Tag: Science

A publication led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, shows that microscopic partnerships between ciliates and bacteria play a role in the nitrogen cycle of lakes. The study, published in The ISME Journal, investigates what determines the ecological niche of the remarkable symbiosis, and how strongly the host depends on its microbial partners.

Deep in the Atlantic, a vast circulation of water carries heat from the tropics toward Greenland. This is the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, or Amoc. It does this work largely out of sight, so it doesn't have the public profile of rainforests, polar ice caps or other huge climate-regulating systems.

We're still in the definition phase of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), but it seems like every week a new research group comes out with a paper helping to shape what is becoming one of the most important space telescopes of the 2040s. A new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server from a team of researchers led by Daniel Jaffe of the University of Texas at Austin contributes to this ongoing definition work by arguing that it's time HWO adopted a high-resolution near-IR spectroscopy capability—which sounds great in practice, but so far hasn't been attempted because of technological limitations. But, according to the paper, two recent inventions finally make a working version of an extremely high-resolution exoplanet hunter viable.

Resurrecting dinosaurs using DNA retrieved from a mosquito trapped in amber is a great movie plot, though it's less likely to happen in the real world. However, researchers have been trying to unlock the secrets behind the evolution of a single protein family to understand the evolution of ancestral proteins.

AI is growing fast, and keeping up means building more data centers, manufacturing advanced chips and powering the tech behind it. All of that comes with a carbon cost. AI advocates claim that in the long run, AI will save energy and cut carbon emissions across global industries.

Husker scientists have developed a new swine influenza vaccination technique whose low cost and adaptability can greatly strengthen disease protection.

Frontline employees who face rude or disrespectful customers are more likely to justify negative behaviors, from cutting corners to leaving their jobs, according to a new study.

A newly developed method allows researchers to dynamically switch chirality—a particular lack of mirror symmetry—to generate spin currents in semiconductors, researchers from Science Tokyo report. Their approach relies on the reversible insertion and removal of small chiral molecules from the interlayer gaps of a layered, nonchiral semiconductor material using electrochemistry.

US astronaut Christina Koch, the first woman to take part in a lunar mission, was named Wednesday the winner of a top Spanish prize for having "helped extend the frontiers of humanity."

Genes aren't just transferred from parents to their offspring. Nature has found other ways to pass on genetic information, even between different species. And a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports that cockroaches, in particular, are riddled with DNA transferred from another species.

The Conversation is a media partner of the think tank Vision’s seventh ‘Europe of the Future’ conference in Siena, Italy.

Professor Jeremy Howick, University of Leicester, receiving the 2025 Professor Sir Paul Curran award from Lady Curran, at a celebration of authors’ work.

The Conversation invites academics across the UK and Ireland to write a poem inspired by climate change research.

The Conversation Prize is back in 2026.

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.

Tire particles might seem tasty, if you’re a fish—but a new study shows how this pervasive microplastic can affect growth and behavior in marine species.

New seismic images from the Aleutian Arc show how active volcanic arcs may build new continental crust, highlighting the complex transition at multiple stages.

Popular soil biogeochemistry models inadequately represent regionally-important processes and lack transferability, resulting in poor predictions of soil organic carbon stocks in sub-Saharan Africa.

An improved weather forecast for an exoplanet 700 light-years away has revealed new details about its true chemical composition, clarifying more than a decade of blurry data.

研究表明，看似相互独立的气候过程实际上可能存在紧密的联系。

Plastic pollution may ripple downstream, threatening the human and wildlife communities that depend on glacier-fed waters.

It is now clear that more than half the fatalities from last week’s earthquake in the Philippines were caused by landslides. In the areas of the Philippines affected by the 8 June 2026 M=7.8 earthquake offshore Mindanao, operations have shifted from rescue to recovery. Inquirer has an interesting report about information provided by an official […]

New claims challenge inconsistencies in one of the foundational principles of physics. What could this mean for geophysics and Earth science applications?

The key word here is "could." Experts emphasize that no two El Niños are alike.

A new rate- and roughness-dependent friction law incorporates multi-scale fault processes to reproduce earthquake fracture energy scaling.

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Ben Tracy, Climate Central If you feel like your electricity bill just keeps climbing, you aren’t imagining it. Since 2020, U.S. residential energy prices have surged by about 30%, making power the largest household energy expense behind gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But for residents like Alex Curtis, the days of feeling powerless against rising costs are coming to an end. Curtis is waging a war on his electric bill, and his new weapon of choice is a lightweight, thin-film solar panel. “Oh, it’s super light too,” Curtis remarked as he unboxed the kit on the balcony of his condo in Sunnyvale, California. It weighs just about 1

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. Does solar energy need subsidies to compete with fossil fuels? Unsubsidized utility-scale solar is now generally cheaper than building fossil fuel power plants. Costs are often compared using “levelized cost of energy,” the average lifetime cost to build and run a power plant divided by the electricity it produces. A 2025 analysis estimates the mean

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink I’ve often come across graphs on social media showing atmospheric CO2 concentrations over time, with various dates of climate agreements highlighted. Shared by doomers and skeptics alike, they are used to argue that the rise of CO2 concentrations is inexorable and has not (or perhaps cannot) be slowed by actions we take.

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, June 7, 2026 thru Sat, June 13, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (7 articles) What happens when the world`s breadbaskets start failing simultaneously? The Conversation, Ekamjot Dhillon, Jun 07, 2026. This 1,000-year-old pine tree`s protector fears changing weather patterns Mayors from around the world gathered last week in Huangshan

Open access notables Emergence of Uncompensable Heat Stress During Monsoon Season in India, Chuphal et al., AGU Advances Uncompensable heat stress (UHS), characterized by the loss of homeostasis due to excessive environmental thermal loading, causes substantial heat-related health risks in India. However, the spatial and seasonal heterogeneity, as well as temporal changes of UHS in India remain poorly understood. Using observations, reanalysis data, and climate model projections, we highlight the surge of UHS during the monsoon season (July–October) as the climate warms. In the observed period (1979–2021), the frequency and area affected by UHS ha

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler You have likely seen a headline like this: 62,000 people died from record-breaking heat in Europe: link It’s a striking number. It’s also not clear what it means. Is this the number of people killed by extreme heat? Or climate change’s contributions to the ex

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Bob Henson It might have seemed exotic when it first appeared, but the forecast “cone of uncertainty” used by the NOAA/NWS National Hurricane Center (NHC) is now a familiar part of tropical cyclone readiness in U.S. states and territories. For 2026, NHC has made a couple of key tweaks to its standard cone product. It’s also testing an expanded version of the cone – one made feasible by a new way of understanding how and where forecast errors arise. Since its debut in 2002, the cone has become what a University of Miami writer called “arguably [the cen

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, May 31, 2026 thru Sat, June 6, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Policy and Politics (8 articles) Scilencing The Trump Administration would just as soon we didn't know stuff, especially about our planet The Crucial Years, Bill McKibben, May 31, 2026. Companies No Longer Report Greenhouse Gas Emissions And Climate Risk Progressive lawmakers and environmental groups strongly condemned the decision, ar

Open access notables Historical Volcanic Eruptions Mitigated the Expected Rapid Arctic Sea Ice Decline Prior to 2000, Wang et al., Geophysical Research Letters Arctic sea ice has declined at sharply contrasting rates over the past four decades—modest before 2000 and rapid thereafter. Using observational and model evidence, we show that large tropical volcanic eruptions can trigger decade-long Arctic sea ice recoveries, and that without the 1982 El Chichón and 1991 Pinatubo eruptions, Arctic sea ice would have declined approximately 1.5 times faster before 2000. We further show a model's sensitivity to volcanic aerosol forcing scales with its sens

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler I’ve long been struck by how hard it is to predict the evolution of our energy system, even a few years in advance, never mind 25 or 30 years. I still remember the “peak oil” craze in the mid 2000s, when people were telling me the end of oil was nigh. It sounded convincing right up until it turned out to be wrong. In this post, let me show you how bad previous predictions have been for the electricity sector. evolution of our energy system in 6 charts Each plot below shows annual predictions of how a particular source of electricity will evolve as well as what actually happened. The data come from the Energ