SCIENCE NEWS - A queen bee may be shaped by more than its famous royal diet. The wax of the peanut-shaped chamber where the queen develops has distinct physical and chemical properties that help steer its development, researchers report June 3 in Nature. By analyzing the chamber’s composition and the larvae it harbors, the team...
GIZMODO - Early this year, researchers confirmed why one part of Antarctica bleeds red. In similar yet arguably more concerning news about Earth’s poles, Arctic rivers are turning orange—and scientists now know the real reason behind this shift. In a study published last year, the same team initially documented the orange slush—toxic iron particles fatal...
LIVE SCIENCE - Google wants to release 64 million bacteria-riddled mosquitoes in California and Florida — but scientists aren't concerned. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing an application made by the tech giant for an experimental mosquito release permit, which, counterintuitively, could reduce mosquito populations that carry diseases. The release is part of Google's...
POPULAR SCIENCE - Alaska’s Arctic rivers have a big, orange problem. Previously clear rivers are turning a cloudy orange color due to iron particles, and it’s more than unsightly. The particles can suffocate fish and choke insects, threatening the food web and ecosystem as a whole. Scientists have long pointed to previously frozen soil beginning...
UNIVERSE TODAY - Mars holds a special place in the Solar System. It represents marginal habitability. This means it transitioned from warm and wet and potentially hospitable, to cold and dry and inhospitable. What can its transition tell us about exoplanet habitability? New research to be published in the Planetary Science Journal examines the question...
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN - Today a stretch of Canada’s remote Northwest Territories is covered in snow-covered peaks. But more than half a billion years ago this wilderness was an ancient seafloor home to the wrinkled pancakes, fleshy fronds and spiral-shaped critters that were among Earth’s earliest complex life-forms. Researchers recently unearthed a trove of fossils that...
LIVE SCIENCE - Astronomers have reconstructed the "skeleton" of the cosmos in unprecedented detail, thanks to the largest-ever survey conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The resulting map reveals how galaxies have evolved since the universe's infancy around 13 billion years ago and how they fall together in a vast structure called the...
EARTH.COM - The majority of California’s water comes from the Pacific Ocean. Atmospheric rivers build over the sea, ride the jet stream east, and slam into the Sierra. When forecasters track wet winters, they watch ocean temperatures off the coast to predict weather conditions. However, they may need to look beyond what is proximate. A...
THE DEBRIEF - New data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is helping researchers map the cosmic web in the greatest detail ever achieved, providing new insights into the network of galaxies as improved resolution reveals hidden features. An international team of researchers led by the University of California, Riverside, revealed their newest...
EARTH.COM - For years, maps of how matter is arranged across the universe came with a built-in compromise. Individual galaxies showed up fine. The filaments and clusters they formed – the bigger architecture – remained smeared at the edges. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is changing that. Its largest survey has produced the most...
ZME SCIENCE - For humans, a fruit fly weighs almost nothing. Yet when scientists made that tiny body feel four, seven, ten, and even thirteen times heavier than normal, it survived every time. At 13G, humans can only survive for a few minutes. In a new study, researchers at the University of California, Riverside, spun...
EARTH.COM - Space agencies have spent decades designing life-detection instruments around a single idea: biology leaves specific molecules behind. Send the right probe, find the right chemicals, and the question of whether life existed answers itself. The idea has a flaw. Those same molecules form without life in cold meteorite chemistry and deep-sea vents. A...
EARTH.COM - Termites chew through the wooden framing of houses and cost property owners billions of dollars every year. Fixing this severe property damage usually requires pest control workers to pump homes full of highly toxic gases. Families have to pack up and evacuate their houses for several days during these extreme chemical treatments. We...
SFGATE - On a Saturday morning in mid-April, driving into Joshua Tree National Park’s Ryan Campground, the scenery was striking: Giant, rounded boulders. Scurrying lizards. Spiky cholla cactus, shrubby creosote and, of course, the park’s namesake Joshua trees. But on the short walk from car to campsite, a more concerning life form came into view...
ENGADGET - We love when astronomers share the images they capture with the James Webb Space Telescope because they are so dang beautiful and cool. But of course, science is about more than just pretty pictures. A research team has used the telescope to map out the cosmic web, a collection of dark matter, gas...
INTERESTING ENGINEERING - Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have created the most detailed map yet of the universe’s vast cosmic web, revealing how galaxies connected and evolved across 13.7 billion years of history. The new map gives scientists an unprecedented look at the large-scale structure of the universe during its earliest stages. Researchers...
SPACE.COM - A new type of self-interacting dark matter could provide solutions to three very different cosmic puzzles, new research suggests. The first mystery that could be solved involves an ultradense clump of matter detected in the system JVAS B1938+666, which is gravitationally lensed, or visibly distorted, thanks to a quirk of general relativity. The...
THE WASHINGTON POST - Few things ruin an evening outdoors faster than the realization that you’re being eaten alive by mosquitos. These biting insects, which can transmit diseases like dengue, malaria and West Nile virus, “remain the most dangerous animal on Earth,” said Adrian Vasquez, an assistant professor in the biology department at Mercer University...
INTERESTING ENGINEERING - Humans can tolerate only brief bursts of extreme gravitational force. Fighter pilots train to endure high G-loads, but even they struggle beyond 9G. At higher levels, blood drains from the brain, causing blackout within seconds. Sustained exposure remains dangerous and poorly understood, especially during spaceflight and reentry. Now, new research from the...
GIZMODO - Pests are, well, pesky because they simply won’t go away. And in a terrifying turn of events, scientists found that the fruit fly—a super common kitchen pest—adapts and survives under crushing hypergravity. According to a study on the findings, published recently in the Journal of Experimental Biology, fruit flies initially show some bolstered...