Using a new slow-motion electron camera, physicists from Regensburg, Marburg and Jülich revealed how intense electric fields drive electrons in graphene, causing them to jump across energy gaps in a seemingly paradoxical manner. This was made possible by a novel combination of laser technology and electron microscopy.
The gender balance among the top scorers on Advanced Placement exams tends to track the gender balance among students taking those tests, according to a new study led by the University of Georgia.
Finding an Earth-like world beyond the solar system is the holy grail of exoplanet research, and the field has seen remarkable technological advances in detecting and studying exoplanets since the first confirmed exoplanet around a sun-like star was discovered in 1995. These advances include ground- and space-based telescopes, notably the James Webb Space Telescope. Although astronomers have already directly imaged some exoplanets, directly imaging Earth-like planets around sun-like stars remains a major technological challenge, primarily because these planets are extremely faint compared with their host stars and appear very close to them in the sky.
The severity of the losses refugees experience can shape the kinds of businesses they build in a new country, according to a qualitative study by Tilburg University researcher Kurian George and colleagues.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are synthetic chemicals known for their exceptional resistance to degradation, earning them the nickname "forever chemicals." These persistent substances can accumulate in water, soil and living organisms, raising concerns about their potential impacts on human health and the environment.
The combination of heat waves and drought markedly reduces the capacity of street trees to cool the air in Mediterranean cities. The lack of soil moisture severely restricts plant transpiration, reducing the thermal relief provided by these trees during extreme heat events.
The Earth is surrounded by an invisible barrier that was thought to prevent highly energetic electrons from reaching closer to our planet. But in 2024, Japan's Arase space probe detected these electrons well inside the barrier. Now, research led by Nagoya University has found evidence that the electrons were accelerated locally rather than infiltrating from outer radiation belts.
More than a century after Einstein first devised the equations that describe gravity, physicists are still finding new ways of interpreting them. Luca Comisso, an associate research scientist in Columbia University's departments of Astronomy and Physics and the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, and Felipe A. Asenjo of Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile, recently found a new way of looking at Einstein's equations that reveals a striking analogy with "magnetic reconnection" in plasmas, which occurs when magnetic field lines break and reconnect, powering explosive phenomena such as solar flares.
On Oct. 13, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (RBG Kew) launched the Seed Portal for Online Data (SeedPOD), a new open-access platform designed to tackle bottlenecks affecting global ecological restoration, by making native seed collections and the knowledge needed to grow them easier to discover.
In Australia, around 2,000 people are on the waiting list to receive an organ transplant, but thanks to new research being undertaken at the University of New England (UNE), this number could someday be significantly reduced.
