Change is afoot for the official measuring stick used to size up big places in America. more

More than 27,000 pigs have died in a hog-cholera epidemic that has struck Indonesia, with thousands more at risk, an animal welfare official said. more

A UN climate summit in Madrid risked collapsing Saturday after all-night negotiations between countries left them more divided than ever over on how to fight global warming and pay for its ravages. more

A question that has long puzzled scientists is how our Milky Way galaxy which has an elegant spiral shape with long arms, took this form. more

Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon in November surged by 104 percent compared to the same month in 2018, according to official data released Saturday. more

Take a deep breath in. Slowly let it out. more

Mitochondria, tiny structures present in most cells, are known for their energy-generating machinery. Now, Salk researchers have discovered a new function of mitochondria: they set off... more

Thousands of marine worms dubbed "penis fish" for their shape and color appeared this week on a California beach after a strong winter storm exposed them. more

South African farmer Steve Bothma heaved a sigh of relief when the weatherman finally predicted rain. more

Rochester Institute of Technology and the Instituto Argentino de Radioastronomía (IAR) have collaborated to make the first pulsar observations from South America. more

Officials from almost 200 countries hunkered down for another night of talks late Friday as a U.N. climate meeting in Madrid went into overtime without agreement on key issues. more

Born pink, blind, and helpless, giant pandas typically weigh about 100 grams at birth—the equivalent of a stick of butter. Their mothers are 900 times more massive than that. more

Growing up in the wild makes plants tough. Wild plants evolve to survive the whims of nature and thrive in difficult conditions,... more

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have developed a new methodology that allows researchers to assess the chemical composition and structure of metallic particles... more

In the world of squirrels, moving away from your home turf has better outcomes for males than for females, according to a... more

With the popularity of online shopping, it's no secret brick-and-mortar stores are fighting to stay relevant. Waiting area entertainment is one way they are standing out, because no... more

A new approach to trapping light in artificial photonic materials by a City College of New York-led team could lead to a tremendous boost... more

Buzzing chainsaws are interrupted by the frequent crash of breaking branches as crews fell towering trees and clear tangled brush in the densely forested Santa Cruz Mountains south... more

A team of researchers at McMaster University has developed a self-cleaning surface that can repel all forms of bacteria, preventing the transfer of antibiotic-resistant superbugs and other dangerous bacteria in... more

TSCs are emerging devices that combine the advantages of visible transparency and light-to-electricity conversion. One of the valuable prospective applications of such devices is their integration into buildings, vehicles, or portable electronics. Therefore, colour-perception and flexibility... more

Control of the polarization of light is a key feature for displays, optical data storage, optical quantum information, and chirality sensing. In particular, the direct emission of circularly polarized (CP) light has... more

How is knowledge exchanged and shared when interdisciplinary research teams work together? Professor Margarete Boos and Lianghao Dai from the University of Göttingen have investigated this by studying several different research projects. Their study makes concrete recommendations for how teams... more

The manipulation of rivers in California is jeopardizing the resilience of native Chinook salmon. It compresses their migration timing to the point that they crowd their... more

In 2015, the first commercial nanopore DNA sequencing device was introduced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies. Based on a synthetically engineered transmembrane protein, nanopore sequencing allows long DNA strands to be channelled through the central... more

Researchers at Duke University have engineered a bandage that captures and holds a pro-healing molecule at the site of a bone break to accelerate and improve the natural healing process. more

Made up of 2-D sheets of carbon atoms arranged in honeycomb lattices, graphene has been intensively studied in recent years. As well as the material's diverse structural properties, physicists have paid particular attention to the intriguing... more

A type of Martian aurora first identified by NASA's MAVEN spacecraft in 2016 is actually the most common form of aurora occurring... more

Antiparticles—subatomic particles that have exactly opposite properties to those that make up everyday matter—may seem like a concept out of science fiction, but they are real, and the study of matter-antimatter interactions has important medical and technological applications. Marcos Barp... more

The existence of habitable alien worlds has been a mainstay of popular culture for more than a century. In the 19th century,... more

When people learn that a charitable contribution they earmarked for a specific project was used for another cause, they feel betrayed—and often punish the... more

From Sudan to Syria to Bangladesh, climate change is often presented as a powerful and simple root cause of violent conflict and mass migration. more

The invader, puffed out into the shape of a ball, fluttered one wing straight up in the air.... more

Every day brings fresh and ever more alarming news about the state of the global environment. To speak of mere "climate change"... more

Animal campaigners demanded on Friday that a Botswana hunter's licence be revoked after an elephant was killed despite being protected, raising tensions over the country's new hunting rules. more

After a quick spread over 100 miles of Florida's west coast, red tide has... more

The Florida black bear will remain off-limits from hunters, but only for now. more

It is now almost 10 years since ESA's CryoSat was launched. Throughout its decade in orbit, this novel satellite, which carries a radar altimeter to measure changes in the height of the world's ice,... more

The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission takes us over the green algae blooms swirling around the Baltic Sea. more

Pathogens can use a range of toxins to damage their host organism. Bacteria, such as those responsible for causing the deadly Plague, use a special injection mechanism to deliver their poisonous contents into the host cell. Stefan Raunser, Director at... more

On 17 December, ESA will launch a first-of-its-kind space laboratory, OPS-SAT. The small, low-cost test satellite has been specifically designed for operational experiments in space, and includes the most powerful flight computer on board any current ESA spacecraft. more

Nothing seems safe from plastic contamination. A new study by NSF-funded researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggests there could be a million... more

A new paper has revealed an ancient trackway, found imprinted on a block of sandstone from the base... more

Researchers at the University of Exeter, UK, followed a population of wild banded mongooses (Mungos mungo) in western Uganda for 15 years, using ultrasound imaging to track which females became pregnant and which carried to full term. They... more

At a prehistoric archaeological site in Turkey, researchers have discovered two 8,500-year-old human teeth, which had been used as pendants in a necklace or... more

It came as a bittersweet surprise to biologists and government agencies monitoring the steadily shrinking Salton Sea's slide toward death... more

NGC 3175 is located around 50 million light-years away in the constellation of Antlia (the Air Pump). The galaxy can be seen slicing across the frame in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with... more

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in... more

This holiday season, Americans will buy some 20 million turkeys and 300 million pounds of ham. more

The choices that societies make concerning the treatment of children can bring about the greatest of debates and prompt significant political action.... more

Advances and investment in geothermal energy, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) are "critical" to... more