Scientists have known for years that birds like geese and ibises gain an aerodynamic advantage from flying in a "V" formation. Now, researchers from Brown University have provided new insights into the nature of that advantage.
A pioneering study has revealed that by the turn of the next century, at least half a million more people in the UK will be at risk of coastal flooding—a 25% increase compared with now. The research, led by the Met Office and the University of Bristol, quantifies for the first time the scale of the UK population at risk from coastal flooding under future sea level rise projections.
A study by Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) analyzes Instagram discourse that associates the ideal of being a good mother with exclusive breastfeeding and fosters guilt among women who cannot or do not wish to breastfeed, often because of the difficulty of balancing it with other daily responsibilities. These discourses are gaining visibility in a context in which the phenomenon of "instamoms"—many with hundreds of thousands of followers—has increased the platform's impact on how motherhood is conceived.
A new method at the University of Missouri could transform how Rocky Mountain spotted fever is diagnosed. The method detects the deadly tick-borne disease in just 40 minutes—a leap that could help patients get lifesaving treatment sooner. The study, "A rapid isothermal RPA–CRISPR/Cas12a assay for detection of Rickettsia rickettsii," was published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Global hunger declined for a third consecutive year in 2025, demonstrating that progress is possible. However, the improvements remain fragile, unevenly distributed and insufficient to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, according to The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2026 (SOFI 2026) report, released Tuesday by five United Nations specialized agencies.
A 2-year-old is lying on the floor yelling, with their socks pulled off after spending 15 minutes trying to get them on in the first place. A caregiver might take a deep breath and think, "Here we go again—another 'terrible twos' tantrum."
For decades, water utilities have relied on giant tanks filled with ion-exchange resin beads to remove perchlorate, a harmful industrial pollutant, from drinking water. The system works by attracting negatively charged perchlorate ions to positively charged resin beads, allowing purified water to flow out of the tanks. But the process leaves behind a difficult problem: resin beads loaded with perchlorate that must be regenerated or disposed of as hazardous waste.
Personal and professional conversations about triumph and disappointment happen every day, but what is the most appropriate way to react when others share their news with us? New research by Bayes Business School (City St George's, University of London) reveals that a common reaction is to mirror success with our own successes and failure with our own failures. Across nine experiments with more than 8,000 participants, deeper analysis suggests this reflects attempts to show empathy while reducing a sense of boastfulness.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS), the Tübingen AI Center and Ellis Institute Tübingen have conducted a study that uncovers a mathematical strategy explaining how digital labor platforms can systematically suppress wages. The research, titled "Stochastic Wage Suppression on Gig Platforms and How to Organize Against It," develops a mathematical model motivated by digital labor markets, including crowdwork, ride-hailing and food delivery. It shows how a buyer that posts prices and can wait for workers to accept them may keep payments very low when some workers are willing to accept tasks at very low prices.
Physical touch may be an important evolutionary tool to help manage social tension and keep the peace. That is according to a new study led by Durham University in the UK, analyzing behaviors of our closest ape relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees.
