Hurricane damages cost an average of $20.5 billion per event in the United States. Their effects are widespread and often chronic, with loss of infrastructure, communities, and lives. The aftershocks ripple out farther still—pressure is mounting on the nation's electricity grid as the frequency and intensity of hurricanes climb ever higher.

As concerns grow that the war in Ukraine could expand into a nuclear conflict, U.S. President Joe Biden compared the current situation to the Cuban missile crisis, a Cold War confrontation between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. over Soviet missiles placed in Cuba in 1962.

La Jolla Institute for Immunology Associate Professor Ferhat Ay, Ph.D., is building some of the world's smallest maps. Dr. Ay harnesses computers to transform DNA genomic sequences into 3D maps. These maps can reveal how genes interact and how the body fights disease.

NASA's Mars rovers strive for groundbreaking scientific discoveries as they traverse the Martian landscape. At the same time, the crews operating the rovers do all they can to protect them and the billions of dollars behind the mission. This balance between risk and reward drives the decisions surrounding where the rovers go, the paths they take to get there and the science they uncover.

In a study that confirms its promise as the next-generation semiconductor material, UC Santa Barbara researchers have directly visualized the photocarrier transport properties of cubic boron arsenide single crystals.

Over the last decade, the lush olive groves one associates with the Italian countryside have become desiccated, as if stuck in a perpetual winter. The culprit is Xylella fastidiosa, a species of aggressive bacteria that have caused devastating epidemics in several important crops. X. fastidiosa now threatens almonds, olives, and grapevines—staples of Europe's economy and cuisine.

Jeholornis was a raven-sized bird that lived 120 million years ago, among the earliest examples of dinosaurs evolving into birds, in what's now China. The fossils that have been found are finely preserved but smashed flat, the result of layers of sediment being deposited over the years. That means that no one's been able to get a good look at Jeholornis's head. But in a new study, researchers...

Researchers reconstructed the geomagnetic fields recorded in 21 archaeological destruction layers throughout Israel and used the data to develop a reliable new scientific tool for archaeological dating. The new tool enables the verification of Old Testament accounts of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian military campaigns against the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Researchers have identified a receptor, CD169 (also called Siglec1), that is exclusively expressed on macrophages and contributes to the hyper-inflammatory response of macrophages upon infection with SARS-CoV-2. These findings, they believe, may provide an explanation of how SARS-CoV-2 infection of macrophages in lungs of COVID-19 patients promote inflammatory responses.

Piecing together the crushed skull of a fossil bird that lived alongside the dinosaurs helped researchers extrapolate what its brain would have looked like: big olfactory bulbs would have meant that this bird, the earliest known animal to eat fruit, had a better sense of smell than most modern birds. And the bones around its eye sockets revealed that it would have been better at seeing by day than...

A new study looks deep inside the brain, where previous learning was reactivated during sleep, resulting in improved memory. Neuroscientists teamed up with clinicians to study the brain electrical activity in five of the center's patients in response to sounds administered by the research team as part of a learning exercise. While prior studies have used EEG recordings captured by electrodes on...

Researchers wanted to know if the Clean Air Act is capable of reducing air pollution disparities or if a new approach would be needed. The team compared two approaches that mirror main aspects of the Clean Air Act and a third approach that is not commonly used to see if it would be better at addressing disparities across the contiguous U.S.

Why do some 4- and 5-year-olds still nap like clockwork every afternoon, while other preschoolers start giving up habitual napping at age 3? It's a question many parents no doubt ponder and one that a sleep scientist has been considering for years. Now, sleep scientists describe a new theory about why and when young children transition out of naps. It's not about age as much as the brain.

Research has found sharing real-time air quality readings in developing countries can reduce air pollution and lead to lower mortality rates.

Using a neural network model, neuroscientists have found that, as the brain moves between REM and slow-wave sleep cycles, the hippocampus teaches the neocortex what it learned. This process seems to convert novel, fleeting data into enduring memories.

New research analyzing pieces of the most ancient rocks on the planet adds some of the sharpest evidence yet that Earth's crust was pushing and pulling in a manner similar to modern plate tectonics at least 3.25 billion years ago. The study also provides the earliest proof of when the planet's magnetic north and south poles swapped places.

A warm, dry winter is in store for much of California as La Niña conditions are slated to persist through at least January, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Aquaculture is fast becoming integral to global food security, and to feed the world's growing population, it is expected to continue expanding rapidly in the coming years.

The last time world leaders got together for a climate summit, the backdrop was thoroughly menacing. A pandemic had decimated national budgets. Poor countries were up in arms over the hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines by the same wealthy nations whose fossil fuel consumption did most to warm the planet. Relations between the two largest emitters, the U.S. and China, had devolved into zero sum...

A joint study by TAU and the Hebrew University, involving 20 researchers from different countries and disciplines, has accurately dated 21 destruction layers at 17 archaeological sites in Israel by reconstructing the direction and/or intensity of the earth's magnetic field recorded in burnt remnants. The new data verify the Biblical accounts of the Egyptian, Aramean, Assyrian, and Babylonian...

Research co-led by The University of Queensland has found sharing real-time air quality readings in developing countries can reduce air pollution and lead to lower mortality rates.

While air quality has improved dramatically over the past 50 years thanks in part to the Clean Air Act, people of color at every income level in the United States are still exposed to higher-than-average levels of air pollution.

New research analyzing pieces of the most ancient rocks on the planet adds some of the sharpest evidence yet that Earth's crust was pushing and pulling in a manner similar to modern plate tectonics at least 3.25 billion years ago. The study also provides the earliest proof of when the planet's magnetic north and south poles swapped places.

In 2012 CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) revolutionized particle physics when it was announced that the Higgs boson had been created and detected by the world's most powerful particle accelerator.

Scientists from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences used photons to create a spiking neuron, the basic element of the future photonic neural network processor. The results of their work are published in the latest Laser and Photonics Review.

On a hilltop about 95 miles west of Chicago grow plant species that have been there for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The soil is sandy, so when the surrounding lowlands were used for agriculture, the hill remained untouched. From that vantage point, Nachusa Grasslands sprawls below with sections of savanna, a pond frequented by blue herons, patchy spots where bison have grazed, and a red...

Bees pollinate 71 of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of food worldwide. They also pollinate wild plants, helping sustain biodiversity and the beauty of the natural world.

While cattle production has historically focused on increasing the feed efficiency of steers to produce a marketable beef product, researchers at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture are studying the feed efficiency of heifers, whose health and pregnancies set production up for success.

The decline of an endangered species of whale slowed last year, as it lost about 2% of its population, but scientists warn the animal still faces existential threats and is losing breeding females too fast.

For a researcher who studies wildfire, University of Montana graduate student Kyra Clark-Wolf couldn't have had better timing.

The research team from Hunan University has proposed a facile and industrially applicable method to fabricate an extreme wettability surface on an Al-based superhydrophobic surface by a composite process of electrochemical mask etching and micro-milling, and achieved the controlled evaporation, directional bouncing and transport of droplets on this surface over a wide temperature range for the...

America was unprepared for the magnitude of the pandemic, which overwhelmed many counties and filled some hospitals to capacity. A new paper in PNAS suggests there may have been a mathematical method, of sorts, to the madness of those early COVID days.

International efforts to avoid dangerous climate change by reaching the global 1.5°C target are unlikely to be achieved in "emerging emitter" countries without substantial further decreases in the costs of non-emitting energy deployment or economic support and low-carbon technology transfer from historically high-emitting countries.

Research at the University of Gothenburg has shown that the Skaftö wreck had probably taken on cargo in Gdańsk in Poland and was heading towards Belgium when it foundered in the Lysekil archipelago around 1440. Modern methods of analysis of the cargo are now providing completely new answers about the way trade was conducted in the Middle Ages.

Small structures made out of carbons are a useful and versatile tool that can be used across industries, including in water and wastewater treatment, gas and oil, and energy storage. In order to create these nanostructures, synthetic and natural polymers have traditionally been used as a starting point to initiate the chemical reaction necessary to create the nanostructured carbons. This is called...

In a recent study, researchers systematically introduced excited-state multiple proton transfers (ESMPTs) in organic molecules. Although great advances have been achieved, there is still much controversy regarding the mechanism of ESMPT in organic molecules. From a large number of experimental studies conducted so far, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about the origin of spectral features,...

In a new study, North Carolina State University researchers found more people shifted blame for shark bites away from the animals after watching positive YouTube videos about them. They also saw greater support on average for non-lethal strategies for responding to incidents in which a shark has bitten a person.

Coral reef halos, also known as grazing halos or sand halos, are bands of bare, sandy seafloor that surround coral patch reefs. These features, clearly-visible from satellite imagery, may provide a window into reef health around the world, according to a recently published study by researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

It’s a tale of two ancient British caves: In Cheddar Gorge, just outside of Bristol, England, reindeer hunters etched designs onto human bones and drank out of carved human skulls about 15,000 years ago. A few hundred kilometers to the north, people living just a few hundred years later lived on freshwater fish and marine animals, laying their dead to rest in a cavern with decorated...

Mercury is a unique element that has found a myriad of scientific and practical applications throughout the centuries. Besides its well-known role in commercial thermometers, mercury is widely used in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) because it forms a liquid amalgam with gold. By heating the mixture, mercury evaporates, leaving behind gold. The problem with this style of ASGM is that...

New findings suggest an explanation for the century-old mystery of how chromosome recombination is regulated during sexual reproduction.

Whether it's a car door not properly closed, a shanked kick in football, or a misplaced note in music, our ears tell us when something doesn't sound right. A team of neuroscientists has recently uncovered how the brain works to make distinctions between 'right' and 'wrong' sounds -- research that provides a deeper understanding of how we learn complex audio-motor tasks like speaking or playing...

As heart cells mature in mice, the number of communication pathways called nuclear pores dramatically decreases, according to new research. While this might protect the organ from damaging signals, it could also prevent adult heart cells from regenerating, the researchers found.

By measuring the electrical fields near swarming honeybees, researchers have discovered that insects can produce as much atmospheric electric charge as a thunderstorm cloud. This type of electricity helps shape weather events, aids insects in finding food, and lifts spiders up in the air to migrate over large distances. The research demonstrates that living things can have an impact on atmospheric...

In the first nationally representative study of cognitive impairment prevalence in more than 20 years, researchers found almost 10% of older adults have dementia and 22% have mild cognitive impairment.