Polar bears are icons of the Arctic, elusive and vulnerable. Detailed monitoring of their populations is crucial for their conservation—but because polar bears are so difficult to find, we are missing critical data about population size and how well-connected those populations are. Scientists have now developed a new tool to help: DNA analysis using skin cells shed in the bears' footprints in...

Disc golf is booming, with record numbers of players turning up each year to partake in the disc-throwing sport. It is also whizzing and whistling. In fact, the sound a disc makes while soaring through the air toward its target is full of information about how fast the disc is flying and how quickly it spins.

With Planet Earth running a fever, U.N. climate talks focused Sunday on the contagious effects on human health.

This year, a record-hot Atlantic Ocean went toe-to-toe with a strong El Niño for which weather phenomena would steer the hurricane season. The winner?

Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago.

A small team of bio-scientists from the University of Rostock's Institute for Biosciences and Nuremberg Zoo's Behavioral Ecology and Conservation Lab, both in Germany, has found evidence that bottlenose dolphins can sense electric fields. In their study, reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the group tested the ability of two captive bottlenose dolphins to sense a small electric field.

Nearly 120 nations pledged to triple the world's renewable energy within seven years at UN climate talks Saturday as the United States pushed to crank up nuclear capacity and slash methane emissions.

They call the giant climate business expo running outside the COP28 United Nations talks in Dubai the "green zone".

Dubai's glitzy skyline was obscured by a blanket of smog rated as "unhealthy" on Sunday as thousands of delegates attended a COP28 conference dedicated to the harmful effects of air pollution.

Fifty oil and gas companies representing 40 percent of global production pledged to decarbonize their operations by 2050 at the UN's COP28 climate talks in Dubai on Saturday.

A drone buzzed back and forth above rows of verdant orange trees planted near Nabeul, eastern Tunisia.

A powerful earthquake that shook the southern Philippines killed at least one villager and injured several others as thousands scrambled out of their homes in panic and jammed roads to higher grounds after a tsunami warning was issued, officials said Sunday.

The president of French Polynesia has questioned whether 2024 Olympic surfing can go ahead at the planned site in Tahiti, saying he was concerned about safety and damage to coral from a planned judging tower.

Earth's surface is the living skin of our planet—it connects the physical, chemical and biological systems.

Climate change is causing tropical species in the ocean to move from the equator towards the poles, while temperate species recede. This mass movement of marine life, termed tropicalization, is leading to a cascade of consequences for ecosystems and biodiversity, and has the potential to impact the global economy.

A golden mole that "swims" in sand has resurfaced in South Africa after 87 years in the wilderness when many specialists feared it had become extinct, researchers have said.

Almost half of marine mammals around the UK are being poisoned by banned chemicals.

The universe is expanding. How fast it does so is described by the so-called Hubble-Lemaitre constant. But there is a dispute about how big this constant actually is: Different measurement methods provide contradictory values.

This week in our wrap up, we lull you into a false sense of security with adorable lion cubs then ambush you with terrifying pulsars. We do this not out of a sense of malice but to prepare your mind for the possibility of a giant cosmic void. Also, Japan has launched a new fusion research facility.

Imagine you're a farmer searching for eggs in the chicken coop—but instead of a chicken egg, you find an ostrich egg, much larger than anything a chicken could lay.

More than 20 nations including the United States called for a tripling of nuclear energy to drive down emissions on Saturday as world leaders assembled for a second day at UN climate talks in Dubai.

A new case of cattle anthrax has been confirmed in southwest North Dakota's Grant County, bringing the number of cases in the state to 25 this year, according to state agriculture officials.

More than 110 countries want the COP28 climate negotiations to adopt a goal of tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Friday.

Children must be taught more about the importance of plants if education about climate change and sustainability is to be effective, experts have warned.

If Thanksgiving dinner conversations have turned into heated political arguments over the past two decades, social media may be to blame. Popular social media figures—or influencers—who create or share distorted political messages may cause political parties to moderate their policies to win over independent voters in general elections but tend to polarize the rest of society, according to...

Twenty-five feet below ground, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory scientist Spencer Gessner opens a large metal picnic basket. This is not your typical picnic basket filled with cheese, bread and fruit—it contains screws, bolts, steel tubing, and many other parts and pieces that carry particles to nearly the speed of light. The components are arranged precisely to do an important job: help...

A new study from Simon Fraser University researchers examines the Canadian military's efforts to reduce the impacts of underwater noise pollution on species during training exercises in the Pacific Ocean but caveat that more can still be done.

It first appeared as a glowing blob from ground-based telescopes and then vanished completely in images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, the ghostly object has reappeared as a faint, yet distinct galaxy in an image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Upon infection or immunization, all jawed vertebrate species generate proteins called antibodies that bind and neutralize pathogens. Strong and long-lasting antibody responses in warm-blooded species such as mammals are produced in secondary lymphoid microstructures (SLMs) among which germinal centers (GCs) are the centerpiece.

Hip hop dancing can be used to spread awareness of disability rights and help those with sight problems to participate in performance equally, a new study says.

A recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth sheds new light on the formation of the East Coast of the United States—a "passive margin," in geologic terms—during the breakup of the supercontinent Pangea and the opening of the Atlantic Ocean around 230 million years ago.

Botanist Denis Conover does not have to go far to study the growing problem of invasive plants.

If you mix cornstarch and water in the right proportions, you get something that seems not-quite-liquid but also not-quite-solid. Oobleck flows and settles like a liquid when untouched but stiffens when you try to pick it up or stir it with a spoon. The properties of oobleck and other non-Newtonian fluids—including Silly Putty, quicksand, paint, and yogurt—change under stress or pressure, and...

Mothers who took parental leave part-time or for shorter periods were more likely to engage in income-generating activities or pursue education. A new study uncovers surprising patterns in parental leave usage among newly arrived migrant women in Sweden, specifically focusing on their integration into the labor market.

Arianne Teherani has a loud, clear message for the negotiators at COP28: "Climate change is undermining human health, fundamentally, all over the world, right now."

A representative survey by IU International University of Applied Sciences reveals there are still significant differences between the sexes in career trajectories.

Recent drought-related data compiled by the UN point to "an unprecedented emergency on a planetary scale, where the massive impacts of human-induced droughts are only starting to unfold."

Climate change is overwhelmingly a problem of wealthy people. The wealthiest 1% of humanity produce over 1,000 times the emissions of the poorest 1%. In fact, these 77 million people are responsible for more climate-changing emissions than the poorest 66% (5 billion people) of humanity.

In a study published in Science Advances, researchers from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE-Berlin) shed light on the intricate dance between the prion protein and copper ions in the physiopathology of live cells.

When the Vera C. Rubin Observatory comes online in 2025, it will be one of the most powerful tools available to astronomers, capturing huge portions of the sky every night with its 8.4-meter mirror and 3.2-gigapixel camera. Each image will be analyzed within 60 seconds, alerting astronomers to transient events like supernovae. An incredible 5 petabytes (5,000 terabytes) of new raw images will be...

A researcher has just finished writing a scientific paper. She knows her work could benefit from another perspective. Did she overlook something? Or perhaps there's an application of her research she hadn't thought of. A second set of eyes would be great, but even the friendliest of collaborators might not be able to spare the time to read all the required background publications to catch up.

Before having our first baby last year, we wondered whether we had the money, time and necessary skills to raise a child. Perhaps you find yourself contemplating the same? Many people certainly have, as birth rates have been declining across the world for the past 200 years.

With NASA gearing up to send humans back to the moon in the next few years with the Artemis missions with the goal of establishing a permanent outpost at the lunar south pole, nations are making efforts to contribute to Artemis and a permanent presence on our nearest celestial neighbor.

It seems like we have free will. Most of the time, we are the ones who choose what we eat, how we tie our shoelaces and what articles we read on The Conversation.