Science

CO2 venting from the seabed at volcanic vent sites in Papua New Guinea. Credit: Emma Ransome / Imperial College London A new study shows that ocean acidification is changing the mix of microbes in coral reef systems, which can be used to assess ecosystem health. The study, published today in Microbiome, looked at coral reefs … Read more

Figure shows that wildfires are much more responsive to the fertilizer effect of CO2 than to the greenhouse gas alone without considering this effect. Credit: James Gomez/UCR By fueling the growth of plants that become kindling, carbon dioxide is driving an increase in the severity and frequency of wildfires, according to a UC Riverside study. … Read more

Bird migration is coming your way! This map shows the peak migration date across zones in the United States. Turning out lights and making glass safer February 15–June 15 will prevent collisions throughout spring migration. Credit: BirdCast Spring bird migration has begun. Under cover of darkness, 2.5–3.5 billion birds will fly northward to their breeding … Read more

Lithium niobate (LN) powers a newly developed optical metasurface for shaping and guiding light waves. Leveraging the electro-optical effect of lithium niobate, the device applies different electric signals to electrodes to shape any wavefront, in reconfigurable arbitrary polarization states. Credit: Advanced Photonics (2024). DOI: 10.1117/1.AP.6.1.016005 Over the past decade, metasurfaces deploying two-dimensional artificial nanostructures have … Read more

Schematic diagram illustrating the application of high-throughput sequencing for evolutionary genomics, promoting germplasm innovation and effective breeding in neo- and paleo-polyploid vegetables with cucumber as an example. Credit: Vegetable Research (2024). DOI: 10.48130/vegres-0024-0005 A research team has elucidated the role of polyploidy in the evolution and breeding of vegetable crops, leveraging advanced sequencing technologies to … Read more

This artist’s concept by citizen scientist William Pendrill shows, at left, a cool brown dwarf called a T Dwarf, and, at right, a warmer brown dwarf passing in front of a distant star. Pendrill, also an illustrator, participates in Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, which uses NASA data to look for brown dwarfs and other objects. … Read more

CMS event display of a candidate Higgs boson decaying into two photons, one of the two decay channels that were key to the discovery of the particle. Credit: CERN As part of its continued commitment to making its science fully open, the CMS collaboration has just publicly released the combination of CMS measurements that contributed … Read more

A new technique, called advanced dual-chirped optical parametric amplification, has increased the energy of single-cycle laser pulses by a factor of 50. The technique uses two crystals (shown as clear cubes), which amplify complementary regions of the spectrum. Credit: RIKEN Extremely short pulses of laser light with a peak power of 6 terawatts (6 trillion … Read more

Propagating spiral waves in a bacterial film ~2 mm in diameter. The color map represents the phase angle distribution of the wave pattern. Credit: Dr. Shiqi Liu A new study by researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong has reported the emergence of mechanical spiral waves in bacterial matter. Spiral waves are commonly seen … Read more