In 1934, a German paleontologist named a giant flying insect from the Carboniferous period Rochlingia hitleri , after Adolf Hitler, who had just taken power in Germany, and Hermann Röchling, an anti-semitic steel manufacturer and member of the Nazi Party. Three years later, an Austrian amateur entomologist named a brown, eyeless beetle from Slovenian caves...

A flat budget isn’t something that scientists typically welcome. But for the U.S. research community, that’s the best-case scenario in the short run as Congress returns this month from its summer recess and tries to agree on spending levels for the 2024 fiscal year that begins on 1 October. The government could shut down if Republicans and Democrats don’t declare a truce....

Across the globe, and particularly in Brazil, lies an embarrassment of riches that also stage a showdown as mitigating climate change and protecting biodiversity square off against growing food.

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) makes for a great late summer target, as a naked-eye object or with binoculars or a telescope. It’s the closest major galaxy to us at 2.5 million light-years. It’s also the most distant thing that most people can see with their naked eyes alone! (In the right conditions, some people canContinue reading "See Andromeda, our galactic neighbor: This Week in Astronomy...

Around six billion tonnes of sand is dredged from the world's oceans every year, a new report says.

While the practice of no-till gardening is not new, information has traditionally centered on agricultural field crops. Now, home gardeners are catching on.

Linguists have developed the comparison of the genetic code with language where nucleotides act as letters, and introduced the concept of "a semiotic nucleotide"—the minimal element that makes it possible to distinguish between codons—coding units of DNA. According to this approach, the biochemical characteristics of DNA operate as informational ones.

Right at the bottom of the deep sea, the first very simple forms of life on Earth probably emerged a long time ago. Today, the deep sea is known for its bizarre fauna. Intensive research is being conducted into how the number of species living on the sea floor have changed in the meantime.

Non-native species—displaced either by global trade and travel or by climate change—pose "a severe global threat" to local biodiversity, food security as well as public health, a new report has found.

California is known for its warm weather, and Sacramento is no exception. With an average of 269 sunny days annually, the state's capital city has even been deemed the sunniest place on Earth for certain summer months.

Sequestering CO2 in farming soils is promoted as an excellent strategy to mitigate climate change. Is this actually the case, however? Several soil experts voiced their doubts during the Wageningen Soil Conference on 29 August.

A University of Hawaiʻi-led discovery of an immense bubble 820 million light years from Earth is believed to be a fossil-like remnant of the birth of the universe. Astronomer Brent Tully from the UH Institute for Astronomy and his team unexpectedly found the bubble within a web of galaxies. The entity has been given the name Hoʻoleilana, a term drawn from the Kumulipo, a Hawaiian creation chant...

One person has died in Greece after torrential rain triggered flash flooding in parts of the country.

In the United States, tens of millions of people live behind levees, but historically disadvantaged groups are more likely to live behind subpar levees and have fewer resources to maintain critical levee infrastructure, a new study reveals. The study is the first to quantify the national disparity of disadvantaged communities living in levee-protected areas, which puts people at increased risk of...

It's no secret to most San Diegans that leopard sharks come each summer to warm their pregnant bellies on the sand at La Jolla Shores.

Researchers have developed an energy-efficient computing-based chip with smell-sensing units that can detect food spoilage and provides real-time conditions continuously throughout the spoilage process. The system is described in a study published in Advanced Science.