Researchers have pinpointed two intervals when ice and ocean conditions would have been favorable to support early human migration from Asia to North America late in the last ice age, a new paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened the use of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, but nuclear weapons of any kind would cause widespread devastation, according to a new position paper by a group of renowned scientists from around the world. They want to make policymakers and the public aware of the ecosystem impacts and long-lasting consequences of nuclear radiation.

Researchers at Indiana University Bloomington have uncovered previously hidden steps of a gene silencing process used to combat viruses and other would-be genome invaders.

A combination of factors made the powerful earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria early Monday particularly deadly, including its timing, location, relatively quiet fault line and the weak construction of the collapsed buildings, experts said.

Two new viruses are infecting hibiscus plants in Hawaiʻi and could pose a threat to the state flower, according to researchers in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources. Their findings were published in Viruses.

A new examination of ancient and current species of reptiles conducted by a University of Texas at Austin paleobiologist reveals the serious impact of the disappearance of even a few species of reptiles in some island areas. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has startling conclusions about how, on smaller islands in the Caribbean where human impact was...

In the race to restore some of North America's most biodiverse and threatened ecosystems, a straightforward first step is likely among the most important.

Political ideology shapes attitudes about COVID-19 treatments not just for the general U.S. population but also for critical care physicians, according to new research led by University of Pittsburgh scientists.

Plants, like animals and people, seek refuge from climate change. And when they move, they take entire ecosystems with them. To understand why and how plants have trekked across landscapes throughout time, researchers at the forefront of conservation are calling for a new framework. The key to protecting biodiversity in the future may be through understanding the past.

Nasty remarks by politicians against their critics are so common that we may not pay them much mind. That's the problem of political incivility, say a pair of researchers who've studied the phenomenon among U.S. politicians.

In living organisms, development is a combination of multiple coordinated processes that interact in time and space over the course of growth. One false note in the delicate symphony can have catastrophic consequences. However, the precise score of this biological music is often a mystery to scientists. One solution is to use advanced microscopy techniques to observe organ growth in real time. The...

Long believed to be a uniquely human trait crucial for communication, visible white sclera—the "whites of the eye"—occur more commonly in chimpanzees and other mammals than previously reported, finds a new study from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin.

Nicola Botta of PIK Potsdam, Germany, and colleagues have developed a new method for assessing how much decisions matter in situations in which the consequences of such decisions are highly uncertain. Applying the method to a stylized greenhouse-gas emission problem reveals that opting for an early transition to a decarbonized society is rational even when the probability of actually realizing...

Microorganisms help to keep the water of lakes clean. In the process, they also detoxify the nitrogen compound ammonium, which is introduced into water bodies by fertilizers, for example, and is also produced naturally by metabolic processes.

Winter is coming to an end; the last nights of below zero temperatures are here. In the morning, one still spots the occasional icicle on a gutter or car bumper. When you look at these icicles carefully, you may notice that they show a characteristic pattern of ripples—always around one centimeter wide. What causes these ripples? Using an icicle machine of their own design, physicists and...

Democracy may lead to more deforestation in the tropics. So write environmental scientist Joeri Morpurgo and his colleagues in Biological Conservation. They found that competitive elections are associated with more loss of tropical rainforest than elections without competition. "We must prevent politicians from exploiting the remaining rainforest for political power."

In the cell, messenger RNAs—or mRNAs—are translated into proteins and eventually degraded, but the relationship between translation and mRNA decay remains cloudy. FMI researchers developed an innovative tool to control and visualize mRNA translation and decay, one molecule at the time. The team discovered that translation promotes mRNA degradation—a finding that may help advance the...

French officials on the Caribbean island of Saint-Martin are seeking ways to battle an invasion of green monkeys, blamed for threatening the tropical tourism hotspot's fragile biodiversity, local authorities said.

A major 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by another strong quake devastated wide swaths of Turkey and Syria Monday, killing thousands of people.

Much of what the chemicals industry produces, except for metals, is derived from fossil resources. Using renewable biomass and even one-carbon sources, such as formaldehyde, is necessary to increase the sustainability of the chemicals industry.

In a paper published in the journal Sustainable Chemistry for Climate Action, Prof. Gadi Rothenberg of the Van 't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences presents a realistic look at carbon dioxide emissions, climate change and the role of sustainable chemistry. Using simple back-of-the-envelope calculations he shows that the climate goals of the Paris Agreement are beyond reach. According to...

Scientists from two Asian universities, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) and Newcastle University in Singapore, have completed a study to understand how the mechanical behavior of carbon fiber–reinforced epoxy composite laminates could be compromised by moisture seepage.

A recent research study published in the International Journal of e-Collaboration (IJeC) has explored the relationship between social presence, online social capital, and social commerce (s-commerce) behavior. The study used an online survey and analyzed the collected data through a structural equation model (SEM).

Consulting with others on money matters reduces financial overconfidence and improves the quality of investment decisions a newly published paper from University of Sussex researchers, has found. The counter-intuitive effect is most pronounced when non-experts, including family and friends, are consulted.