A new study published in the Journal of Climate reveals how surface warming in Antarctica, particularly over the Antarctic Peninsula, is significantly altering the stability of the lowest layers of the atmosphere.
New research shows that maintaining and adopting proposed marine protected areas (MPAs) in the Southern Ocean could almost double the protection of genetic hotspots from 28% to about 54%. These actions would stave off an otherwise high likelihood of ecosystem collapse in the region, according to the study led by researchers from Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF).
An earthquake typically sets off ruptures that ripple out from its underground origins. But on rare occasions, seismologists have observed quakes that reverse course, further shaking up areas that they passed through only seconds before. These "boomerang" earthquakes often occur in regions with complex fault systems. But a new study by MIT researchers predicts that such ricochet ruptures can occur even along simple faults.
A research team led by Professor Tae-Woo Lee has developed a technology to mass produce ultra-high color purity perovskite nanocrystals (PeNCs), the core material for next-generation displays, without the need for high temperature, vacuum, or specialized gas facilities. This study, which proves that 100% photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY) can be maintained from lab to industrial scale, was published in the journal, Nature, on February 18, 2026.
Due to climate change, extreme weather events such as flooding are expected to increase in Germany in the future. This poses hidden risks to the health care system that have hardly been the focus of resilience planning to date: restrictions on access to hospitals and the supply of medical products due to flood-related traffic disruptions.
Up to 30% of bird diversity hotspots, places where large numbers of different bird species occur, in the western United States face threats from high-severity wildfires in the future that could eliminate critical forest habitats, according to research published in the journal Nature Communications.
Birds currently inhabiting many territories across Africa, Latin America and Asia are, on average, considerably smaller than those that predominated in 1940. This is the conclusion of an international study led by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), which documents—drawing on the collective ecological memory of 10 Indigenous Peoples and local communities—a reduction of up to 72% in the mean body mass of the bird species present in their territories between 1940 and 2020.
In the everyday world, governed by classical physics, the concept of equilibrium reigns. If you put a drop of ink into water, it will eventually evenly mix. If you put a glass of ice water on the kitchen table, it will eventually melt and become room temperature. That concept rooted in energy transport is known as thermalization, and it is easy to comprehend because we see it happen every day. But this is not always how things behave at the smallest scales of the universe.
Researchers at the University of Oklahoma have developed new hybrid materials that challenge conventional thinking about how light-emitting compounds work and could advance the field of fast radiation detection. The research, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, presents a novel approach to designing layered perovskite materials that combine the best of both organic and inorganic components.
Scientists have pinpointed crucial genetic resistance to a fungal disease that threatens the global banana supply in a wild subspecies of the fruit. In a valuable step forward for banana breeding programs, Dr. Andrew Chen and Professor Elizabeth Aitken from the University of Queensland have identified the genomic region that controls resistance to Fusarium wilt Subtropical Race 4 (STR4). The study is published in the journal Horticulture Research.
