Science
Scientific discoveries and research
Plant diversity boosts natural pest control in farms, while forests and grasslands follow different rules
Plant diversity has long been regarded as key to stable and resilient ecosystems. However, until now, little has been understood about why it has different effe...
College professors face an emerging challenge: We know students are no longer reading entire books
Anyone who has spent time on a college campus lately has probably heard laments from faculty about their students' reading habits, or rather, nonreading habits....
Chocolate syrup-like fluid stores multiple interacting memories
Animals and electronic devices aren't the only things with memory. Materials can retain memories of past deformations in their microscopic structure. A common e...
There's a business case for companies to embrace sustainability, if it's pitched the right way
Sustainable business practices are often seen as a luxury that only rich countries can afford. And these days, some of the biggest economies, including the U.S....
Global map reveals mining's uneven toll on forests and biodiversity
A new study led by Japanese researchers from Tohoku University and the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) reveals that some of the minerals mos...
Engineers observe quantum heat waves at room temperature
Efficient heat management in solids is key to advancing the next generation of electronics. However, wave-like heat movement—known as phonon focusing—had been o...
Exploring the lost golden age of language diversity before expanding empires drove a global decline
Today, people speak or sign around 7,500 languages. Yet this figure provides only a snapshot of a constantly changing history. How many languages existed before...
Simple circuit brings topological insulators closer to practical electrical measurement standards
Researchers at the University of Würzburg have succeeded in detecting exceptionally robust electrical transport in a topological insulator. This could lead to n...
Colorado basins supplying 70% of Lake Powell's water face major midcentury shortages
If the Colorado River Basin is the lifeblood of the American Southwest, keeping the region's agricultural, ecological and economic systems thriving, Colorado's...
The sex life of treefrogs: How females build better nests by mating with multiple partners
African gray foam-nest treefrogs (Chiromantis xerampelina) are common across the savannas and dry forests of southeastern Africa. Despite their unremarkable out...
Machine learning narrows search for additional particles in the Higgs boson family
What if the Higgs boson found in 2012 is not alone but is the only sibling we have encountered so far? Scientists at CERN discovered the particle that year, and...
Universal structure of exceptional points revealed in nonlinear light‑based systems
Exceptional points, or EPs for short, are among the phenomena of modern physics. These are special points or locations at which the properties of matter, space...