• Baby white sharks prefer being closer to shore, scientists find

    Remember #BabyShark? And no, this was not the very catchy song for kids that took the internet by storm. Earlier this year, social media was abuzz with stunning footage of a newborn great white shark, captured by a flying drone.

  • Key protein regulates immune response to viruses in mammal cells

    Researchers have revealed the regulatory mechanism of a specific protein that plays a key role in balancing the immune response triggered by viral infections in mammal cells. These findings could help drive the development of antiviral therapies and nucleic acid medicines to treat genetic disorders. The research is published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

  • Bike Bus gains supporters as a way to promote sustainable and safe mobility

    The Bike Bus movement has emerged as a powerful tool to promote road safety, sustainability and community. According to a global survey carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), the phenomenon has gained momentum globally in recent years, with more than 470 Bike Bus routes worldwide, transporting 32,000 children to school every week.

  • Study presents new perspective on morality based on nuances in values among different political ideologies

    While social psychology has long been interested in learning more about how one's moral values relate to one's political views, most of the research to date has used quite the same perspective.

  • Marine microbial populations: Potential sensors of the global change in the ocean

    Animal and plant populations have been extensively studied, which has helped to elucidate ecosystem processes and evolutionary adaptations. However, this has not been the case with microbial populations, due to the impossibility of isolating, culturing and analyzing the genetic content of the different species and their individuals in the laboratory. Therefore, although it is known that populations of microorganisms include a great diversity, it remains largely uncharacterized.

  • Unraveling the mysteries of consecutive atmospheric river events

    In California's 2022-2023 winter season, the state faced nine atmospheric rivers (ARs) that led to extreme flooding, landslides, and power outages—the longest duration of continuous AR conditions in the past 70 years. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) recently conducted a study using machine learning to understand these complex weather systems better, finding that more intense atmospheric rivers are more likely to occur in succession within a short period of...

  • Research team resolves decades-long problem in microscopy

    When viewing biological samples with a microscope, the light beam is disturbed if the lens of the objective is in a different medium than the sample. For example, when looking at a watery sample with a lens surrounded by air, the light rays bend more sharply in the air around the lens than in the water.

  • Research suggests ways to ensure more sustainability in global agricultural trade

    The EU wants to ensure greater sustainability in agricultural trade with the Global South—with the aim of minimizing the environmental and climate-damaging effects of importing crops such as soya, palm oil, coffee, and cocoa. However, this aspiration is often not fulfilled in practice.

  • Using deep learning to image the Earth's planetary boundary layer

    Although the troposphere is often thought of as the closest layer of the atmosphere to the Earth's surface, the planetary boundary layer (PBL)—the lowest layer of the troposphere—is actually the part that most significantly influences weather near the surface. In the 2018 planetary science decadal survey, the PBL was raised as an important scientific issue that has the potential to enhance storm forecasting and improve climate projections.

  • Stars vs. numbers: How consumers perceive online rating formats

    Mathematically speaking, scoring 3.5 out of 5 is the same as receiving three and a half stars on a five-star scale. But visually speaking, the numbers don't add up.

  • RNA's hidden potential: New study unveils its role in early life and future bioengineering

    The beginning of life on Earth and its evolution over billions of years continue to intrigue researchers worldwide. The central dogma or the directional flow of genetic information from a deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) template to a ribose nucleic acid (RNA) transcript, and finally into a functional protein, is fundamental to cellular structure and functions.

  • New study shows how quickly surface water moves to groundwater reservoirs across Australia

    A new study from Charles Darwin University (CDU), Monash University and The University of Newcastle has presented almost 100,000 estimates of groundwater recharge rates across Australia, by far the largest known database of its kind.