A fossil bed in northwestern China is littered with the remains of hundreds of prehistoric birds—including some whose broken bones were crushed into pellets, similar to those coughed up by modern owls. For years, scientists guessed that a larger predatory animal must have hunted these ancient birds, but they never found direct fossil evidence of this predator.
On a hot afternoon in California wine country, the sun can do more than warm a vineyard. It can scorch it. When temperatures climb above 100°F, grape clusters can heat to nearly 140° in direct sunlight. The berries shrivel. Their color compounds break down. Yields drop. And for growers who have invested millions in land and vines expected to produce for decades, a single brutal heat wave can ripple through the balance sheet for years.
Researchers in Japan have created some of the world's smallest semiconducting nanotubes, structures 100,000 times thinner than a human hair. By growing molybdenum disulfide inside protective tubes of boron nitride, the researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo, produced highly uniform tubes just 1 nanometer wide, a scale at which it's difficult to make stable nanotube structures. The work confirms decades-old theoretical predictions about how these ultrafine materials behave and could also provide a new route toward miniaturized electronic devices.
The most distant, nearly invisible dormant black hole has been detected and "weighed" by an international team of astronomers that includes researchers from UCL. The study, published in Science, identified a dormant black hole at the heart of a galaxy known as MRG-M0138 located over 10 billion light years away. It is the most distant dormant black hole yet detected, 15 times farther away than the previous record.
In a new study, bumble bees solve a completely novel object-manipulation task. What makes this behavior especially remarkable is that the bees had never been trained. The findings challenge the long-standing assumption that spontaneous problem-solving is restricted to humans and other large-brained vertebrates.
Mangrove forests, once considered one of the world's most threatened coastal ecosystems, are showing signs of recovery worldwide, according to new research from Tulane University that finds decades of losses largely offset by regrowth and expansion.
The study "Homo cooperans: Understanding the nature of human cooperation" arrives at a clear result: 69% of study participants chose to cooperate. At the same time, the study published in the journal Science shows that people systematically underestimate the willingness of others to cooperate.
Ozone pollution has worsened in much of the continental United States over the past decade, fueled by wildfires and the long-distance transport of unhealthy air, according to a new study titled "Fires reverse progress toward ozone air quality standards in the U.S.," led by University of Iowa researchers and published in the journal Science.
For years, remote work has been viewed as one of the most important drivers of employee satisfaction. New research suggests that assumption may be giving remote work too much credit.
Arctic communities are increasingly exposed to dangerous weather events due to climate change and rely on accurate weather forecasts. However, conditions in the lower atmosphere remain poorly observed in the Arctic because monitoring systems are expensive and difficult to deploy.
