Research led by atmospheric scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory sheds new light on one of the fundamental challenges of weather forecasting: determining the conditions under which a cloud will produce rain—and how much rain it will produce.
Whether it's gushing from a bumped nose or pooling atop a pricked finger, our blood is some hue of red. But red-bloodedness isn't universal in the animal kingdom. In some creatures, the vital fluid is purple; in others it's yellow, green or even white.
How do some people experience work as meaningful? Organizational researcher Rachel Waldo at Lund University argues that one important answer has been largely overlooked: the brand itself.
A genome contains all of the DNA of every living organism, but its contents don't stop there—most of these structures also contain snippets of DNA that can copy and paste themselves to "infect" a genome, expanding its size. Precisely why that happens remains a mystery.
An international research team led by Curtin University has for the first time uncovered unequivocal evidence of fossilized red blood cells and amino acids of collagen, reshaping our understanding of fossil preservation and molecular longevity in deep time.
Mars shares many landforms and weather patterns with Earth, including changing seasons, volcanoes, canyons, dust storms, dust devils and water ice. Another feature that Earth and Mars share is polar ice caps. These are among each planet's striking features, but the major difference is that Earth's polar ice caps are both composed of water, while Mars' north polar ice cap is composed only of water and its southern polar ice cap is carbon dioxide.
Exceeding 1.5C of global warming will have "irreversible" consequences for glaciers, sea ice and the Earth's frozen regions, two U.N. reports warned on Monday, calling for urgent action.
Zombies have taken many forms in popular culture. In Michael Jackson's "Thriller" music video, corpses climb out of their graves and perform an impressively coordinated dance. In HBO's "The Last of Us," a fungus infects humans, takes over their bodies and turns them into hosts that help spread the infection. Even Plankton has tried his hand at taking control of another organism in "SpongeBob SquarePants."
It's a dizzyingly busy time for scientists searching for life on distant planets. To date, astronomers have cataloged more than 6,000 planets beyond our solar system and are searching the atmospheres of the most promising worlds for chemicals that might be byproducts of life. Astrobiologists are particularly interested in atmospheres like Earth's that trap enough heat to support liquid water on the planet's surface, which scientists consider the key factor in determining whether a planet can support life as we know it.
A new study from NYU Abu Dhabi has revealed how coral-associated bacteria help corals withstand extreme heat by producing steroid hormones that strengthen their immune response.
