Oxford University researchers have made a significant step toward realizing a form of "biological electricity" that could be used in a variety of bioengineering and biomedical applications, including communication with living human cells. The work was published on 28 November in the journal Science.

Within a cell, DNA carries the genetic code for building proteins. To build proteins, the cell makes a copy of DNA, called mRNA. Then, another molecule called a ribosome reads the mRNA, translating it into protein. But this step has been a visual mystery; scientists previously did not know how the r...

Coral adaptation to ocean warming and marine heat waves will likely be overwhelmed without rapid reductions of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to an international team of scientists.

More than a million years ago, on a hot savanna teeming with wildlife near the shore of what would someday become Lake Turkana in Kenya, two completely different species of hominins may have passed each other as they scavenged for food.

Researchers at University of California San Diego analyzed the genomes of hundreds of malaria parasites to determine which genetic variants are most likely to confer drug resistance.

Scientists have a problem with cosmic rays—they produce too many muons at the Earth's surface. Cascades of muons are byproducts of high-energy cosmic rays as they collide with nuclei in the upper atmosphere, and scientists see more muons at Earth's surface than standard physics models predict.

Vorticity, a measure of the local rotation or swirling motion in a fluid, has long been studied by physicists and mathematicians. The dynamics of vorticity is governed by the famed Navier-Stokes equations, which tell us that vorticity is produced by the passage of fluid past walls. Moreover, due to ...

A team of bioarchaeologists from the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Université de Bordeaux, and Aix-Marseille Université has found evidence of an aristocratic family in France embalming their loved ones after death for nearly two centuries. In their paper publ...

There are over 30,000 weather stations in the world, measuring temperature, precipitation and other indicators often on a daily basis. That's a massive amount of data for climate researchers to compile and analyze to produce the monthly and annual global and regional temperatures (especially) that m...

Using ESA's XMM-Newton satellite and NASA's Chandra spacecraft, German astronomers have observed a supersoft X-ray source designated RX J0513.9−6951. Results of the observations, published on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the evolution of this source.

Earth's continents are slowly moving across the planet's surface due to plate tectonics, culminating in regions of crustal expansion and collision. In the latter case, high temperatures and pressures lead to the reworking of the crust, affecting its composition, as well as that of the underlying man...

A small team of astrophysicists at the University of California, Los Angeles, working with colleagues from the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Colorado, Boulder, has found evidence that Alfvén waves in space plasmas speed up ion beams, resulting in the creation of small-scale aco...

Air pollution caused by fires is linked to more than 1.5 million deaths a year worldwide, the vast majority occurring in developing countries, a major new study said on Thursday.

Paleontologists unveiled on Wednesday the fossil of a young marine crocodile dating back 10 to 12 million years that was discovered in a Peruvian desert.

An international team of scientists has published a study highlighting the potential role of iron sulfides in the formation of life in early Earth's terrestrial hot springs. According to the researchers, the sulfides may have catalyzed the reduction of gaseous carbon dioxide into prebiotic organic m...

The increased use of a chemical compound to replace TNT in explosive devices has a damaging and long lasting effect on plants, new research has shown.

Looking to inform the conservation of critically endangered bird species, University of Utah biologists have completed an analysis identifying traits that correlate with all 216 bird extinctions since 1500.

When a star dies in a supernova, one possible outcome is for the remains to become a neutron star. Inside a neutron star, the protons and electrons combine into uncharged neutrons. This substance is called neutron matter.

Pesticides can be made more effective and environmentally friendly by improving how they stick to plant surfaces, thanks to new research led by Dr. Mustafa Akbulut, professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M University.

New research has revealed how tiny soil microbes are impacted by extreme weather events, offering new insights into the risks posed by climate change.