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Baker's yeast is one of biotechnology's most important microorganisms. It has long been used to leaven bread and ferment beer. More recently, advances in synthetic biology have enabled engineered yeast to convert sugar into ...

For decades, astronomers have assumed that the Martian surface froze solid around 3 billion years ago and has stayed that way ever since. If this were really the case, any liquid water would have long since either been locked ...

Nearly 80 years ago, a British expedition discovered the battered remains of a giant fossil on the peak of an Arctic island. Unable to take it with them, they snapped some pictures, took some bones and left the fossil to ...

El Niños and La Niñas are the third-most dominant influences on Earth's climate, after the sun and the greenhouse effect. But they haven't been easy to decipher or to predict in terms of when they will happen and what exact ...

Reproduction is central to the survival of all living organisms. Over millions of years, animal species on Earth have evolved a remarkable variety of mating strategies, ranging from physical fights with competitors to mesmerizing ...

In a world first, scientists led by a team from Stanford University have created 16 viable viruses that do not exist in nature and were designed by AI. Their experiment, which is published in Science, could help in the fight ...

Tropical cyclones are among the most destructive natural forces on the planet, but predicting where they will go and how strong they will become is beset by challenges. Current methods are often good at tracking storm paths ...

Hold on to your telescopes: The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team has released the largest-ever 2D color map of the universe. The 5.6-trillion-pixel map contains nearly 4 billion celestial objects, primarily stars and galaxies. ...

Roughly 2.5–2 billion years ago, Earth's surface experienced the biggest chemical change in its history when oxygen became abundant in the atmosphere, eventually leading to the evolution of complex life forms such as plants ...

In his 1927 paper, "A law of comparative judgment," the American psychologist L. L. Thurstone proposed that when people select one option among multiple alternatives, they are picking the one that has the highest value to ...

In January 2024, physicists at TU Dortmund University demonstrated a continuous time crystal in a semiconductor whose oscillations remained stable for hours. In a new study published in Nature Communications, Professor Alex ...

Over the last decade, researchers have developed two-dimensional materials with fascinating quantum effects that could be harnessed for next-generation technologies.