Science, engineering, and discovery — the research and breakthroughs that matter.

The catastrophic flooding in July 2021 claimed the lives of more than 200 people in Germany and Belgium. The high death toll makes it clear that hazard mapping and risk communication must be improved urgently. Researchers at the University of Potsdam, the Helmholtz Centre for Geo

The Etruscan painted tombs in Tarquinia, Italy, date to the first millennium BCE and are known for their vivid scenes of music, feasting, processions and the afterlife. While these tombs have been extensively studied, archaeologists have typically looked at the paintings as image

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a fast, simple way to turn lignin, a plentiful plant-based byproduct of the papermaking industry, into potentially more valuable renewable chemicals.

Animals fulfill a wide range of roles in human society. They provide food, contribute to scientific research, live alongside people as companion animals, and play important roles in education, conservation, research and public engagement through zoos.

Symbiotic ammonia-oxidizing archaea in marine sponges are not strict specialists but true "flexitarians." A team led by microbiologists Bettina Glasl and Katharina Kitzinger from the University of Vienna, in collaboration with partners from Australia, has shown that, unlike their

Glassy polymers are those whose chains become immobilized below their glass transition temperature. The immobilized chains make them hard and stiff but also brittle, causing them to fracture when stretched. One promising strategy for overcoming this trade-off is to incorporate io

The key to finding more critical minerals may lie in understanding how fluids and chemicals move through rock. As these fluids travel underground, they can dissolve, transport and concentrate valuable minerals in specific places.

The majority of money laundering arrests involve people under 30, a new analysis has found.

While studying the properties of hackmanite, researchers created a new material called davyne that changes color in the near-infrared region. The color change cannot be detected with the human eye, but only with a spectrometer or an infrared-sensitive camera. The researchers stud

MIT researchers have created bacterial “transistors” that can be wired together into living circuits capable of performing calculations and directing chemical signals. One day, these biological computers could coat plant roots or leaves, detecting environmental threats and automa

Twice already this week, Indonesian volunteer firefighter Kristoforus Sinyong worked throughout the night fighting some of the blazes that have consumed swaths of the island of Borneo.

Soft nanoscale confinement prevents ice, exposing water's liquid-to-glass transition and more — today's student signal.

School suspensions are associated with a complex combination of socioeconomic disadvantage, special educational needs, peer relationships and students' experiences of school, according to new research from The University of Manchester.

Despite efforts to encourage broader participation, women earn about 25% of undergraduate engineering degrees and 18% of undergraduate computer science degrees—and men remain a small minority among people earning nursing and education degrees.

Animals fulfill a wide range of roles in human society. They provide food, contribute to scientific research, live alongside people as companion animals, and play important roles in education, conservation, research and public engagement through zoos.

The catastrophic flooding in July 2021 claimed the lives of more than 200 people in Germany and Belgium. The high death toll makes it clear that hazard mapping and risk communication must be improved urgently. Researchers at the University of Potsdam, the Helmholtz Centre for Geo

Scientists have overturned a leading explanation for why male and female bonnethead sharks have differently shaped heads. Instead of males developing a pointed snout at maturity, both sexes actually begin with more pointed heads that become rounder with age, particularly in femal

Beneath the Arctic Ocean is an orchestra featuring natural and human composers, from cracking sea ice and whistling beluga whales to humming shipping-vessel engines. Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory heard some of this cacophony when analyzing data from commercial off-the-s

Researchers at Lund University have developed a new type of light-emitting diode based on thin, branched nanowires that could offer significantly higher efficiency and lower production costs than current technology. By controlling where in the structure the light is generated, th

Why do some ants help nestmates in distress while others don't? A research team from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Tel Aviv University addressed this question in a new study. The researchers examined worker ants of the species Cataglyphis niger, some of which had

Researchers have completely suppressed superconductivity in magic-angle graphene by screening interactions between electrons, helping resolve a long-running debate about the origin of the phenomenon.

The human body and its gut microbiome produce thousands of small molecules that shape how the body functions—influencing immunity, metabolism and more. Identifying what those molecules actually are has been one of the biomedical sciences' most persistent bottlenecks. More than 80

In a paper published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, researchers at Kyushu University report on what happens when wharf roaches, a common shoreline scavenger, eat expanded polystyrene (EPS). Roaches that fed on EPS showed no significant reduction in lifespan, but their

A study of preschool children found that brief digital or traditional gameplay improved performance on tasks requiring quick responses but reduced performance on tasks demanding greater concentration and self-control.