More than 171 million students globally—or 1 in 10—from preprimary to upper secondary age had their schooling disrupted by climate hazards in 2025, according to a new analysis released by UNICEF today.
Parents often learn the hard way that to make it anywhere on time, they should calculate how much time they think they need to get ready—and double it.
Within tiny halos of light clinging to a vanishingly thin wisp of optical fiber, scientist Jongmin Lee guides atoms like marbles through a narrow pipe. Rock the fiber and the atoms shift side by side; they just don't fall off. But don't be deceived by the seemingly delicate nature of his experiment. Lee is exploring how to measure motion precisely in rough-and-tumble environments.
An entomologist at the University of Missouri has discovered two saucer bug species previously unknown to science, adding to our understanding of Earth's biodiversity.
Researchers from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology's (SMART) Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research group, alongside collaborators from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore), and institutions in the United States, Poland and France, have discovered aminovaleramididine synthetase (AvaS), the first identified pyridoxal phosphate (PLP)-dependent enzyme responsible for producing a chemical modification linked to how bacteria respond to metabolic stress.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we wore masks and kept 2 meters (6.6 feet) apart in an effort to reduce the spread of the tiny droplets we release into the air with every breath, conversation or cough. The main goal was to reduce the number of virus particles—known as virions—to which we were exposed. For each virus, a person must be exposed to a minimum infectious dose to develop disease, and in many cases, the larger the dose, the more severe the illness.
Researchers have demonstrated that a naturally occurring mineral can serve as a low-loss optical material for next-generation broadband all–van der Waals nanophotonic components.
Light in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum plays a key role in modern sensing. Because molecules interact with this kind of light in specific ways, researchers use technologies like mid-IR spectroscopy to identify biological materials, drugs and pollutants. Mid-IR light can also serve as a carrier of information in free-space optical communications, where data are transmitted through the air without using cables or fibers. Better control of mid-IR light could therefore lead to more sensitive detectors and faster communications.
If you want to drum up support for environmental action, putting climate change front and center may not always be the best strategy. A new study by Aya Takagi and Ryosuke Nakadai of Yokohama National University suggests that support for policies that emphasize biodiversity conservation, including conservation measures that also contribute to climate goals, may be less divided along cultural lines than measures explicitly associated with climate change.
Some 550 million years ago, Earth looked very different than it does today. The Southern Hemisphere was dominated by an enormous single continent known as Gondwana.
A University of the Basque Country-EHU research group has determined the causes of a 255 m (837 feet) crustal uplift of the Atlantic slope and a 167 m (548 feet) uplift of the Mediterranean slope, as well as the development of rivers in these areas.
England's approach to teaching young people about pornography may be doing more harm than good, according to new research from the University of Surrey. A new study argues that fear-based education is failing to reflect how teenagers actually encounter sexual media.
Quantum technologies are poised to transform fields ranging from medicine and sensing to computing and communications by manipulating the energy states of atoms and molecules. These manipulations are achieved by controlling quantum states with laser pulses.
So far, quantum computers have been held back by their extreme sensitivity to errors and external disturbances. The longer a quantum operation takes, the greater the risk of computational errors.
As tiny as they are, marine plankton play pivotal roles in biogeochemical cycles and sustaining aquatic ecosystems, producing around half of the oxygen on Earth and also acting as carbon sinks. When they die, their decomposing cells produce dissolved organic carbon that can be transformed and stored in the ocean for thousands of years, so understanding plankton mortality is essential for uncovering the mechanisms behind marine ecosystems.
Peatlands store large amounts of carbon. However, when they are drained, they can become substantial sources of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO₂).
In the transformation toward sustainability, the interests of societal, economic and political actors often clash, making conflict inevitable. Understanding these dynamics and learning how to engage with them constructively is therefore crucial.
Tiny manufacturing imperfections in optical components normally go unnoticed. Yet they can alter light in surprisingly significant ways. An international research team led by TU Darmstadt has shown that such imperfections can affect not only polarization—the direction in which light oscillates—but also the spatial shape of a light beam.
A recent study coordinated by the University of Helsinki tracked the populations of 100 bird species across Finnish protected areas. Cold-dwelling species fared better in large protected areas, while the same species saw much steeper declines in smaller ones.
For years, scientists have relied primarily on radio imaging from techniques like very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) to study jets from the active galactic nuclei of supermassive black holes. This allows for the detection of broad, unresolved features, called components, moving at what appear to be faster-than-light speeds. However, traditional imaging has poor resolution and treats each observation as a separate snapshot in time, limiting information about how the features move.