The absence of a signal could itself be a signal. This is the idea behind a new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, which aims to redefine how we search for dark matter, showing that it may not be necessary to find the same "clues" everywhere in order to interpret it.
Australians don't need an economist to tell them they're hurting at the petrol pump. They feel it every time they pull into a service station, every time they rethink a planned holiday, or every time they've had to squeeze another household bill to fill the tank. But the cost of rising petrol prices isn't only financial. It's emotional, social, and psychological too.
On a calm summer's morning in southern Australia, the water can look deceptively clear, until you see thousands of gelatinous shapes washing ashore. In January, thousands of pink lion's mane jellyfish washed into Port Phillip Bay, prompting beach warnings and startling swimmers more accustomed to cold water than the shock of stinging tentacles.
Some 39 Australian mammals have gone extinct since Australia was colonized in 1788.
Using new genetic markers, fruit breeders can now tell whether grapes will be seedless and self-pollinating even years before vines bear fruit. The approach will save time and resources in the pursuit of creating flavorful new grape varieties, including the major challenge of developing seedless muscadines on self-pollinating vines. A paper on this work appears in Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences.
More than 3,000 fish species have been caught in bottom trawls, with estimates suggesting the true number could be nearly double, according to the world's first global inventory.
When a drought turns into an urban water crisis, a city's first step is often to limit lawn watering and launch a campaign to encourage everyone to conserve. It might raise water-use rates or offer incentives for installing low-flow devices.
A study published in Cell Research advances a central idea in stem cell biology by identifying a checkpoint that controls the identity of many different types of stem cells across developmental stages. For nearly two decades, scientists have understood that stem cell self-renewal depends on blocking differentiation signals—a concept described in earlier work, including Qi-Long Ying and Austin Smith's 2008 Nature paper titled "The ground state of embryonic stem cell self-renewal."
Online comments can shape how social media content about politics is perceived, even when people's opinions are hard to change, a new study shows. The new research suggests that while attitudes may be stable, the way people interpret political messages can still shift depending on the surrounding conversation online. Engaging with problematic content can make a difference.
A shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could trigger a substantial release of stored ocean carbon into the atmosphere over hundreds of years, according to a new study that simulated such a collapse under stable climate conditions. This would add 0.2°C of extra global warming. The new paper from researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), published in Communications Earth & Environment, highlights the AMOC's role as a key regulator of the global climate.
