This year, greyhound racing in Britain turns 100 years old. The first race took place on July 24, 1926, in Manchester, where six dogs chased a mechanical hare around a track.
Heat stress is a leading cause of weather-related deaths and can be especially dangerous in cities, where phenomena like urban heat islands drive temperatures higher than in surrounding rural areas. Now, a new dataset developed by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) aims to provide city governments and health officials with information that could minimize heat impacts on residents.
A new prehistoric animal species from Tanzania dating to around 240 million years ago, during the Triassic period, has been described by an international team of researchers. Led by the University of Bristol, the new species, named Dinodontosaurus isiyavamanda, could help scientists refine the age of one of the world's most significant fossil sites and reshape the timeline of early dinosaur evolution.
Carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be harmful to the environment in large amounts but can be used in the production of fuels and other useful chemicals. Doing so isn't easy, though. Now, Yale researchers have developed a new way to combine electrocatalysis and plasma to efficiently and practically generate a number of valuable products from the gas. The results are published in Nature Catalysis.
Weather forecasts inform countless everyday decisions—from farmers deciding when to sow crops and energy companies anticipating demand to public authorities preparing for heat waves. But how useful those forecasts are depends considerably on where people live.
The tolerance of individual Canadians for radical forms of environmental activism depends on several factors. Overall, however, Canadians do not support vandalism or violence as forms of protest. Those are the key findings of a new study by researchers from McGill University and Université Laval. The findings are published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science.
In the hills of northwestern Morocco, overlooking the river that gives the site its name, research at Oued Beht is bringing to light a previously unknown chapter of the region's past. The discovery of a substantial built structure suggests that, during the second millennium BC, communities in northwestern Africa were actively shaping their environment. They were also engaging in broader networks of interaction across the Mediterranean world.
New cases of New World screwworm have recently surfaced in the United States, highlighting the critical need to track its paths to determine where future infestations may occur. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are employing predictive models as part of a forward-thinking approach to manage New World screwworm. This strategy allows USDA agencies to act earlier, respond faster and direct resources where they are most needed to protect U.S. livestock, pets and wildlife.
No, President Joe Biden did not engineer Hurricane Milton. No, the ice crystal contrails left behind by high-altitude aircraft are not "chemtrails" sprayed by governments to control the weather or manipulate populations. No, state-run cloud seeding did not cause the record floods in Dubai.
A new collaborative report from University of Utah researchers and coordinated by the Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy provides Utah Department of Natural Resources, Department of Environmental Quality and policymakers with a comprehensive analysis of the growing risks posed by dust from the exposed lakebed of Great Salt Lake, the potential costs of controlling that dust, and the long-term benefits of stabilizing lake levels.
This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images released to date from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the smallest stars. The researchers discovered brown dwarfs just twice the mass of Jupiter, bringing the study of these curious objects into a new mass range and revealing new insights about the star-formation process.
A research team at the Institute of Applied Physics at TU Darmstadt has shown for the first time that atoms that are completely disordered and in constant motion can nevertheless emit jointly directed light preferentially in one direction—even though neither the atoms nor their environment exhibit a direction—and that the strength of this asymmetry can be specifically adjusted. The paper is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Across parts of the internet where young men trade tips on self-improvement, the latest project is scent. Deodorant is out, and washing less is in.
The same amount of rain falling on the same landscape at different times can send very different amounts of water into its rivers, according to a new study in Nature Water. The research offers a global picture of how catchments behave—not where rivers are or how much water they carry, but how consistently landscapes turn rainfall into river flow.
Scientists have found how a protein produced by bacteria disrupts the mechanism that controls flower development in plants, turning reproductive organs into leaf-like structures. These findings shed light on a plant disease that is expected to spread as climate change expands the range of its insect vectors in northern latitudes. They used a synchrotron technique at ESRF, the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France. The results are an Editor's Pick in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Helicobacter pylori bacteria infect around half the global population and are a leading cause of stomach ulcers and gastric cancer. While antibiotics remain the standard treatment, they often fail to reach bacteria hidden beneath the stomach's protective mucus layer and deep within ulcer tissue. This often requires higher antibiotic doses, increasing the risk of adverse effects and antibiotic resistance.
Chemical separation can be energy-intensive when molecules have similar sizes and properties. Researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan, have now developed an interlayer adaptive crystal that changes its spacing to recognize specific molecules.
Xufeng Zhang is using magnets to make computers more power efficient at the quantum level. The Northeastern professor of electrical and computer engineering recently published two papers highlighting small-scale magnetic systems he and his team developed that could help make computers much more power efficient in the future.
Shorebirds are capable of some of the longest migrations on Earth, yet most return year after year to the same area to breed. Coming back has distinct advantages, including knowing the best spots to feed or roost, having information about where predators lurk, and—hopefully—finding last year's partner again.
From a mountainside overlooking Utah's Great Salt Lake, a time traveler turning back the clock 20,000 years would watch a dramatic transformation of the landscape. The shallow, salty lake below would swell into an immense body of fresh water, at one point reaching nearly 1,000 feet (305 meters) deep and covering more than 10 times the lake's modern area. Mountain ranges would become islands, and the new shoreline would move far beyond its current boundary.