions for tourism. Their net economic value worldwide is estimated to be tens of billions of dollars. However, if atmospheric and...

A new research paper published in Aging Volume 14, Issue 9, is titled "Single-cell transcriptomics reveals age-resistant maintenance of cell identities, stem cell compartments and differentiation trajectories in long-lived naked mole-rats skin."

Compact and lightweight metasurfaces—which use specifically designed and patterned nanostructures on a flat surface to focus, shape and control light—are a promising technology for wearable applications, especially virtual and augmented reality systems. Today, research teams painstakingly design the specific pattern of nanostructures on the surface to achieve the desired function of the lens,...

Zoning laws, adopted by thousands of local governments across the country, dictate much of what can be built in the United States. Zoning codes have major ramifications for businesses, housing, and quality of life but can be very difficult for non-experts to understand.

The waters rose overnight and by morning formed a shallow pond over the grassy field covering a cemetery in Jamestown, one of the founding sites of the American nation.

X-ray detection is of great importance in diverse applications, such as radiation detection, medical diagnosis, and security inspection. A popular way to achieve X-ray detection is to integrate a photodetector with a luminescent material called a scintillator, which emits energy in the form of light. Scintillators can convert high-energy X-ray photons to low-energy visible luminescence.

Researchers have developed a new metasurface-based device that can produce multiple distinct holographic images depending on the surrounding medium and the wavelength of light used. The ability to store information that is only retrievable with the right set of keys—such as a certain light wavelength combined with wet conditions—could be further developed to design simple yet effective...

Covered in the red dust that sealed its fate, the NASA InSight lander is slowly shutting down, more than 250 million kilometers from home.

Congress held its first hearing in half a century Tuesday on unidentified flying objects. And no, there is still no government confirmation of extraterrestrial life.

Agencies that rate and rank nations, corporations and colleges wield enormous power, influencing investment flows and prompting leaders to pursue policies that might improve their standing.

Early animals formed complex ecological communities more than 550 million years ago, setting the evolutionary stage for the Cambrian explosion, according to a study by Rebecca Eden, Emily Mitchell, and colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, publishing May 17th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.

As part of a government effort to reduce animal testing, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have worked with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Inotiv Inc. to produce a new protocol for screening skin allergens. The method is potentially cheaper and faster than animal testing, while maintaining a similar performance.

For many years after discovering a diverse population of sometimes dangerous microbes constantly living in our intestines, scientists described the situation as a form of living with the enemy. But when it comes to commensal populations of the fungus Candida albicans, the dreaded invader may be better seen as a helpful friend arriving with gifts.

If you have ever watched a bird land on a tree branch, you may have noticed that it rapidly pitches its wings upward at a high angle to execute a smooth landing. However, for some birds, they land by folding their wings as they perch instead, creating a sweeping motion as they decelerate.

Removing not only a diseased grapevine but the two vines on either side of it can reduce the incidence of leafroll disease, a long-standing bane of vineyards around the world, Cornell researchers have found.

When Christopher Tubbs joined an ambitious multinational effort to save California condors from the brink of extinction, he knew the odds of success were long.

Physicists at EPFL, within a large European collaboration, have revised one of the fundamental laws that has been foundational to plasma and fusion research for over three decades, even governing the design of megaprojects like ITER. The update shows that we can actually safely use more hydrogen fuel in fusion reactors, and therefore obtain more energy than previously thought.

When Hurricane Michael tore through North Florida in 2018 as a Category 5 storm, it left more than 3 million acres of felled trees in its wake.