/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Researchers from the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have discovered a breakthrough in the fight against Fusarium Head Blight, which is a major disease affecting U.S. wheat and other cereal crops. /news/2025-05-discovery-flip-genetic-script-fungal.html Molecular & Computational biology Agriculture Fri, 23 May 2025 11:30:01 EDT news667217084 A biologist at the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences advises consumers to think twice when deciding which chocolate bar they want to eat. That's because a heavy metal often found in chocolate might not just affect their health, but also the health of their future children. /news/2025-05-toxic-effects-cadmium.html Environment Fri, 23 May 2025 09:59:59 EDT news667213195 Imagine looking at thousands of scattered puzzle pieces and trying to guess what picture they create. Without any reference point, it's nearly impossible. /news/2025-05-chaos-clarity-tool-complex-cell.html Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 22 May 2025 15:27:18 EDT news667146431 A recent publication by University of Guam Marine Laboratory scientists, "Restoration innovation: Fusing microbial memories to engineer coral resilience," suggests a novel framework that pairs fundamental biology with applied biology to innovate in restoration ecology. The research is published in the journal One Earth. /news/2025-05-coral-fusion-fragmentation-microbiome-science.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Thu, 22 May 2025 13:11:19 EDT news667138270 A team of marine biologists at the University of North Carolina and Duke University has found humpback whales have poorer eyesight than previously assumed. In their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the group dissected and tested the left eye of a humpback whale. /news/2025-05-humpback-whale-eyesight-weaker-previously.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 22 May 2025 11:50:01 EDT news667133052 As global temperatures rise, many species are scrambling to adapt—or risk extinction. Scientists refer to these animals as "species on the move," but new research suggests the scientific community may be overlooking the wide variety of ways these species are adapting. /news/2025-05-rethinking-climate-holistic-approach-species.html Evolution Ecology Wed, 21 May 2025 11:09:43 EDT news667044573 Biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have released the first broad-scale, comparative, fine-grained analysis linking the amplitude, or volume, of a bird's song to its vocal frequency, or pitch. Though biologists have long wondered whether birds are able to control their pitch as they get louder or if their vocal abilities are mechanically limited, until now there has been no wide-ranging data with which to probe this aspect of the evolutionary history of birdsong. /news/2025-05-biologists-link-bird-songs-pitch.html Evolution Ecology Wed, 21 May 2025 10:46:08 EDT news667043161 A new study published in Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems showcases how untreated wastewater released into the Chicago River during extreme rain events significantly altered the freshwater ecosystem. /news/2025-05-reveals-impact-sewage-chicago-river.html Ecology Tue, 20 May 2025 16:56:03 EDT news666978961 For decades, the signal crayfish has been an ecological troublemaker. It is invasive and widespread across Europe, Asia, and parts of the United States. Recently, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have turned their attention back to the signal crayfish's homeland and made a remarkable discovery. /news/2025-05-newly-crayfish-species.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 20 May 2025 14:23:04 EDT news666969781 Any parent will tell you how useful it can be to have family living nearby, giving a helping hand when raising your children. In humans, relatives and even non-relatives act as childminders. Such behavior is widespread in other animals too, particularly birds. /news/2025-05-tailed-tits-village.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 20 May 2025 13:56:04 EDT news666968162 Plastic pollution is harming invertebrates at the bottom of the food chain, including beetles, slugs, snails and earthworms, according to a new study by the University of Sussex and the University of Exeter. More than 1 in 10 samples had fragments of plastic in their stomach, and harmful chemicals are being passed onto larger animals who feed on them. /news/2025-05-microplastics-eaten-uk-invertebrates-contaminating.html Ecology Tue, 20 May 2025 13:48:58 EDT news666967734 Sharks have been evolving for more than 450 million years, developing skeletons not from bone, but from a tough, mineralized form of cartilage. These creatures are more than just fast swimmers—they're built for efficiency. Their spines act like natural springs, storing and releasing energy with each tailbeat, allowing them to move through the water with smooth, powerful grace. /news/2025-05-sharkitecture-nanoscale-blacktip-shark-skeleton.html Bio & Medicine Nanomaterials Tue, 20 May 2025 11:01:04 EDT news666957661 Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a computational imaging system that borrows techniques from astronomy to reconstruct 4D videos of freely moving small model organisms, like zebrafish and fruit fly larvae. By using a concave mirror and an array of sensors, researchers were able to rapidly capture the unrestrained movements of animals from dozens of synchronized viewpoints. /news/2025-05-astronomy-enables-capture-high-4d.html Cell & Microbiology Biotechnology Tue, 20 May 2025 09:17:03 EDT news666951421 On an island off the coast of Panama lives a population of wild primates with a remarkable culture. White-faced capuchins on Jicarón Island in Coiba National Park use stone tools; and scientists have been monitoring this unique tradition with an array of motion-triggered cameras on the island since 2017. /news/2025-05-capuchin-monkeys-bizarre-fad-abducting.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 19 May 2025 11:00:03 EDT news666862261 Lichens on stone, those "still explosions" as the great American poet Elizabeth Bishop named them, remain unseen to most, which is remarkable when you consider how commonplace they are. It seems these ecologically and culturally significant whatever-they-are unfairly fall victim to something akin to plant blindness, a known phenomenon and the tendency of people to overlook plants, which many of us—when we first encounter lichens—identify them as, even though that's not what they are at all. /news/2025-05-lichens-stone-life-reconnecting-natural.html Ecology Mon, 19 May 2025 09:47:06 EDT news666866822 A team of physicists, biologists and engineers at Cornell University, in the U.S., has discovered some of the factors that lead to more or less spray when cutting onions and found a couple of ways to reduce the amount of eye irritation. The group has published a paper describing their study on the arXiv preprint server. /news/2025-05-physicists-onions.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Mon, 19 May 2025 09:40:01 EDT news666865985 Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and partner institutions, including the Brookfield Zoo Chicago's Sarasota Dolphin Research Program (SDRP), are the winners of the inaugural Coller Dolittle Challenge for their work in identifying possible language-like communication in dolphins. /news/2025-05-evidence-language-communication-dolphins.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 19 May 2025 08:05:17 EDT news666860402 Corals everywhere on the planet live in harmony with microscopic organisms. Many corals get their vivid colors from microscopic algae which lives inside the corals' tissue and provides the coral with food. Even in the water surrounding coral reefs, there is a microscopic soup of bacteria, archaea, and other types of microbes that respond to changes in the habitat and can indicate whether or not the coral reef is healthy. /news/2025-05-microbial-reef-accessible-tool-ecosystem.html Ecology Cell & Microbiology Fri, 16 May 2025 14:35:43 EDT news666624935 Plants are sprouting from the ground earlier and earlier once the snow has disappeared. This is now happening on average six days earlier than 25 years ago, according to a newly published study by SLF researcher Michael Zehnder and colleagues. /news/2025-05-alps-week-earlier-years.html Plants & Animals Ecology Fri, 16 May 2025 09:20:04 EDT news666606001 Ask scientists which gene-editing tool is most needed to advance gene therapy, and they'd probably describe a system that's now close to realization in the labs of Samuel Sternberg at Columbia University Vagelos College of Â鶹ÒùÔºicians and Surgeons and David Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. /news/2025-05-advanced-gene-editor-enables-precise.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 15 May 2025 17:03:04 EDT news666547381 Especially in temperate climates, winter poses a major challenge for honeybee colonies. To ensure their survival, the animals must maintain the right temperature in the hive and raise the next generation of workers. The availability of pollen from flowers plays a vital role as well. /news/2025-05-diverse-pollen-sources-boost-honeybee.html Ecology Thu, 15 May 2025 13:50:02 EDT news666534686 A proposal to regulate the killing of coyotes in California has drawn fierce opposition from ranchers and farmers, who say they need to be able to control the wild canines to protect livestock and pets. /news/2025-05-limit-coyotes-ire-california-ranchers.html Plants & Animals Ecology Thu, 15 May 2025 09:00:01 EDT news666515724 A vast bloom of toxic algae is killing more than 200 species of marine life off the southern coast of Australia, scientists and conservation groups say. /news/2025-05-toxic-algae-marine-life-australian.html Ecology Thu, 15 May 2025 05:00:27 EDT news666504023 With coral reefs in crisis due to climate change, scientists have engineered a bio-ink that could help promote coral larvae settlement and restore these underwater ecosystems before it's too late. In a paper published in Trends in Biotechnology, researchers demonstrate that the ink could boost coral settlement by more than 20 times, which they hope could contribute to rebuilding coral reefs around the world. /news/2025-05-ink-boosts-coral-settlement-rebuild.html Ecology Biotechnology Wed, 14 May 2025 11:00:05 EDT news666281701 When I first started working with integral field spectroscopic (IFU) data, I was struck by how much complexity was being averaged out or masked by traditional processing techniques. Most segmentation methods in astronomy—especially those designed for IFU data cubes—rely either on predefined morphological components or on signal-to-noise heuristics. Among the most common is Voronoi binning, which prioritizes the signal-to-noise ratio at the expense of preserving the underlying spectral variation. /news/2025-05-ai-powered-algorithm-capivara-unmasks.html Astronomy Wed, 14 May 2025 10:10:01 EDT news666435654 Global warming is already very tough for animals in the wild, but it may be toughest for creatures like fish, whose body temperatures are controlled by the water temperatures around them. /news/2025-05-zebrafish-bred-tolerance-apparent-tradeoffs.html Plants & Animals Evolution Wed, 14 May 2025 05:00:04 EDT news666275461 About 3.7 billion years ago, a string of naturally occurring amino—the same kind that astronomers have found in meteorites and just recently in a stellar nursery near the center of the Milky Way—reacted with a naturally occurring catalyst and began the fateful process of self-assembled replication. /news/2025-05-beetleweed-chromosome-complements-geographical-range.html Plants & Animals Ecology Tue, 13 May 2025 16:05:03 EDT news666371101 A scientist braving crashing waves to track whales in a northern Norwegian fjord tops a list of winners of Nature's 2025 Scientist At Work competition. Arctic telescopes, tiny frogs, and mountain fog also feature in the top six images showcasing the fieldwork of scientists. /news/2025-05-breathtaking-images-scientist.html Other Tue, 13 May 2025 15:22:12 EDT news666368528 Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, UCSF and the University of Pittsburgh have developed a new workflow for designing enzymes from scratch, paving the way toward more efficient, powerful and environmentally benign chemistry. The new method allows designers to combine a variety of desirable properties into new-to-nature catalysts for an array of applications, from drug development to materials design. /news/2025-05-enzymes-workflow-paves-powerful-environmentally.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Tue, 13 May 2025 14:39:03 EDT news666365941 A protein located in the wrong part of a cell can contribute to several diseases, such as Alzheimer's, cystic fibrosis, and cancer. But there are about 70,000 different proteins and protein variants in a single human cell, and since scientists can typically only test for a handful in one experiment, it is extremely costly and time-consuming to identify proteins' locations manually. /news/2025-05-ai-virtually-protein-human-cell.html Molecular & Computational biology Tue, 13 May 2025 14:30:05 EDT news666365402