Top Science News

March 14, 2024

Alaska Dinosaur Tracks Reveal a Lush, Wet Environment

Mar. 12, 2024 — A large find of dinosaur tracks and fossilized plants and tree stumps in far northwestern Alaska provides new information about the climate and movement of animals near the time when they began traveling between the Asian and North American ...

Bee-2-Bee Influencing: Bees Master Complex Tasks Through Social Interaction

Mar. 6, 2024 — Bumblebees successfully learned a two-step puzzle box task through social observation. This task was too complex for individual bees to learn on their own. Observing trained demonstrator bees performing the first unrewarded step was crucial for ...

Astronomers Spot Oldest 'Dead' Galaxy Yet Observed

Mar. 6, 2024 — A galaxy that suddenly stopped forming new stars more than 13 billion years ago has been observed by astronomers. Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted a 'dead' galaxy when the universe was just 700 million years old, the ...

Sinking Land Increases Risk for Thousands of Coastal Residents by 2050

Mar. 6, 2024 — A new study provides a new comprehensive look at the potential for flooding in a combined 32 cities along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts. It predicts as many as 500,000 people will be affected by flooding alongside 1 in 35 privately owned ...

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Milk to the Rescue for Diabetics? Cow Produces Human Insulin in Milk

Mar. 13, 2024 — An unassuming brown bovine from the south of Brazil has made history as the first transgenic cow capable of producing human insulin in her milk. The advancement could herald a new era in insulin production, one day eliminating drug scarcity and high costs for people living with ...

Research Sheds Light on New Strategy to Treat Infertility

Mar. 8, 2024 — New research describes the science behind a promising technique to treat infertility by turning a skin cell into an egg that is capable of producing viable embryos. The technique could be used by women of advanced maternal age or for those who are unable to produce viable eggs due to previous treatment for cancer or other causes. It also raises the possibility of men in same-sex relationships ...

Shape-Shifting Ultrasound Stickers Detect Post-Surgical Complications

Mar. 7, 2024 — Gastrointestinal surgeries carry risk of fluid leaks, a potentially life-threatening complication. But no existing methods can reliably and non-invasively detect these leaks. To address this unmet need, researchers developed a tiny, soft, flexible sticker that changes in shape inside the body, enabling standard ultrasound tech to detect leaks for earlier detection and intervention. After the ...

Lack of Focus Doesn't Equal Lack of Intelligence -- It's Proof of an Intricate Brain

Mar. 8, 2024 — Imagine a busy restaurant: dishes clattering, music playing, people talking loudly over one another. It's a wonder that anyone in that kind of environment can focus enough to have a conversation. A new study provides some of the most detailed insights yet into the brain mechanisms that help people pay attention amid such distraction, as well as ...

Robot ANYmal Can Do Parkour and Walk Across Rubble

Mar. 13, 2024 — The quadrupedal robot ANYmal went back to school and has learned a lot. Researchers used machine learning to teach it new skills: the robot can now climb over obstacles and successfully negotiate ...

Cheers! NASA's Webb Finds Ethanol, Other Icy Ingredients for Worlds

Mar. 13, 2024 — What do margaritas, vinegar, and ant stings have in common? They contain chemical ingredients that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has identified surrounding two young protostars known as IRAS 2A and IRAS 23385. Although planets are not yet forming around those stars, these and other molecules detected there by Webb represent key ingredients for making potentially habitable ...

Explaining a Supernova's 'String of Pearls'

Mar. 13, 2024 — Physicists often turn to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability to explain why fluid structures form in plasmas, but that may not be the full story when it comes to the ring of hydrogen clumps around supernova 1987A, research suggests. It looks like the same mechanism that breaks up airplane contrails might be at play in forming the clumps of hydrogen gas that ring the remnant of supernova ...

Supply Chain Disruptions Will Further Exacerbate Economic Losses from Climate Change

Mar. 13, 2024 — Global GDP loss from climate change will increase exponentially the warmer the planet gets when its cascading impact on global supply chains is factored in, finds a new ...

Drought, Soil Desiccation Cracking, and Carbon Dioxide Emissions: An Overlooked Feedback Loop Exacerbating Climate Change

Mar. 13, 2024 — Soil stores 80 percent of carbon on earth, yet with increasing cycles of drought, that crucial reservoir is cracking and breaking down, releasing even more greenhouse gases creating an amplified feedback loop that could accelerate climate ...

Menopause Explains Why Some Female Whales Live So Long

Mar. 13, 2024 — Females of some whale species have evolved to live drastically longer lives so they can care for their families, new research ...

What Kinds of Seismic Signals Did Swifties Send at LA Concert?

Mar. 13, 2024 — Seattle may have experienced its own Swift Quake last July, but at an August 2023 concert Taylor Swift's fans in Los Angeles gave scientists a lot of shaking to ponder. After some debate, a research team concluded that it was likely the dancing and jumping motions of the audience at SoFi Stadium -- not the musical beats or reverberations of the sound system -- that generated the concert's ...

Grounding Zone Discovery Explains Accelerated Melting Under Greenland's Glaciers

Mar. 13, 2024 — Researchers have conducted the first large-scale observation and modeling study of northwest Greenland's Petermann Glacier. Their findings reveal the intrusion of warm ocean water beneath the ice as the culprit in the accelerated melting it has experienced since the turn of the century, and their computer predictions indicate that potential sea ...