Greece is facing a very difficult wildfire season. Greece on Sunday was battling a spate of wildfires which have forced the evacuation of hundreds of people, as experts warn of more extreme weather conditions to come next week. Firefighters were battling a “dangerous” fire near Athens on Sunday night, with smoke covering parts of the … Read more
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Every summer, millions of people jet off on vacations around the world. The United Nations World Tourism Organization estimates that international arrivals, the measure of global travel, will be 2% higher than the pre-pandemic total was in 2019. However, as more of us are taking vacations, some of the world’s tourism … Read more
Mass coral bleaching in recent decades has devastated the reef. Credit: UQ The Great Barrier Reef is vast and spectacular. But repeated mass coral bleachings, driven by high ocean temperatures, are threatening the survival of coral colonies which are the backbone of the reef. Our study, published today in Nature, provides a new long-term picture … Read more
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain An insect bites off another insect’s leg. Is this predatory behavior, aggression, defense, competition or something else? In the case of carpenter ants, it’s for the good of the amputee and to the benefit of the colony. A July 2024 University of Lausanne study found carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) carry out … Read more
Credit: University of Cambridge Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey tracked fire activity over the past 150 years by measuring carbon monoxide trapped in Antarctic ice. This gas is released, along with smoke and particulates, by wildfires, cooking and communal fires. The findings, reported in the Proceedings of the National … Read more
Credit: Quek et al. Quantum computers have the potential of outperforming conventional computers on some practically relevant information processing problems, possibly even in machine learning and optimization. Yet their large-scale deployment is not yet feasible, largely due to their sensitivity to noise, which causes them to make errors. One technique designed to address these errors … Read more
This combination image, created from two photos provided by NASA, shows Jupiter pictured on April 3, 2017, left, and Mars pictured on Aug. 26, 2003, right. Credit: NASA via AP Mars and Jupiter are cozying up in the night sky for their closest rendezvous this decade. They’ll be so close Wednesday, at least from our … Read more
After 30 days, the algae in the middle were still unicellular. As the scientists put algae from thicker and thicker rings under the microscope, however, they found larger clumps of cells. The very largest were wads of hundreds. But what interested Simpson the most were mobile clusters of four to 16 cells, arranged so that … Read more
After a successful test deployment at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, clean room technicians inspect the Deployable Aperture Cover for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn The “visor” for NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope recently completed several environmental tests simulating the conditions it will experience during launch and … Read more
by The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture The tricot approach enables farmers to test new crop varieties and improve food security in their communities. Credit: Ammaly Phengvilaysouk / CGIAR initiative on Mixed Farming Systems For over a decade, farmers across the world have been working hand-in-hand with researchers at … Read more
