Tag: Science

Sugar-based amphiphilic molecules, which contain a hydrophilic sugar headgroup and a hydrophobic segment such as an alkyl chain, can assemble in water depending on their concentration, forming hydrophobic microenvironments or organizing at interfaces. These properties are important fundamental phenomena related to detergents, emulsifiers, molecular assemblies, and the dispersion and delivery of drugs and functional molecules.

In the world of organic chemistry, nitrogen-containing organic compounds are ubiquitous, forming the backbone of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, dyes, and functional materials. To build these important molecules, chemists often rely on highly reactive intermediates that can be transformed into many different products.

The astronauts on Artemis II's trip to the moon in April 2026 didn't just have an amazing journey through space. They also saw something extraordinary. They were the first humans to see a total solar eclipse from space.

RIKEN researchers have found out how light energy harvested by pigments besides chlorophyll is transferred to the molecular site where photosynthesis occurs in cyanobacteria. The work is published in the journal Plant and Cell Physiology.

Cell division is one of the most fundamental and complex processes underpinning life. In human cells, thousands of molecules coordinate with one another in highly precise steps, all within a fraction of a second. But things don't always go as planned.

Labor market policies intended to protect trade secrets and spur research and development may instead limit late-career wages and encourage firms to replace human labor with machines and other automation equipment, according to a study in the journal Labour Economics by researchers at Penn State, the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Colorado State University.

There are tens of thousands of near-Earth objects (NEOs) that represent some of the most easily accessible resources in the solar system. Planning trajectories to rendezvous with these miniature worlds is notoriously difficult, and requires a massive amount of computational power to calculate. But a new paper from astrodynamicist Alessandro Beolchi of Khalifa University of Science and Technology and his co-authors offers a much less computationally intensive way to find these trajectories, and has the added bonus of finding much less energy-intensive paths to boot.

A new study by a team at Tohoku University, published in Chemical Engineering Journal, has shown that more isn't always better when it comes to nanoscale chemical reactions. One might think that giving reactants completely unrestricted access to a speed-boosting catalyst would be the fastest way to drive a chemical reaction. Instead, it was shown that hollow nanoreactors can work more efficiently when transport into the reaction space is slightly restricted.

Caring about future generations means believing that people who will live decades or centuries from now deserve ethical consideration. In practice, that means taking their interests into account when making all kinds of decisions across a range of issues—from aggressively cutting carbon emissions to investing in pandemic preparedness initiatives and regulating powerful emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

Predators are typically larger, faster, and more powerful than the animals they hunt. Yet in nature, most attacks fail. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by researchers from the University of Amsterdam Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED), asks: why do prey get away so often? The key, the researchers found, lies in something the original model overlooked: reaction times.

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.

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.

Abrupt temperature swings aren’t random—large-scale air mass shifts and seasonal processes drive day-to-day variability across major Northern Hemisphere regions.

Intensively managed agricultural sites show behavioral shifts of the critical zone system and subsystems thus impacting predictability.

Bans on older versions of “forever chemicals” seem to be working. But emerging variants behave in ways that scientists are only beginning to pin down.

Researchers around the world are seeking to search and destroy pervasive “forever chemicals.”

Coal mining brings a slew of risks to communities, but “being employed is good for your health.”

A new approach to analyzing watersheds shows how storms occurring after a wildfire can have higher flooding risk than similar storms that occurred before a fire.

Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) is a Solar Radiation Management (SRM) solution to cool the planet by changing the albedo of low-altitude marine clouds to increase reflected shortwave radiation.

The National Water Availability Assessment Data Companion is the first tool that integrates information about water availability in individual watersheds at a national scale.

Drought has the potential to turn normal soils into perfect breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria, new research has found.

What can warm fluids in arc crust tell us about how much magma is lurking underground? Hydrothermal heat fluxes provide constraints on the supply of magma from the mantle in subduction zones.

Open access notables Unprecedented 2024 East Antarctic winter heatwave driven by polar vortex weakening and amplified by anthropogenic warming, Tang et al., npj Climate and Atmospheric Science During July–August 2024, East Antarctica experienced the most intense winter heatwave in the 46-year satellite era, with regional mean surface air temperatures across Dronning Maud Land exceeding the climatological mean by more than 9°C for 17 consecutive days. To explore the physical drivers and quantify the anthropogenic contribution to this unprecedented event, we propose a multi-model, multi-method attribution framework integrating regional climate m

WASHINGTON (AP) — Burning time for North American wildfires is going into overtime. Flames are lasting later into the night and starting earlier in the morning because human-caused climate change is extending the hotter and drier conditions that feed fires, a new study found. Fires used to die down or even die out at night as temperatures dropped and humidity increased, but that’s happening less often. The number of hours in North America when the weather is favorable for wildfires is 36% higher than 50 years ago, according to a study published earlier this month in Science Advances. Places such as California have 550 more potential burning hours than in the mid-1970s. Parts of southwestern New Mexico and central Arizona are seeing as many as 2,000 more hours a year when the weather is prone to burning fires, the highest increase seen in the study, which looked at Canada and the United States. T

This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler I am finalizing a textbook on climate risk and am posting chapters as I finish them. I’d previously posted chapters about embedded energy and physical climate risk; this post is a chapter on transition risk, the economic and social risks of the transition to a clean-energy economy. Introduction In the context of climate risk, transition risk encompasses the economic and social risks associated with a shift towards a low-carbon economy. Such an effort would fundamentally reshape our world and create critical financial uncertainty for assets and industries tied to

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters October 28, 2025, was a very bad day to be in Jamaica. That morning, Category 5 Hurricane Melissa intensified into the strongest hurricane ever observed in the Atlantic: 190 mph (305 km/h) winds, a tie with Hurricane Allen of 1980. That afternoon Melissa powered ashore in Jamaica, causing a catastrophic $8.8 billion in damage, equivalent to 41% of Jamaica’s GDP. Melissa came close to its maximum potential intensity The maximum potential intensity of a tropical cyclone is the maximum strength a storm can achieve based on the existing atmospheric and oceanic conditions. Potential intensity theory was 

A listing of 28 news and opinion articles we found interesting and shared on social media during the past week: Sun, April 19, 2026 thru Sat, April 25, 2026. Stories we promoted this week, by category: Climate Change Impacts (10 articles) A more troubling picture of sea level rise is coming into view Scientists have uncovered a “blind spot” in the research on rising seas, revealing that tens of millions of people thought safe from coastal flooding are at risk of inundation. Grist, Fred Pearce, Apr 18, 2026. Wildfires used to 'go to slee

This is a guest blog post by John Lang about his new "Climate Trunk" graphics project and website. He will add one graphic per week for about 2 years rounding out the big picture of human-caused climate change graphic by graphic. If you had to explain climate change in 10 seconds, what would you say?  Climate scientists Katharine Hayhoe and Kimberly Nicholas have long boiled it down to five phrases: It’s real. It’s us. It’s bad. We’re sure. And we can fix it. This framing has helped millions cut through a topic swamped by jargon, acronyms and complexity. The first four Climate Trunk graphics owe a debt to that tradition.  You’ll noti

Technical note: new feature in New Research Every article we list here is eyeball-scanned by a real human but we do lean on bibliographic catalogs (publication databases) to supply article metadata for assembly of each edition of our weekly research surveillance scan. A little in-house software on our end connected via an API to a rich suite of upstream bibliographic information makes regular production possible. While recently making API changes to improve our background tooling for New Research, we found ourselves unable to resist tapping into a little more information to include in our regular product. There's one key metric to help us all better understand what practicing scientists find most useful (and stimulating) in the torrent of climate-related research r

This year's General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) will again take place as a fully hybrid conference in both Vienna and online from May 4 to 8. This year, I'll join the event virtually for the full week, participating in the hybrid sessions from the comforts of my home. I already picked most of the sessions I plan to attend and - as meet-hopping is a lot easier online than on-site - I didn't have to pay close attention to where in the conference center they happen. This year, I submitted abstracts to two sessions and both happen to be on Monday. This suits me just fine as it means, that I can freely plan the rest of my week, picking and chosing sessions piquing my interest. This blog post provides an overview of my itinerary. Monday morning, May 4 The very first session

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters In brief:  Multiple studies have found that tropical cyclones are becoming stronger worldwide.  New so-called attribution studies have linked increased wind speeds to human-caused ocean warming.  In the future, scientists expect an increase in the proportion of Category 4 and Category 5 tropical cyclones. The dangers posed by one of humanity's greatest scourges – the tropical cyclone – are being significantly increased by human-caused global warming. In fact, one of the more confident predictions about how climate change will affect these great storms — which we will refer to by their Atlantic name when they reach winds of 74 mph (119 km/hr)

This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Pearl Marvell The Trump administration’s fuel blockade against Cuba has resulted in widespread power outages, gas shortages, garbage in the streets, and a humanitarian crisis – but also a surge in solar installations. In 2025, the Caribbean nation produced 10% of its electricity from renewable sources, a jump from 3.6% in 2024, according to Rosell Guerra Campaña, director of the Ministry of Renewable Energy at Cuba’s Ministry of Energy and Mines. Cuba’s increased reliance on renewables is driven by dire necessity. Since President Donald Trump’s January 2026 executive order impo