Science
Scientific discoveries and research
New measure captures how scientists' identities shift across academic disciplines
Does the academic discipline of a scientist's doctorate accurately capture their disciplinary affiliation decades later? Consider a scientist who earned a docto...
Bite, buzz, release: How bees make flowers give up their pollen
Life is not always easy for a bee: Not all plants place their pollen outside. Some flowers have to be set to vibrating before the pollen can get out of their tu...
Unusual bonds reorganize structure and magnetism in vanadium material
While chemical bonds usually determine the structure and properties of a material, bonds between neighboring metal atoms can also change as temperature or other...
Shapeshifting plant roots rely on a balance of anatomy, metabolism, and microbes to maximize survival
Scientists have identified the mechanisms that allow plants to change their root anatomy to maximize survival when nutrients are scarce. The findings could pave...
Scientists discover a strange new form of ice that could help explain the interiors of Neptune and Uranus
Scientists have discovered that there is ice deep inside planets like Neptune and Uranus and want to find out what form it takes and how it behaves. They cannot...
Smart pen detects pressure and movement to identify children's writing difficulties sooner
A study by Politecnico di Milano and the University of Insubria (Varese and Como) has been published in PLOS Digital Health. The study involved more than 700 ch...
Fertilizers and extreme heat are damaging coral reefs in the Gulf of Mexico, isotope analyses reveal
Who isn't familiar with the colorful coral reefs from movies like "Finding Nemo" or "The Little Mermaid"? Unfortunately, the reality is often quite different, a...
New study offers a detailed look at how wildfire smoke impacts Reno's air quality
With Western wildfires increasing in size, duration and intensity, millions of Americans are now exposed to wildfire smoke each year. In California, 2020 and 20...
AI extracts interpretable constitutive laws directly from solid-mechanics data
Researchers at the Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT), Ningbo, have developed a graph-based approach that directly extracts concise, accurate constitutive eq...
Healthy checkout policy shows promise for reducing soda sales and increasing healthy snack purchases
In March 2021, Berkeley, Calif., became the first city in the world to ban the display of sugary beverages and snacks in store checkout lanes, where candy, choc...
Brain's ability to hear a musical beat remains distinctly human, study suggests
The seemingly trivial ability to hear a regular pulse in music is a remarkable—and perhaps distinctively human—feature of the brain. In a wide-ranging critical...
Travel bots are making decisions for us—convenient, but should we trust them?
Imagine telling your phone that you want a quiet boutique hotel near a city center, below a certain price, with a decent breakfast and late checkout. A few seco...