Plants convert light into energy efficiently through photosynthesis—an ability that scientists and engineers still struggle to match with electronic devices. Recently, researchers have looked beyond traditional semiconductor materials to create devices using a promising class of materials called nanoplasmonics. These tiny metal structures can absorb and concentrate optical energy and generate energetic charge carriers.
A major new study has raised concerns about how domestic violence and abuse is understood and responded to within children's services.
Once relics of a bygone way of life, the iconic dry-stone dwellings with conical roofs dotted across Puglia are in increasing demand as cool havens in Italy's sweltering south.
University of Miami researchers and collaborators have expanded an offshore reef restoration and coastal resilience project off Miami Beach with the deployment of three 3D-printed SEAHIVE clustered structures.
Marine sponges may play an important, previously underestimated role in reducing methylmercury contamination in marine food webs. In a new modeling study, researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon showed that sponges can significantly influence the spread of this environmental toxin through ecosystems. The findings suggest that the animals' unique feeding behavior helps reduce methylmercury levels and may lower contamination in fish. The study is published in the journal Biogeosciences.
At least 101 million Europeans were forecast to swelter in temperatures of more than 35C on Thursday, as scores of people were thought to have been killed by the heat wave.
As part of their marketing strategy, many companies send public relations packages full of curated products to social media influencers, who film themselves opening the gifts on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.
New research indicates that sea turtles seem to navigate across hundreds of miles of open ocean using Earth's magnetic field. Previous experimental studies suggested that sea turtles use geomagnetism to navigate, but this study, published in Science Advances, was purely observational: Researchers attached devices measuring location and compass direction (the way a turtle was facing at a given moment) to six female green sea turtles that took about a month to navigate more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) westward across the Indian Ocean. The satellite tags, developed over the course of five years specifically for this purpose, measure compass headings to within 10° and location to within 100 meters.
In group decision-making, it is critical for each member to engage in discussions with a broader perspective and without fixating on personal values and knowledge. While self-distancing, or stepping back and viewing oneself from a third-person perspective, has been associated with more objective thinking, its role in multiparty decision-making within virtual environments remains underexplored.
Great apes may have been laughing with a similar rhythm to modern humans for at least 15 million years, a University of Warwick study reveals. The finding offers unexpected clues to how human speech evolved.
