When people discuss architecture in Ghana, attention often focuses on modern buildings: concrete houses, glass offices, shopping malls and ambitious urban developments. Yet across the country, another architectural tradition continues to offer lessons about how people have built and lived for generations.
The vast majority of modern quantum technologies—from quantum cryptography to the quantum internet to the quantum computer—rely on one essential element: the transmission of photons. Two qubits (two atoms, for example) exchange information: One qubit emits a photon, and the other qubit absorbs it.
In May 2024, Earth experienced its most intense geomagnetic storm since the Halloween storms of 2003. This "superstorm" filled night skies in many parts of the world with colorful aurorae, and it disrupted some infrastructure, such as GPS signals used by agricultural equipment.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 helped standardize pollution limits at the national level, but individual politicians can wield significant influence over industrial emission rates in their districts, according to a new analysis conducted by a multi-institutional team that includes researchers at Penn State.
The University of Michigan's High-Achieving Involved Leader (HAIL) Scholarship program increased on-time bachelor's degree attainment rates by 4%, according to a study co-authored by researchers from U-M, Harvard University and elsewhere.
Woolly rhinoceroses (Coelodonta antiquitatis) were fascinating creatures: giant, lumbering Ice Age beasts with thick fur and massive horns that died out about 11,000 years ago. Previous genetic studies had left open the question of whether their genetic diversity emerged in high-latitude areas, like that of woolly mammoths, but a new analysis of ancient DNA and habitat models covering the past 500,000 years has revealed a different story.
An international research team led by Dr. Gabriele Russo of the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen has re-examined historical fossil collections from Lebanon using modern methodology. The results, published today in two complementary studies in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, show that the Levant served as an important corridor for animals and various human lineages during the Pleistocene and that environmental conditions in the central part of the region differed significantly from those in the south.
Using cryopreserved sperm alongside larger breeding populations in zoos and aquaria could dramatically improve the long-term survival prospects of endangered pupfish, according to new research.
Imagine having a friend who always has time for you, never judges you and remembers everything you have said. For many, that friend is not a human being but a social AI model. This emerges clearly in Marita Skjuve's Ph.D. thesis, submitted at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo (UiO).
New techniques have enabled researchers in Sweden to begin decoding how one of Northern Europe's most important coniferous tree species switches from growing branches to producing cones—their seed-bearing reproductive organs.
Every second, particles zip through your body at nearly the speed of light. They rain down from a storm high in the sky, where cosmic rays, a powerful type of interstellar matter, constantly strike atoms in Earth's atmosphere. The impacts break them apart into a shower of particles that rain to the ground.
One of the problems with how America deals with wildfires is the belief that there is one primary strategy that can end the nation's wildfire crisis. Whether that's detecting and putting out every fire fast, increasing logging and forest thinning, or allowing fires to burn under safe conditions, the default choice today is to pour more money and effort into the star approach of the moment.
A research team from the University of Bern has shown in a large-scale field experiment that populations of the same fish species can be much more fine-tuned to their local environments than previously thought. Habitats that appear nearly identical to us can therefore make a decisive difference in evolution. This hidden diversity is not only key to understanding how biodiversity arises, but also has important implications for its conservation.
Parasites in wildlife don't just pose a risk to their wild hosts—they can also spread to domestic animals and humans, making safe and reliable ways to screen for these pests critical to promoting better health for all.
Physicists at the University of Oxford have helped confirm that one of the strangest phenomena in physics—quantum entanglement—occurs even among some of the heaviest and most fleeting particles ever created. The discovery, made using the world's most powerful particle collider at CERN, has been published in Physical Review Letters.
Snails carry weather records on their backs that could be used to map prehistoric cyclones, a University of Queensland study has shown. The project led by School of the Environment researchers examined the rings on the shell of a Biggenden Banded Snail (Figuladra bayensis) collected from Coalstoun Lakes National Park in southeast Queensland.
The publication of the latest results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2025) on Sept. 8 prompted the usual flurry of commentary, comparisons and rankings. France has slipped, some countries have improved, while others have proved more resilient. As always, attention quickly turns to where each country stands.
Human development may be changing more than where pollinators live—it may also be changing when they are active. University of Florida researchers at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) have found that pollinator seasons shifted later in the year across some of the most human-modified landscapes in the eastern United States.
Across Africa, people are restoring and managing mangroves, grazing lands and urban green areas in the face of increasing threats from climate change. Increasingly, they make decisions based on climate-related information supplied by governments, funders and researchers.
"Resilience" is in danger of becoming a casualty of business buzzword bingo, but we know it matters. The World Economic Forum lists it as one of the most important skills for the future of work, and I've found it turns up on any list of key attributes, usually nestled under "attitude" or "personal effectiveness."