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Groundbreaking modeling has revealed that as many as 220,000 Indigenous Australians died in a devastating 1789 smallpox outbreak that originated in Sydney, tracing its origins to the First Fleet. Soon after British ships arrived, smallpox swept through First Nations communities in the Sydney area, and many died as a result. The study found that the epidemic had a devastating demographic impact and ramifications for how First Nations people resisted colonization and their capacity to manage the c

A new study by the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research at the University of Oxford reveals that industrial poultry farming has led to a more than 100-fold increase in the movement of Campylobacter, allowing strains that once circulated in wild birds to mix extensively in commercial poultry populations.

Sixty-six million years ago, the six-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) Chicxulub asteroid crash-landed in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula and changed life on Earth forever. The reign of the dinosaurs ended, and only creatures that could shelter in burrows or shallow waters survived into the age of mammals that followed.

Nanocarbons are molecular-scale carbon structures considered to be the building blocks for next-generation materials. Until now, scientists have built them by fusing small, flat carbon molecules together at their edges. Modifying the inside of a molecule was considered challenging because inner bonds are locked into flat, rigid structures that resist change.

Some people love to swear. In the workplace, some of those people might be in charge.

In his 2023 bestseller, Determined, neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky argued that the interaction of biology and environment leaves no room for free choice. Philosopher and neuroscientist Sam Harris puts the case more bluntly: "free will is an illusion."

California is once again confronting a rapidly escalating wildfire season fueled by extreme heat, drying vegetation, drought and strong winds.

Laser dicing, a technique that uses focused laser pulses to separate individual chips from a semiconductor wafer, is increasingly favored over mechanical blade cutting because it can process delicate, low-strength materials with minimal physical stress. However, achieving proper yield requires precise control over the process.

Archaeological excavations generate a vast quantity of documents of various types and formats, which constitute a scientific heritage of great value. However, the way this data is organized, documented and preserved remains highly varied. This is the main conclusion of the article "Research data management practices and perspectives among Catalan archaeologists: a qualitative approach," published in the Journal of Documentation.

Adolescents in both the United States and the United Kingdom have become increasingly ambitious about their future careers over the past two decades, according to a new study by researchers at Penn State. The team also found that family socioeconomic background plays a different role depending on the types of occupations students expect to pursue, with relatively small socioeconomic differences among American students aspiring to the highest-status careers.

Heat warnings have stretched across Canada this summer, from Atlantic Canada and southern British Columbia to the Prairies, central Canada and the Northwest Territories.

Photocatalytic reduction of CO2 offers a promising approach to storing energy from intermittent sunlight in carbon-containing fuels and chemicals, thereby enabling carbon recycling. Single-atom Cu catalysts have attracted attention because they enhance CO2 photoreduction. However, the roles of single-atom active sites and adjacent atoms in these catalysts have not been well understood.

Sand has a way of getting everywhere on a beach day—and for some, it can make or break the whole trip. There's the way it whips through the air just as sandwiches are being unwrapped, the way it turns blisteringly hot underfoot by midday, and the way it stubbornly clings to every piece of clothing.

To improve carbon recycling and reduce emissions, researchers at Science Tokyo developed iron-substituted calcium titanate (Fe-doped CaTiO3) as an environmentally friendly support material for chemical looping, a process that converts carbon dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxide for fuel and chemical production. By substituting iron into CaTiO3, the material gained oxygen vacancies and improved ion and electron transport, accelerating CO2 conversion. Built from widely available, low-cost elements,

The African armyworm is a highly destructive migratory pest that damages maize, sorghum, millet and sugarcane. These caterpillars also cause indirect damage to livestock by destroying grazing lands and pastures.

Researchers at the University of Bath and The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) suggest that the celebrated Dunning-Kruger effect, often taken to mean the least competent people are the most overconfident, may actually be the wrong way around.

Biomolecular condensates are ubiquitous in living cells, including bacteria, viruses, plants and mammalian systems. These membraneless bodies, or molecular communities made up of DNA, RNA and proteins, are where molecules large and small within the cell come together to coordinate various biochemical reactions.

A study of more than 350,000 students in England has found that teachers predict higher A-Level grades for girls than boys who go on to achieve the same exam results. The findings raise fresh questions about the role of predicted grades in university admissions.

Positrons—the antimatter counterpart of electrons—are created in high-energy cosmic processes. When normal matter meets its antimatter counterpart, they annihilate, or vanish, and produce a distinctive 511 keV gamma-ray signal. Scientists use this signal to detect where these annihilations occur.

An SKKU research team led by Professor Travers B. Child of the SKK Graduate School of Business (SKK GSB) has become the first in the world to use micro-level data to demonstrate that aid fragmentation—the phenomenon in which numerous international aid agencies operate simultaneously in a single region—can deepen administrative corruption in developing countries. The study was conducted jointly with Professor Austin L. Wright of the University of Chicago and Professor Yun Xiao of the University o

A new computer model is one of the first artificial intelligence tools to advance scientific discovery in agriculture and biogeochemistry and is 50 times more efficient than its predecessors, according to a study that offers a proof-of-principle for how AI might be used to shed light on obscure biological processes.

That kitchen sponge sitting by your sink is not as innocent as it looks. It could be harboring Salmonella enteritidis, E. coli or Staphylococcus aureus—and there's no way to tell just by looking at it or smelling it.

Quasars, distant cores of galaxies powered by supermassive black holes, are among the most luminous objects in the universe. While not uncommon, their brightness can make it difficult to accurately measure the galaxies they reside in. This means scientists must use gravitational lensing to assist in analyzing these bright objects, a method that relies on studying how an object's strong gravity bends light around its host galaxy. Yet despite their own powerful gravity, quasars that can act as len

Light typically interacts with a material the same way whether it enters through the front or the back—like polarized sunglasses that work the same from either side. Cornell researchers have demonstrated a simple route to breaking that symmetry, opening new possibilities for photonics and quantum information processing.

Invasive rats on tropical islands are creating winners and losers among the tiny underwater animals near the bottom of the food chain that inhabit surrounding coral reefs. Scientists say the changes to these marine ecosystems can rewire food chains on the reefs.

A new study using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope finds that star formation in the nearby Andromeda galaxy has undergone a 500-million-year decline, with an even steeper drop in the last 40 million years. Andromeda, a spiral galaxy comparable in size to our Milky Way, is close enough to be seen with the unaided eye from areas with dark skies. Located about 2.5 million light-years from Earth—practically our cosmic backyard—Andromeda offers an opportunity for astronomers to examine its ste

Strengthening the bond between people and nature—that is the aim of a German–Dutch EU project involving Oldenburg. The reasoning behind this is that people who feel they are part of the environment are more likely to campaign for its preservation.

With global warming and extreme weather intensifying, can animals raise their thermal tolerance to cope with a continuously warming environment? A joint research project by the Division of Science at Lingnan University and an international research team conducted experiments on tropical intertidal snails that live under the scorching sun.

Physicists from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), the Technical University of Darmstadt, Sapienza University in Rome and the University of Camerino (both in Italy) have calculated the fundamental laws of thermodynamics for a gas composed of spinning particles. In the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they demonstrate that the pressure of this gas is similar to that of a normal gas but at an elevated temperature. In addition, localized surface cu

Wild seabirds that face high energy demands during the breeding season go on to migrate farther and raise more chicks the next year, but at a cost to their own survival. An international team led by researchers from Nagoya University raised the energy cost of flight for some birds and tracked them through the next year of their annual cycle.

Heavy snowfall in the Argentine Andes has forced more than 100 people to evacuate and stalled almost 1,000 trucks on snow-covered roads, while flights were rerouted Monday.

Firefighters battling devastating fires in France have had to contend with a new threat: immense fire clouds that create their own wind and even lightning that can spark fresh blazes.

The United Nations has fast-tracked a vast antelope migration path in South Sudan onto its List of World Heritage in Danger, the young nation's first such listing.

Doctors can often detect diseases in humans using minimally invasive methods, like blood or urine tests, before symptoms become severe. Now, researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are applying a similar concept to coral reefs, showing that the water surrounding reefs contains chemical and microbial signals that could reveal changes in ecosystem health long before those changes are visible.

A fleeting photoinduced electronic state and the subsequent formation of a photoinduced hidden state in a metal–organic framework were captured in just 30 femtoseconds by researchers at Science Tokyo, Tohoku University and Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan. By combining ultrafast laser spectroscopy with theoretical analysis, the researchers found that a transient electronic state plays a key role in this process. The findings provide new insights into controlling material properties with lig

Scientists at Houston Methodist Research Institute have developed a biodegradable implant designed to deliver cancer-fighting immunotherapy drugs directly into tumors over an extended period, a strategy that could improve treatment effectiveness while reducing side effects.

An international study led by the Universities of Córdoba and Pisa used isotopic analysis to reconstruct the dietary traces left in human remains found in an Italian necropolis, revealing what daily life was like in that community 2,700 years ago. Despite the passage of time, certain patterns of behavior recur: diet, human mobility, gender differences and the role of funerary symbolism in signifying social status.

Next-generation energy devices like fuel cells and water electrolyzers depend on ion-exchange membranes that allow only water and certain ions to pass through.

By analyzing 100,000 California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection inspection records from 2013 to 2024, researchers at the University of California, Irvine have identified the key environmental and human factors responsible for the most destructive wildfires, and they have synthesized the knowledge into a high-resolution, actionable fire risk map for the Golden State.

Burying underwear in soil isn't a typical science lesson. But for students on Hornby Island, it's one way they can learn how seaweed supports local ecosystems.

Interviews with political activists in Southern California showed stark differences in how migrants are viewed: either "like us" and deserving of rights or lawbreakers undeserving of social belonging and benefits.

An earthquake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 shook Kumamoto on Japan's southern main island of Kyushu late Tuesday afternoon and a tsunami advisory was issued, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

Firefighters in France and Spain rushed to contain the worst wildfires in living memory Tuesday, seizing crucial hours before the arrival of another wave of searing temperatures.

A substance-use prevention program delivered to students and their families in the sixth and seventh grades led to wide-ranging benefits well into adulthood and—for those who became parents—even positively affected their children, according to a new study by researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development.

As water shot into an open stock tank atop a high-country mesa, a trickle soaked the dusty earth below. Scott Snyder rose from the shade to fasten a hose and stop the spillage.

To explain the stock market's reaction to earnings results, investors and other market participants have used a standard tool for decades: the earnings surprise.

A puzzle that can tell players how fast they think on their feet has been developed by a University of Leeds researcher.

Minor cuts and scrapes usually heal in time, but losing a finger or a whole limb? For most vertebrates, that's a done deal. Unless, of course, you've got the self-healing machinery of an axolotl.

Jupiter's moon Io is the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system, boasting hundreds of active volcanoes that spew molten lava into space. This activity results from a process called tidal heating, in which Jupiter's massive gravity constantly stretches and compresses the much smaller moon during its noncircular orbit.

The arms race between bacteria and antibiotics is nothing new—antimicrobial resistance has been an emerging issue in human and animal health for a long time. But in a new review published in JAC-Antimicrobial Resistance, NC State researchers used a One Health approach to study findings from whole-genome sequencing data and the role of plasmids—small DNA molecules with the ability to pass genes from one bacterial species to another—in the spread of antimicrobial resistance. One Health refers to t