Zebra finches communicate via eye contact and calls to coordinate their spatial positions during flocking flight

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai submarine volcano in January 2022 was one of the most explosive volcanic events of the modern era, a new study has confirmed.

Computer scientists develop Emu, an algorithm that uses long reads of genomes to identify the species of bacteria in a community. The program could simplify sorting harmful from helpful bacteria in microbiomes like those in the gut or in agriculture and the environment.

Researchers examined 21st century changes in ocean-surface temperature, salinity, and density, across mangrove forests worldwide. Their study suggests that changes in surface-ocean density may impact the dispersal patterns of widely distributed mangroves species, and more likely so in the Indo-West Pacific region, the primary hotspot of mangrove diversity.

Urban areas account for 2% of the world's land but are responsible for 40%–70% of global anthropogenic, or human-made CO2 emissions. Quantitative fossil-fuel and greenhouse gas (GHG) variation tracking in a city's most densely populated areas is important.

Important, yet often neglected, tadpoles play a critical role in the ecology of aquatic habitats. On 279 pages, a new book presents descriptions for 99 species from the southeast Asian island of Borneo, covering all species commonly found, as well as representatives of the more cryptic ones. LIB-scientist Alexander Haas and his team of international collaborators worked over 20 years on its...

Photoacoustic imaging generates ultrasound waves by irradiating biological tissues with pulses or modulated continuous lasers. Ultrasound sensors are used to capture ultrasound signals in a distributed manner. Then, the light absorption distribution of biological tissues can be reconstructed with the help of image reconstruction algorithms. Compared with optical imaging, photoacoustic imaging...

Deep within the Sahara Desert lies one of the best-preserved craters on Earth. On Asteroid Day, the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the almost-perfectly circular Tenoumer Crater in Mauritania.

Aquilaria sinensis (family Thymelaeaceae) is the principal source of Chinese agarwood. It is a vulnerable evergreen tree native to lowland forests in southern China. Its fruit matures during the June-August hot season. However, most of its fruit dehisces on sunny hot-dry afternoons, exposing the seeds under the canopy. Due to this exposure, the seeds desiccate in four hours and lose viability...

Many bird species fly together with conspecifics in flocks to safely cover flight distances. To avoid collisions with each other and head in the same direction, flock members have to communicate and coordinate their flight positions. Researchers led by Susanne Hoffmann from Manfred Gahr's department at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence investigated how this communication takes...

Aircrafts transport people, ship goods, and perform military operations, but the petroleum-based fuels that power them are in short supply. In research publishing on June 30 in the journal Joule, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab have found a way to generate an alternative jet fuel by harvesting an unusual carbon molecule produced by the metabolic process of bacteria commonly found in soil.

An international team of researchers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester, has developed a fast and economical method of converting methane, or natural gas, into liquid methanol at ambient temperature and pressure. The method takes place under continuous flow over a photo-catalytic material using visible light to drive the conversion.

Astronauts that have returned after spaceflights over three months may show signs of incomplete bone recovery even after one year on Earth, but adding in more resistance-based exercises during spaceflight may help limit bone loss. The small study, published in Scientific Reports, on 17 international astronauts found that while the shinbone partially recovers, the sustained bone losses after one...

When is a thumb not a thumb? When it's an elongated wrist bone of the giant panda used to grasp bamboo. Through its long evolutionary history, the panda's hand has never developed a truly opposable thumb and instead evolved a thumb-like digit from a wrist bone, the radial sesamoid. This unique adaptation helps these bears subsist entirely on bamboo despite being bears (members of the order...

Part of a gene is better than none when identifying a species of microbe. But for Rice University computer scientists, part was not nearly enough in their pursuit of a program to identify all the species in a microbiome.

Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence have sparked interest from governments that would like to use these tools for predictive policing to deter crime. Early efforts at crime prediction have been controversial, however, because they do not account for systemic biases in police enforcement and its complex relationship with crime and society.

The eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai submarine volcano in January 2022 was one of the most explosive volcanic events of the modern era, a new study has confirmed.

A study published in the journal Cell on June 30 shows that when humans and mice are infected with dengue or Zika viruses, they secrete a chemical that may make them more attractive to mosquitoes, the vector that transmits the virus. Almost half of the world's population lives in an area at risk of dengue fever, and with a lack of treatments, many dengue-affected regions see high morbidity and...

In March 2020, when corporate offices shuttered in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and employees began working from home, companies were forced to find more efficient ways to do business. Call it “The Great Digital Transformation.” Before the pandemic, the average company estimated that transitioning to remote work would take 454 days, according to the “McKinsey Global Surveys, 2021:...

The viruses that cause Zika and dengue fever can’t get from person to person on their own—they need to hitchhike inside a mosquito. A new study suggests how they hail these rides: They make their victims smell more attractive to the blood-sucking bugs. It’s "a big advance," says mosquito neuroscientist Laura Duvall of Columbia University, who wasn't connected to the...

The Francis Crick Institute has published its 2021 statistics on animal research, as part of its commitment to openness about animal research.

A quartet of researchers at the University of Oxford's Department of Zoology has found that a careful look at the way large birds perch could perhaps lead to improvements in the ways that drones are programmed to land. In their paper published in the journal Nature, Marco KleinHeerenbrink, Lydia France, Caroline Brighton and Graham Taylor describe their close analysis of perching by Harris hawks...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions was dealt a massive blow by the US Supreme Court today. Less than a week after overturning landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade, the court’s latest decision in West Virginia v. EPA could have far-reaching results for US climate policy as the world continues to set new records for...

Emiliano Bruner, a paleoneurologist at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), has led a study published in the journal Intelligence on how attention evolved in the human genus, which analyzes the paleontological and archaeological evidence that might shed light on the attentional capacity of extinct hominins.