Research showing that pigeons can be used to guide missiles was awarded one of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes. Mammals that can breathe through their backsides, homing pigeons that can guide missiles and sober worms that outpace drunk ones: these are some of the strange scientific discoveries that won this year’s Ig Nobels, the quirky … Read more
The great whodunnit of the human family is exactly what caused Neanderthals to suddenly die off 40,000 years ago. A new study posits a very surprising answer to one of history’s great mysteries—what killed off the Neanderthals? Could it be that they were unadventurous, insular homebodies who never strayed far enough from home? Scientists studying … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain This summer was the hottest on record worldwide, outpacing even last year’s blistering temperatures, according to a new report by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. “During the past three months of 2024, the globe has experienced the hottest June and August, the hottest day on record, and the hottest … Read more
Gardener Jana Kretschmer is working to protect trees from climate change. In the castle gardens of Muskauer Park, which straddles both banks of the German-Polish river border, caretakers have mounted a fightback against the impacts of climate change. On the stump of a 150-year-old oak tree, gnawed by parasites and felled in a storm, a … Read more
US astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams took off aboard Boeing’s Starliner in early June for what was meant to be an eight-day mission. A US astronaut stuck on the International Space Station said Friday he believed Boeing’s Starliner could have carried him home, if more time had been available to work through the beleaguered … Read more
Tunable color emission and application showcase. Credit: Frontiers of Optoelectronics (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s12200-024-00134-2 In the realm of lighting and temperature measurement, advancements in material science are paving the way for significant improvements in technology and safety. Traditional methods, which combine yellow phosphors with blue chips in LEDs, have limitations such as inadequate red light components … Read more
Credit: Jin Chen et al. Volcanic activity alters the Earth’s surface and promotes the development of new ecosystems, providing valuable models for studying soil formation processes such as microbial composition and vegetation succession. Increasing evidence suggests that soil microbes are pivotal in numerous ecological and biogeochemical processes, encompassing carbon mineralization, humus formation, and nutrient cycling. … Read more
Venice Mallow, also called Flower-of-an-hour, (Hibiscus trionum) was selected by Edwige Moyroud as a new model plant for studying petal pattern development. Native to Australia, H. trionum also now occurs in gardens and has become naturalized in some parts of the world. Credit: Lucie Riglet and Edwige Moyroud Flowers like hibiscus use an invisible blueprint … Read more
Credit: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsami.4c10812 A team of researchers at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), led by Program Head of Chemistry Ali Trabolsi, have developed nanoscale covalent organic frameworks (nCOFs), crystalline organic polymers that have been modified with peptides to treat the most aggressive form of breast cancer, known as triple-negative breast … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain The recent discovery of the Ug99 wheat stem rust strain in Nepal, published in the Plant Disease journal, has once again emphasized the need for vigilance to protect Nepal’s third most important food crop from any large-scale outbreaks of this devastating wheat disease. Nepal already contends with frequent large-scale outbreaks caused … Read more
