Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Uganda's sugarcane boom leaves families hungry: What needs to change
Busoga, in eastern Uganda, is a low, fertile plateau surrounded on three sides by Lake Victoria, the Nile River and Lake Kyoga. Most of its 4.3 million people f...
Fine particles from aircraft exhaust become more harmful over time, lab tests suggest
Fine particulate matter consists of tiny particles with diameters in the nanometer range. They are produced, for example, by fuel combustion, remain suspended i...
New chip-scale gyroscope measures rotation with unprecedented sensitivity
Researchers have developed a chip-scale optical ring-laser gyroscope that can measure rotation as slow as 37 degrees per hour. This record sensitivity, approach...
A trip to Mars could come at a heartbreaking cost
When astronauts first travel to Mars or anywhere else in deep space, they will have to contend with two problems that our planet protects us from on its surface...
Urbanization takes a bigger toll on bird diversity in the tropics than it does at other latitudes, study finds
Researchers at McGill University have found that urbanization is weakening one of Earth's most enduring ecological patterns: the tendency for biodiversity to in...
When parents don't see eye to eye: Are differences in parenting styles a bad thing?
Sometimes it can be hard for parents to agree on how to raise children. One parent might insist their child's homework has to be finished before they're allowed...
Waste plastics become molecular sponges that capture water from air
Discarded plastic packaging materials, old CDs and even LEGO bricks can be transformed into materials that capture significant amounts of moisture from the air....
Spawning coral release quintillions of eggs each year, new calculations suggest
Most kinds of coral spawn once a year. In an enormous multiday event synchronized to specific phases of the moon, they release vast slicks of eggs and sperm int...
Genome publishing overhaul targets 200 reports per month, up from 30
The Wellcome Sanger Institute's Tree of Life program plans to accelerate publication of genome notes from approximately 30 per month to 200, expanding access to...
How E. coli eavesdrops on the metabolic activity of other gut bacteria
The gut microbiome is teeming with hundreds of bacterial species and trillions of bacteria. These microorganisms influence many aspects of health, including dig...
Warmer climate could reshape hurricane risk and its relationship with El Niño around Hawai'i
A new study examining how tropical cyclone activity near Hawai'i could change in a warmer future finds a shift toward stronger storms, even though substantial u...
How detection dogs are helping protect one of Australia's most imperiled lizards
Many of the Australian animals most at risk of extinction are extremely tough to track down. That's because they live in small pockets of disappearing nature, s...