Science News
In animated films, nonhuman characters are still overwhelmingly male
Female protagonists in animated films have come a long way over the past several decades. Take the 1959 movie "Sleeping Beauty": Soft-spoken and vulnerable, ...
Newly discovered viruses reveal an evolutionary missing link
Researchers at the University of Miami have identified a group of previously unknown viruses that bridge an evolutionary gap between viruses and cellular pro...
Rigorous analysis confirms NASA's Artemis II heat shield performance
NASA's Artemis II mission sent four astronauts around the moon and brought them safely back to Earth, laying a foundation for crewed flights to the moon's su...
White Sands footprints suggest humans experienced abrupt environmental shifts during the last ice age
Expanded excavations at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have provided researchers an opportunity to refine the age of the oldest human footprints in ...
Imperial woodpecker returns to life as a detailed digital specimen
Researchers have created a detailed, animated 3D model of the imperial woodpecker (Campephilus imperialis), a spectacular bird that has not been confirmed in...
Food, fear and physics help explain group behavior from plankton to whales
The open ocean is a dynamic environment, where food is patchy, predators are plentiful, and oceanographic conditions change constantly. Life in the pelagic e...
Fair climate transitions need more than financial support, evidence review suggests
The transition to a low-carbon economy will not affect all people and places equally. Although its overall benefits may outweigh its costs, workers may lose ...
Green, pink and purple: Astronomers reveal the surprising true colors of white dwarf stars
University of Warwick astronomers have shown that white dwarf stars can glow in a range of colors, including the first star ever found that would appear gree...
Researchers in exile thrive in new academic settings when they contribute knowledge, not just receive aid
Publishing scientific articles requires more than knowledge of academic writing conventions; it also depends on access to networks that support the research ...
One-third of food is lost or wasted: How to help farmers cut postharvest losses
Agriculture in the Global South remains under pressure to produce more food while responding to climate change and resource constraints. Policy responses hav...
NASA develops batteries to power humanity's return to moon
If you've ever had your car start sluggishly, or not at all, on a particularly frigid winter morning, you know standard batteries do not like extreme cold. T...
Uganda's sugarcane boom leaves families hungry: What needs to change
Busoga, in eastern Uganda, is a low, fertile plateau surrounded on three sides by Lake Victoria, the Nile River and Lake Kyoga. Most of its 4.3 million peopl...
Simple cleaning steps could curb deadly fungal disease risks for Australia's wild reptiles
With spring underway and the weather warming, reptiles are on the move in suburbs, parks and scrubland across Australia. Snake catchers and wildlife caregive...
Ultrashort laser pulses offer a new way to probe electrons' quantum geometry
Researchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the University of Regensburg have developed a method for determining, using light, a quantum property o...
Scientists discover 'D-rex', a giant fungus from Chinese forests whose unique lineage dates back 65 million years
Deep in the forests of Yunnan, China, scientists have discovered a "fungal giant" that challenges our understanding of how large fungi can become. The newly ...
Isle of Wight fossil Europe's first known long-clawed megaraptoran dinosaur
A new species of dinosaur—a long-clawed predator the size of a large tiger—has been discovered by a UCL-led team from a fossil found on the Isle of Wight. Th...
People with a 'good ear' for sounds make better language learners, study suggests
People who are better at noticing fine details in sound—an ability known as auditory precision—can master the pronunciation of new languages faster and more ...
Optical skyrmions can control the motion of magnetic skyrmions
Magnetic skyrmions (MSks) are swirling patterns of magnetization that form inside certain magnetic materials. They can behave like actual particles in many w...
Stabilizing a simple amino acid opens a path to biodegradable sensors
The humble amino acid glycine—the simplest of all amino acids—is everywhere. The human body produces it, and it helps make up our skin, bones and ligaments. ...
Gravity and quantum information linked through a derivation of Einstein's equations
Recent research shows that gravity and quantum information are deeply connected and that the shape of spacetime can be traced back to the way information is ...
New research traces the origins and human impact of Britain's largest medieval lead industry through ancient teeth
The first definitive evidence of when post-Roman lead production began in one of Europe's largest medieval lead-producing regions, the Derbyshire Peak Distri...
Magnetic sculpting transforms single-source fields into predetermined shapes with mathematical precision
Magnetic fields are invisible yet essential components in technologies ranging from MRI scanners and particle accelerators to atomic clocks and future quantu...
Bacterial antiviral defense suggests ancient link to human chromosome protection
A new antiviral defense system discovered by Columbia scientists could be adapted in the future into a gene editor that slows down aging in our cells and imp...
Electoral integrity under pressure as elections faced persistent threats in 2025
Elections across the world faced a wide range of pressures on electoral integrity in 2025, from violence and misinformation and disinformation to electoral m...
Wildlife populations have declined 73% since 1970—but many of the world's animals still aren't being counted
Wildlife populations around the world have declined by an average of 73% since 1970. That's according to the WWF's new 2026 Living Planet Index—a major estim...
'DNA Typewriter' records cells' history in developing mouse embryo
Scientists have succeeded in reconstructing the family tree of cells in a developing mouse embryo. They recorded cells' relationships, starting when the fert...
Quantum 'birthmarks' hold lasting traces of a system's past
Some classical physical systems can explore many configurations over time until their long-term behavior no longer reveals their starting conditions. The sam...
New study shows effects of hypoxia in Florida's Banana River
A new study by Florida Tech assistant professor of marine sciences Austin Fox, Ph.D. '15, found that low oxygen levels are contributing to the rerelease of n...
Conservation groups alarmed at marine mammals' deaths in Spain
Conservation groups on Sunday condemned the death of a dolphin transferred from France to a Spanish marine park, saying it added to the deaths of other sea m...
Indonesia releases eight orangutans rescued from fires to protected forest
Eight orangutans rescued in recent weeks from blazes that tore through Borneo island have been released into a protected forest, Indonesian authorities and r...