Tag: Science

For decades, research and understanding of the diverse bone raw material used by the Late Prehispanic Period (~1220 to 330 cal BP) people of the Sierras de Córdoba were scarce. However, Dr. Matías Medina and his colleagues, Sebastián Pastor and Gisela Sario, have published a technological analysis of the manufacturing technique used to create one of the most numerous bone tool types, bone arrow points.

Advanced computer models can quantify the impacts of climate change and other environmental challenges, providing deep insights into things like streamflow, vegetation, wildlife and even the risk of wildfires.

What if the pages of an old book could tell us who touched them, what medicines they made, and even how their bodies responded to treatment?

By analyzing the archival data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international team of astronomers has inspected the outflow of a nearby galaxy known as NGC 1266. Results of the new study, presented Dec. 11 on the arXiv pre-print server, could help us better understand the nature of this galaxy.

Thousands of glaciers will vanish each year in the coming decades, leaving only a fraction standing by the end of the century unless global warming is curbed, a study showed on Monday.

A Carnegie-led team of astronomers detected the strongest evidence yet of an atmosphere around a rocky planet beyond our solar system. Their work, published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, used NASA's JWST to reveal an alien atmosphere in an unexpected place—an ancient, ultra-hot super-Earth that likely hosts a magma ocean.

In the age of dinosaurs—before whales, great whites or the bus-sized megalodon—a monstrous shark prowled the waters off what's now northern Australia, among the sea monsters of the Cretaceous period.

Deep in Iraq's southern desert, bulldozers and earthmovers spread layers of moist clay over sand dunes as part of a broader effort to fight increasingly frequent sandstorms.

A team of researchers led by the British Museum has unearthed the oldest known evidence of fire-making, dating back more than 400,000 years, in a field in Suffolk. The discovery shows humans were making fire about 350,000 years earlier than previously known.

Humans and dogs have been living together side by side for thousands of years, so you would think we know everything about our four-legged friends by now. But we may not understand them as well as we think we do.

December 16 marked 250 years since the writer’s birth – but at The Conversation, we have been celebrating all year.

There is a gap between the affection of graduates for universities and the relative scepticism of those that have not attended higher education.

Prototypes For Humanity brings in research talent from more than 800 universities around the world.

Prof Nishan Canagarajah, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, is to step down as Chair of The Conversation UK’s Board of Trustees.

Conferences that bring people of different backgrounds together and propose solutions are more likely to create change.

Podcast series from The Conversation where children ask academics questions wins gold at the British Podcast Awards.

Six finalists want your vote for the People’s Choice winner of the Vitae Three Minute Thesis competition.

A series of lectures on decolonisation sheds new light on contemporary conflicts.

Successful applicants will be invited to the November event to present details of their project.

Whether you’re single, dating, married or somewhere in between, our love lives are increasingly mediated by technology.

The recent SnowEx campaign and the new NISAR satellite mission are lighting the way to high-resolution snowpack monitoring and improved decisionmaking in critical river basins around the world.

The finding, which focuses on lower-income countries, could help inform plans to shrink the global climate knowledge gender gap.

A new study of nutrient levels in soil cores supports oral Indigenous history, informing future estuary restoration efforts.

Researchers have mapped the ancient Stad Slide off the coast of Norway to better understand what triggered it, and the hunt is on for the tsunami it might have unleashed.

New work bridges the worlds of Ryukyuan classical music and the geosciences.

Insects and the plants they depend on are migrating in response to climate change, but not always in the same way.

A new study in southwestern China shows how ecosystems may exhibit “hydrological memory,” which affects how they react to extreme climate events such as heat and drought.

Intensified hurricane precursors may linger longer over the continent, worsening extreme flooding hazards.

The soundscape changes in accordance with near real-time Atlantic Ocean conditions, as the data updates every 12 minutes. “If it’s raining, the piece looks and sounds different. If it’s stormy, the piece is different. It’s a living instrument that the ocean gets to play in real time,” Jewel said.

Portions of the forest managed by pre-Columbian populations hold higher biomass and are more able to withstand climate change.

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 21, 2025 thru Sat, December 27, 2025. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) Lost Science - She Tracked the Health of Fish That Coastal Communities Depend On Ana Vaz monitored crucial fish stocks in the Southeast and the Gulf of Mexico until she lost her job at NOAA. New York Times, Interview by Austyn Gaffney, Dec 18, 2025. Save NCAR

Open access notables Satellite altimetry reveals intensifying global river water level variability, Fang et al., Nature Communications River water levels (RWLs) are fundamental to hydrology, water resource management, and disaster mitigation, yet the majority of the world’s rivers remain ungauged. Here, using 46,993 virtual stations from Sentinel-3A/B altimetry (2016?2024), we present a global assessment of RWL variability. We find a median global fluctuation of 3.76 m, with pronounced spatial patterns: significant RWL declines across Central North/South America and Western Siberia, and increases across Africa, Oceania, Eastern

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler Flooding in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) has recently turned deadly serious, as days of intense rain from a powerful atmospheric river have swollen rivers and caused widespread flooding across the PNW. If you guessed climate change was playing a role in this, you’d be right. Climate change isn’t just making storms “wetter” in a simple sense; it is fundamentally breaking the region’s natural plumbing system. Here is why:

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Do solar panels generate more waste than fossil fuels? Waste from discarded solar panels is dwarfed by the waste from coal, oil, and gas. In addition, solar panel recycling capacity continues to expand and improve. A 2023 study estimated that from 2016 – 2050, if power systems do not decarbonize, coal ash would be 300 – 800 times heavier than waste

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink Tis the season for global temperature forecasts. The UK Met Office recently released their 2026 prediction, estimating that it is most likely to end up as the second warmest year on record at 1.46C (with a range of 1.34C and 1.58C) relative to the 1850-1900 preindustrial baseline period.1 This is likely warmer than both 2023 and 2025

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, December 14, 2025 thru Sat, December 20, 2025. Story of the week As you can see below, five of the six articles in the Climate Policy and Politics category are about the plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. If you live in the US and would like to speak out against this ill-advised plan, you can do so via the action page provided by AGU, the American Geophysical Union: Speak Out to Save NCAR today! Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (6 articles)

Open access notables Widespread Increase in Atmospheric River Frequency and Impacts Over the 20th Century, Scholz & Lora, AGU Advances Atmospheric rivers (ARs) play a dominant role in water resource availability in many regions, and can cause substantial hazards, including extreme precipitation, flooding, and moist heatwaves. Despite this, there is substantial uncertainty about recent and ongoing changes in AR frequency and impacts. Here, we place recent observed trends in their longer-term context using AR records extending back to 1940. Our results show that AR frequency has increased broadly across the midlatitudes, bridging the apparent discrepancy between the obs

This is a re-post from Carbon Brief The past three years have been exceptionally warm globally.  In 2023, global temperatures reached a new high, after they significantly exceeded expectations.  This record was surpassed in 2024 – the first year where average global temperatures were 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.  Now, 2025 is on track to be the second- or third-warmest year on record.  What has caus

Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline. Are toxic heavy metals from solar panels posing a threat to human health? Toxic heavy metals in solar panels are locked in stable compounds and sealed behind tough glass, preventing escape into air, water, or soil at harmful levels. Most concern focuses on cadmium and lead. 40% of new U.S. panels use cadmium telluride, which does not dissolve in water, easily t

This is a re-post from And Then There's Physics Since effective communication often involves repeating things, I thought I would repeat what others have pointed out already. The underlying issue is that there is a narrative in the climate skeptosphere suggesting that extreme weather events are not becoming more common, or that we can’t yet attribute changes in most extreme weather types to human influences (as suggested in the recent DoE climate report).