News

It just wasn't that big.

Ethylene, or ethene, is a primary feedstock for the chemical industry, including as a starting material for the production of a wide variety of plastics. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced a new electrochemical technique for selective and energy-efficient production of ethylene from carbon monoxide, which can be obtained from renewable resources and waste.

Despite being four times thicker than human hair, elephant hair is only half as strong—that's just one finding from researchers studying the hair strength of many different mammals. Their work, appearing in a paper publishing December 11 in the journal Matter, shows that thin hair tends to be stronger than thick hair because of the way that it breaks.

Researchers in Dana-Farber's cBio Center have now demonstrated a powerful 'experimental evolution' method to discover details of protein shape and function, and the method may find uses across a very broad spectrum of biomedical research.

Neutron stars have never been caught behaving this way before.

If you want to know how climate change and hypoxia—the related loss of oxygen in the world's oceans—affect fish species such as the economically important Baltic cod, all you have to do is ask the fish.

Newborn babies, elderly people, sick hospital patients and sports enthusiasts all stand to gain from a breakthrough in the development of wearable technology using nanomaterials from the University of Sussex.

A team of researchers from Denmark, Norway, Spain and Italy has found that both terrestrial gamma-ray flashes and ionospheric ultraviolet emissions are spurred by lightning. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their study of data from the Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and what they found.

The story behind an oddball sky glow endearingly named "Steve" is revealed in a new documentary. Here's why the light show captivated aurora chasers.

Underground fiber-optic cables, like those that connect the world through phone and internet service, hold untapped potential for monitoring severe weather, according to scientists at Penn State.

A team of researchers from the University of Delaware has mapped the seafloor where an atomic blast created a crater back in 1946 during a test. The team has given a presentation outlining their findings at this year's fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Using high-resolution sonar, the team created depth maps that showed not only the crater created by the blast but the test ships that were used to measure its power.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China, the U.S. and Russia has found evidence of ancient lice-like insects that fed on dinosaur feathers. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes their study of two pieces of amber found in Myanmar and what they learned from them.

Physicists at the University of Alberta have created a molecular colourant that can emit light in a wider range of colours than any other molecule currently available.

On Friday, Oct. 11, the OSIRIS-REx team should have been preparing to point their spacecraft cameras precisely over the asteroid Bennu to capture high-resolution images of a region known as Osprey. It is one of four sites scientists are considering from which the spacecraft can safely collect a sample in late 2020.

Chemists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have discovered a method that could turn plastic waste into valuable chemicals by using sunlight.

A parasitic wasp has shown tremendous potential attacking and controlling spotted wing drosophila—an invasive, destructive fruit fly that costs Oregon growers close to a billion dollars a year, Oregon State University researchers have found.

Supermassive black holes are the largest black holes, with masses that can exceed a billion Suns. Just this spring, the first-ever image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy was taken, and researchers recently spotted the largest supermassive black hole ever seen. Despite these groundbreaking efforts, figuring out how these black holes drive a galaxy's shape and structure continues to be a challenge because most of them are too far away for current telescopes to resolve accurately.

Using very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), astronomers have performed comprehensive multiwavelength observations of the radio emission in the blazar S5 0836+710. The new research, presented in a paper published December 2 on arXiv.org, reveals important insights about the structure the blazar's relativistic jet.

Every organ in the body is capable, to some extent, of repairing itself after an injury. As part of this process, scar tissue forms and then recedes to make room for normal tissue when healing is complete.

A new study that examines the genetics behind the bitter taste of some sorghum plants and one of Africa's most reviled bird species illustrates how human genetics, crops and the environment influence one another in the process of plant domestication.

"Increase the size, increase the survival" is the premise behind head-starting—raising an at-risk species in captivity until it is large enough to be less vulnerable to predators after release into the wild. But research conducted by University of Georgia scientists in California's Mojave Desert reveals larger size alone is not enough to save the desert tortoise from predator attacks.

NASA has big plans for returning astronauts to the Moon in 2024, a stepping stone on the path to sending humans to Mars. But where should the first people on the Red Planet land?

A new study on the kinematics and chemical composition of a sample of stars in the vicinity of the sun, led by Dr. Daniela Carollo, researcher of the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, has revealed that the stars that make up the thick disk of the Milky Way belong to two distinct stellar populations with different characteristics and not to a single one, as has been thought for more than two decades.

The story behind an oddball sky glow endearingly named "Steve" is revealed in a new documentary. Here's why the light show captivated aurora chasers.

3-D bioprinting is a highly-advanced manufacturing platform that allows for the printing of tissue, and eventually vital organs, from cells. This could open a new world of possibilities for the medical field, while directly benefiting patients who need replacement organs.