Tag: Science

Conversations with friends have an ease that is hard to replicate with someone you have just met—often replies come more naturally and timing just seems to click. A strikingly similar pattern plays out in zebra finches, very sociable songbirds whose back-and-forth chatter with familiar individuals can take a noticeably different rhythm to exchanges with strangers. Now, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence have uncovered how this communication pattern is reflected in the brain, showing that social context influences the activity of neurons involved in vocal communication. The study has been published in PLOS Computational Biology.

"Follow the water" has been a guiding mantra of astrobiology, and even space exploration more generally, for decades. If you want to find life, it makes sense to look for the universal solvent that almost all types of life on Earth use. But what if life doesn't actually need water to live or even evolve? A recent paper, available on the preprint server arXiv by researchers at MIT, including Dr. Sara Seager, and the University of Cardiff, proposes an alternative to water as the basis for life—ionic liquids (ILs) and deep eutectic solvents (DES).

Is industry doing enough for the climate—or are many efforts still largely plans on paper? A new study from Chalmers University of Technology examines how Sweden's 20 largest industrial emitters are working toward the goal of net-zero emissions by 2045.

Climate change is lengthening our days because rising sea levels slow Earth's rotation. Researchers from the University of Vienna and ETH Zurich now show that the current increase in day length—1.33 milliseconds per century—is unprecedented in the past 3.6 million years. The team reconstructed ancient day-length fluctuations using the fossil remains of single-celled marine organisms known as benthic foraminifera.

Researchers have developed a data-driven analytical framework that reveals how hotel mergers can generate significant resource savings, even among properties that already operate efficiently. Published in The Journal of Engineering Research, the study analyzes potential merger scenarios among 58 hotels in Oman using an integrated framework that combines inverse data envelopment analysis (IDEA) with an ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator. The approach evaluates how operational inputs—such as rooms, beds, staff, and salaries—can be optimized when two hotels merge.

Some of the smallest marine species are actually the most important because all other life depends on them. Phytoplankton are probably the most important, but just above them in the food chain are zooplankton. In Norway's cold Atlantic waters, the zooplankton in question is generally a small copepod called Calanus finmarchicus.

It all started off as a joke, a French researcher told AFP. But what the team found was a piece of history—a long-lost page from a legendary manuscript by ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes which had been languishing, forgotten, in the archives of a French museum.

A US Senate committee has directed NASA to begin work on a moon base "as soon as is practicable." Under legislation advanced by the Senate lawmakers, the outpost would serve as a science laboratory and proving ground, where astronauts would develop the capabilities to live and work beyond Earth's orbit.

Across the animal kingdom, sound is more than communication—it's a signal of survival and success. From birds and primates to insects, fish, and amphibians, animals broadcast acoustic "advertisements" to defend territory, attract mates, and reveal their physical condition. Because these calls can reflect traits such as body size, strength, or health, they play a powerful role in sexual selection and help shape how species compete and reproduce.

The adoption of management techniques that reduce the impact of timber harvesting can promote the recovery of tropical forests, such as the Amazon, and store carbon in the long term while maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services. Research published in the Journal of Environmental Management provides evidence that these good practices increase above-ground biomass, unlike conventional logging. This reinforces the effectiveness of reduced-impact logging forest management (RIL-FM) as a strategy that reconciles timber production, forest conservation, and climate change mitigation.

The Conversation UK is delighted to announce that Professor Paul Boyle, Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University, will be the new Chair of its Board of Trustees.

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.

The Cerrado, largely overlooked in climate science and policy, is a critical carbon sink, according to new research.

Data reveal that changes in nutrient levels vary depending on depth and distance from shore—and that these changes are happening more quickly than scientists realized.

We are delighted to announce that Sarah Feakins has just taken over as Editor-in-Chief of Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.

Learning from diverse aquifer structures, which are all over the place, leads to robust inverse methods.

Environmental degradation poses well-established risks to human health. But the relationship between the two isn’t a one-way street.

A newly discovered exoplanet suggests that a different way to build planetary systems could be possible.

Connections between fast and slow parts of the atmosphere are analyzed over 35 years to understand the links between storms, weather regimes, and atmospheric wave breaking events.

A major failure triggered by heavy rainfall killed seven people. On 8 March 2026, a moderately-sized garbage landslide occurred at the the Bantar Gebang Integrated Waste Processing Site in Bekasi, on the margins of Jakarta in Indonesia. The landslide, which occurred at 14:30 local time, reportedly struck a series of trucks associated with the dump. […]

A study reveals interconnected changes under three emissions pathways and describes the emerging challenges facing Antarctic fieldwork.

Collinearity is not always a showstopper for statistical machine learning (at least not for self-organizing maps).

Open access notables Weather Rescue at Sea: Recovering Historical Weather Observations From 19th Century British Naval Ships, Teleti et al., Geoscience Data Journal  Ship logbooks represent a critical source of historical meteorological data, providing valuable observations of barometric pressure, air temperature, sea surface temperature, wind force and direction, and other variables. Substantial quantities of these records are unavailable to climate science as they have not yet been transcribed. We present ‘Weather Rescue at Sea’, a citizen-science project which transcribed millions of weather observations contained i

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarella Arkkila Mixing science and creativity, “Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel about Our Changing Planet” documents our irrefutable impacts on Earth’s climate system and the dire consequences we now face. But it does so much more than that. Written by Earth scientist Kate Marvel, “Human Nature” starts from the premise that it’s OK for a scientist who has been trained to be objective to have feelings. “And believe me,” she writes, &l

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. Can shadow flicker from wind turbines trigger seizures in people with epilepsy? The flicker of a wind turbine shadow is far below the minimum frequency required to trigger photosensitive epilepsy. A wind turbine is said to produce a “shadow flicker” when its rotating blades pass between the sun and an observer, creating a repeating pattern of light

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, March 1, 2026 thru Sat, March 7, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (8 articles) Humanity heating planet faster than ever before, study finds "Researchers identify sharp rise to about 0.35C every decade, after excluding natural fluctuations such as El Niño" The Guardian, Ajit Niranjan , Feb 6, 2026. Dangerous heat for Tour de France riders only

Open access notables Abrupt Gulf Stream path changes are a precursor to a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, van Westen & Dijkstra, Communications Earth & Environment The Gulf Stream is part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is a tipping element and may collapse under changing forcing. However, the role of the Gulf Stream in such a tipping event is unknown. Here, we investigate the link between the AMOC and Gulf Stream using a high-resolution (0. 1°) stand-alone ocean simulation, in which the AMOC collapses under a slowly-increasing freshwater forcing. AMOC weakening gradually

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters In brief The strongest hurricanes are likely to grow stronger as a result of climate change.  So far, there has been no significant increase or decrease in the number of major hurricanes making landfall in the United States.  However, it’s likely that there has been an increase in the number of major hurricanes in the Atlantic as a whole since 1946. Also, the intensity of landfalling continental U.S. hurricanes has increased, so even if the total number of landfalls has not increased, their potential to do damage has. When major hurricanes do hit, they will do more damage than they did in the past: They will be stronger, wet

This video includes personal musings and conclusions of the creator Dave Borlace. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any). Video description Why does the global energy transition look so slow in the headline statistics — even as solar, wind, EVs and heat pumps surge ahead? New analysis from EMBER argues the problem isn’t the transition — it’s the way we’ve been counting it. By shifting the focus from “primary energy” to “useful energy” the paper reveals how electrification dramatically reduces wasted energy and why renewables are far more competitive than traditional charts suggest. Support Dave Borlace and his "Just have a Think" channel on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/justhav

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink I was reminded of Arthur C. Clark’s famous third law the other day, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I’d recently gotten Claude Code set up on my computer, and was using it to help write the code for some reduced-complexity climate model runs. Suddenly projects that would have taken hours or even days were running in minutes. It was not perfect – I needed to carefully help it create project plans, develop tests, and review the results – but it represented a remarkable step up from the capabilities I was familiar with in past web-based LLM interfaces. I’m somethi

A listing of 30 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, February 22, 2026 thru Sat, February 28, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (13 articles) States push climate superfund bills despite Trump’s opposition "The legislation would make oil and gas firms pay for climate damages from burning their products. Trump has referred to such laws as 'extortion'.” Canary Media, Sarah Shemkus, Feb 17, 2026. Data Centers Are

Open access notables Relative Vulnerability of US National Parks to Cumulative and Transformational Climate Impacts, Michalak et al., Conservation Letters National Parks are under threat from multiple interacting climatic changes, which have already triggered transformations in these protected landscapes. We conducted a multidimensional analysis of climate-change vulnerability for National Parks to identify which parks are most at risk of climate-change impacts and therefore in the greatest need of targeted climate-change vulnerability assessment and planning. We identified 174 (67%) parks as most exposed to one or more potentially transformative climate impact