Science

Keeping in touch via video, phone and instant messaging was little help in preventing a rise in people's anxiety and depression during the pandemic lockdowns, a major new U.K. study has found.

A new study examining the effects of planting a wildflower meadow in the historic grounds of King's College, Cambridge, has demonstrated its benefits to local biodiversity and climate change mitigation.

Researchers have found a stark gender imbalance after carrying out the largest-ever study of video game dialogue, published today.

THOR stands for Tactical High-power Operational Responder. Adrian Lucero / US Air ForceThe defensive weapon is called THOR, and in a recent test it zapped the drones out of the sky. The post The Air Force used microwave energy to take down a drone swarm appeared first on Popular Science.

Ohio public health officials raise concern about brain-eating amoeba in northern states.

Stan HoraczekNetgear makes a wide range of routers. Whether you're a gamer, content creator, or streaming fan, here's how to pick the best one for you. The post The best Netgear routers for 2023 appeared first on Popular Science.

An ancient financial transaction from Jerusalem that was "set in stone" dates to the Early Roman period.

A series of new, disturbing studies from Tel Aviv University reveals a deadly epidemic causing mass mortality of black sea urchins in the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Eilat. The entire population of black sea urchins in Eilat was wiped out over a couple of months. For example, thousands of sea urchins living in a site near the northern shore of the Gulf of Eilat died out over the course of a few weeks. The epidemic was so severe, that today no living black sea urchins have remained at the […]

A video that captures a shark attacking a gray seal is going viral and marks the first great white shark sighting of the season in Cape Cod.

Researchers have experimentally demonstrated a new quantum information storage protocol that can be used to create Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) quantum states. There is a great deal of interest in these complex entangled states because of their potential use in quantum sensing and quantum error correction applications.

The James Webb Space Telescope caught Saturn's icy moon Enceladus spraying a 'huge plume' of watery vapor far into space — and that plume may contain chemical ingredients for life.

A new study published in Geology concludes that an extinct volcano off the shore of Portugal could store as much as 1.2–8.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of ~24–125 years of the country's industrial emissions.

Republican politicians typically favor low taxes and less regulation, which seems like a recipe for corporate profits and stock market success. In reality, however, this is not what happens.

In a study recently published in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers focused on para-nitro-L-phenylalanine (pN-Phe), a non-standard amino acid that is neither one of the twenty standard amino acids nor observed in nature. pN-Phe has been used by other research groups to help the immune system mount a response to proteins that it does not ordinarily respond to.

Bon voyage!. OceanbirdThe new technology is a welcome modernization of classic engineering. The post These massive, wing-like ‘sails’ could add wind power to cargo ships appeared first on Popular Science.

The tendency of cities to trap heat—a phenomenon called the "urban heat island," often referred to as the UHI effect—can lead to dangerous temperatures in the summer months, but new Penn State research published in Buildings suggests that certain urban factors can reduce this effect.

Three studies now published in The Seismic Record (TSR) offer an initial look at the February 6, 2023 earthquakes in south-central Türkiye and northwestern Syria, including how, where, and how fast the earthquakes ruptured and how they combined as a "devastating doublet" to produce damaging ground shaking.

New data show that while individuals with visual disabilities were slow to recover employment because of the effects of the COVID-2019 lockdown, they have made headway, depending on their level of disability, almost meeting their pre-pandemic levels. Possible reasons for their slower recovery include major safety concerns due to the shortage of personal protective equipment, less access to vaccines, and their vulnerability to severe consequences of COVID, according to experts speaking during a […]

Organizations must enable midlife women to thrive in the workplace by taking inspiration from societies such as China and Japan to encourage positive conversations around the impact of menopause, a new study reveals.

Mountain biking is one of the most popular leisure activities today. Sport ecologists at the University of Bayreuth have now compiled and evaluated a wide range of previously published findings on the ecological consequences of this sport. Numerous direct and short-term effects on animals, plants and soils can be clearly demonstrated. However, estimates of long-term consequences remain difficult because of the complexity of ecosystems and their inherent dynamics. The review article was […]

If you look at enough dinosaur fossils, you'll see that their skulls sport an amazing variety of bony ornaments, ranging from the horns of Triceratops and the mohawk-like crests of hadrosaurs to the bumps and knobs covering the head of Tyrannosaurus rex.

Wing's drone flying in the Coors Field. WingIt might never match the pace and precision of a human vendor, but it's still a cool demonstration. The post Watch a Google drone deliver beer and snacks to Denver’s Coors Field appeared first on Popular Science.

The world's most sensitive model-independent experiment to search for particularly light particles, of which dark matter might be composed, starts today at DESY in the form of the 'light shining through a wall' experiment ALPS II. Scientific calculations predict that this ominous form of matter should occur five times as often in the universe as normal, visible matter. Until now, however, no one has been able to identify particles of this substance; the ALPS experiment could now furnish such […]

For generations, physicists were sure the laws of physics were perfectly symmetric. Until they weren't.

Planting forests with diverse species can help ensure their success, according to a new study published May 18 from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and The Nature Conservancy. The discovery is the result of a decade of research from BiodiversiTREE, a large-scale reforestation project at SERC designed to run for 100 years, testing the effects of different tree planting strategies on sapling survival and other ecosystem functions.

A unique method to screen large-scale libraries for industrially useful bacterial strains was recently developed by Tokyo Tech researchers. The simple approach combines biosensors and microfluidics to quickly identify mutant strains that secrete large amounts of industrially useful proteins, opening the doors to more applications, like reasonably priced biopharmaceuticals.

Recent technological advances have given us a remarkable ability to manipulate and control light waves, opening up numerous applications in various fields, such as optical communication, sensing, imaging, energy, and quantum computing. At the heart of this progress are photonic structures that can control light waves, either at the chip level in the form of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) or in free space as meta-optics.

Precipitation patterns and their variations over the Tibetan Plateau (TP) are mainly dominated by the Asian summer monsoon (ASM), westerlies, and their interactions. The exact extent of the ASM's influence, however, remains undetermined. The northern boundary of the ASM denotes the northernmost position, with its leading edge advancing from south to north after its outbreak.

The risk of catastrophic flooding in the Tulare Lake Basin has diminished as cool temperatures have predominated this spring, flattening the melt curve of the Sierra's epic snowpack, state officials said Monday.

Using “slow water” methods can make the Colorado River Basin and its people more resilient

From causing muscle loss to raising the risk of blood clots, long-haul space missions can have a profound impact on the human body.

In the past 30 years, more than 5,000 planets have been discovered outside our solar system. One common exoplanet is the lava world, a hot super-Earth with oceans of liquid lava. Mantas Zilinskas developed models to simulate possible atmospheres of these worlds. Those simulations provide guidance for astronomers searching for these atmospheres with the James Webb Space Telescope. Zilinskas will receive his Ph.D. on Wednesday, May 24.

High school students who experience violence or bullying at school are more likely to bring weapons like a gun, knife, or club to school than those who have not experienced violence, according to a new study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Scientists used ground-based telescopes to get unprecedented views, thanks to the giant planet's position in its long orbit around the sun.

A new review of research suggests that the nature-based technology biochar—a carbon-rich material—could be an important tool to use in agriculture to help mitigate climate change.

More than any other recent event, the COVID-19 crisis has affected the lives of people around the world. In a special issue of the online journal Frontiers in Sociology, edited by sociologists from Constructor University and the Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg, a group of researchers documents the global impact of the pandemic on the social cohesion of individual population groups and world regions.

Brazil, the world's largest chicken exporter, has declared a nationwide "animal health emergency" after confirming eight cases of avian flu in wild birds, authorities said.

Satellites play a vital role in monitoring the rapid changes taking place in the Arctic. Tracking ice lost from the world's glaciers, ice sheets and frozen land shows that Earth is losing ice at an accelerating rate.

Firefighting foam used in battling a fatal fire in an apartment building entered the public water system, prompting the water district to temporarily order thousands of residents not to drink the water.

Bulbophyllum is one of the largest genera in the orchid family, with about 2,200 species, and is widely distributed in the tropics and subtropics. In the course of botanical exploration in southeastern Xizang in 2020–2022, researchers collected several Bulbophyllum specimens with similar habits and floral characteristics and transplanted them to the orchid conservation center of Tibet Agriculture and Animal Husbandry University.

Rapid melting of sea ice in the Arctic is the largest and most clear sign of human-made climate change. Deposit PhotosThe United Nations treaty on CFCs is likely delaying the first ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years. The post The Montreal Protocol had a dramatic ice-saving side effect appeared first on Popular Science.

In a distant star system, a sunlike star orbits an invisible object that may be the first example of a 'boson star' made of dark matter, new research suggests.

Amanda ReedBe prepared to easily suck up all the sand, dirt, and pet fur before and from Memorial Day weekend fun with up to 20% off vacuums at Amazon. The post Clean up with $100 off a Dyson before Memorial Day appeared first on Popular Science.

The Montreal Protocol was intended to save Earth’s ozone layer, but it also helped slow global warming and delayed the melting of Arctic sea ice

How realistic is it to expect to find enough ice on the moon to support human habitation?

Demand has grown for technologies that can tell the sex of a chicken before it hatches. Deposit PhotosThe recently-developed technique can help farmers tell the sex of a chick without cracking an egg. The post How a sniff test could make ‘sexing’ chicks more humane appeared first on Popular Science.

Can the affordably priced Bitvae R2 Rotating Electric Toothbrush compete with more expensive models? Find out in our review

SpotOn GPS Fence makes life with dogs simpler and safer. The post Meet the Game-Changing GPS Collar That Lets Dogs Truly Roam appeared first on Popular Science.

A flexible, conductive membrane that can pass sensory information to the brain and muscles is a step towards artificial skin

A bathtub ring seen above the waterline around Lake Powell, Utah due to drought that reduced the flow of the Colorado River on April 15, 2023. The flight for aerial photography was provided by LightHawk. RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty ImagesThe 'breakthrough' deal follows an unusually wet winter in the West. The post Colorado River deals pays Arizona, California, and Nevada $1.2 billion to use less water appeared first on Popular Science.