News

SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on its most flown Falcon 9 rocket yet, which made a historic fourth launch and landing on Monday (Nov. 11).

A very rare species of small, deer-like animal thought to be on the verge of extinction has been spotted in the northwestern jungle of Vietnam for the first time in nearly 30 years.

SpaceX launched 60 mini satellites Monday, the second batch of an orbiting network meant to provide global internet coverage.

Seawater is one of the most abundant resources on earth, offering promise both as a source of hydrogen—desirable as a source of clean energy—and of drinking water in arid climates. But even as water-splitting technologies capable of producing hydrogen from freshwater have become more effective, seawater has remained a challenge.

Every minute counts when it comes to predicting severe weather. Combing data from cutting-edge geostationary satellites and traditional weather radar created a path toward earlier, more accurate warnings, according to Penn State researchers who studied supercell thuderstorms in the Midwest.

Generations of NASA astronauts in space and on Earth took a moment today (Nov. 11) to mark Veterans Day.

Mercury's march across the sun today (Nov. 11) is due to a weird and wild set of planetary alignments, according to NASA.

Given that transits of Mercury are reasonably rare, so here's a short guide on steps to take to film the event before it ends!

The first appearance of bright green leaves heralds the start of spring, nudging insects, birds and other animals into a whirlwind of action. But a new study shows that urbanization shifts this seasonal cue in nuanced ways, with cities in cold climates triggering earlier spring plant growth and cities in warm climates delaying it.

Ancient Egyptians considered the Nile river to be the source of all life. The steady northward path of the river has nourished the fertile valleys of northeast Africa for millions of years and in doing so, shaped the course of human civilization.

Handheld electrochemical sensors are part of the daily routine for millions of people with diabetes around the globe who monitor their blood sugar levels with electric glucometers. While such sensors have revolutionized at-home medical testing for diabetics, they have not yet been successfully applied to diagnosing other conditions. Sensors like glucometers detect glucose in blood based on the activity of an enzyme, and there are only a limited number of enzymes that can be used to sense biomarkers of human disease. An alternative detection strategy based on binding events between antibodies and their molecular targets have been investigated to expand the use of electrochemical sensors for medicine, but these sensors fall victim to the rapid accumulation of "fouling" substances from biological fluids on their conductive surfaces, which deactivate them. Existing antifouling coatings are difficult to mass-manufacture, suffer from quality and consistency issues, and are not very effective.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge studying perovskite materials for next generation solar cells and flexible LEDs have discovered that they can be more efficient when their chemical compositions are less ordered, vastly simplifying production processes and lowering cost.

This indicates that the storage root was an already-existing trait that predisposed the plant for cultivation and not solely the result of human domestication, as previously thought. This discovery, published today in Nature Plants, is part of a comprehensive monographic study of the morning glories, the biggest study of this group of plants to date, which also contributes important insights to the taxonomy and evolution of this megadiverse group of plants.

With a series of camera traps, researchers have caught the silver-backed chevrotain meandering about its tree-filled home.

An international team of researchers led by the University of Leeds have revealed for the first time that Amazon forests with the greatest evolutionary diversity are the most productive.

On Nov. 11, 2019, the planet Mercury crossed the face of the sun in a rare Mercury transit. See amazing photos of the transit, the last until 2032, from NASA and around the world!

SpaceX launched 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on its most flown Falcon 9 rocket yet, which made a historic fourth launch and landing on Monday (Nov. 11).

Chemical engineers at EPFL have developed a new method for atomic layer deposition, a technique commonly used in high-quality microelectronics. The new method can be used in materials with larger surfaces much more cheaply than current approaches, while preserving quality and efficiency.

Researchers at McMaster University have found that a person's first permanent molars carry a life-long record of health information dating back to the womb, storing vital information that can connect maternal health to a child's health, even hundreds of years later.

Within a galaxy hosting around 300 billion stars, here the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a mere handful or two—just about enough to form a single football team. These stellar "teammates" play under the banner of NGC 1333, the cloud of gas and dust that formed them and that they continue to call home.

Common wasp species could be valuable at sustainably managing crop pests, finds a new UCL-led experimental study in Brazil.

In research that validates what many parents and educators suspect, students whose grades are below average could boost their results if they devote less time to Facebook and other social networking sites.

As we venture forward to the Moon and establish a sustained lunar presence, finding and understanding water on the lunar surface becomes increasingly important. Lunar water is largely in the form of, but not necessarily limited to, water ice. Astronauts on the Moon could use this ice for various crew needs, potentially including rocket fuel. The Lunar IceCube mission, led by Morehead State University in Morehead, Kentucky, will study water distribution and interaction on the Moon. The mission will carry a NASA instrument called Broadband InfraRed Compact High-Resolution Exploration Spectrometer (BIRCHES) to investigate the distribution of water and other organic volatiles. NASA scientists will use this data to understand where the water is on the Moon, its origins and how we can use it.

Astronomers are observing a rare event, a transit of the planet Mercury.

Materials scientists aim to engineer intelligence into the fabric of materials or metamaterials for programmable functions. Engineering efforts can vary from passive to active forms to develop programmable metasurfaces using dynamic and arbitrary electromagnetic (EM) wavefields. Such metasurfaces, however, require manual control to switch between functions. In a new study now published on Light: Science & Applications, Qian Ma and an interdisciplinary research team in the State Key Laboratory, Cyberspace Science and Technology, and the Department of Electronics in China engineered a smart metasurface for self-adaptive programmability.