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Mount Sinabung on Indonesia erupted Monday, spewing a column of black ash and smoke 3,500 meters (11,482 feet) from the top of the mountain into the sky over Sumatra island.

High above the fields of the Morven Sustainability Lab, drones equipped with heat and light sensors are changing what it means to farm smarter. This month, researchers and students from the University of Virginia, NASA and the University at Buffalo tested drone technology by flying more than 100 feet (30 meters) above crops to measure plant health at UVA

Ocean plastic pollution is accidentally on the menu for southern giant petrel chicks. Even small nibbles of it may affect their physiology during development, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and Argentina

Communication between cells in plants, animals and humans takes place via specialized connecting structures. An international team led by biologists from Heinrich Heine University D

Two administrations, the Biden administration and the second Trump administration, reached opposite conclusions about whether vehicle emissions standards should be rolled back. These conclusions came from different assumptions, including whether avoiding air pollution has value to society and the degree to which car buyers value future fuel savings from getting a more efficient vehicle. Both assumptions matter, and disagreement over either accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars in the gove

A collaborative research team has successfully visualized in real space the ultrafast optical modulation of hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs) in a van der Waals heterostructure composed of hBN and WS2. The research is published in the journal Nano Letters, and was led by Kazuki Kamada of the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) and Osaka Metropolitan University, along with Dr. Jun Nishida, assistant professor at IMS, and Takashi Kumagai, associate professor at IMS.

As dogs age, many develop more than one chronic health condition. New research from Texas A

Jupiter hosts more than 100 moons, with most attention focused on the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. This is primarily due to their active geology, including Io being the most volcanically active planetary body in the solar system and Europa having a vast subsurface liquid-water ocean beneath its icy crust. However, Jupiter

Cooling from air conditioning saves lives

Drones often hover in the air, noisy and whining. They can already be used for many tasks, but not when you need some quiet. Their batteries would also last longer if they could take a

While astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets over the last few decades, the true prize continues to elude them

Despite the importance and dominance of angiosperms (

If you wanted to take down a power grid or a network of drones, which part of the system should you attack? Researchers at The University of New Mexico School of Engineering posed the question in hopes of developing better network security mechanisms.

Research in the International Journal of Critical Infrastructures describes a digital-twin system that could make safety monitoring on high-rise construction sites more effective. The system could allow accident risks to be identified as they appear rather than sites simply responding to hazards after the fact.

When exploring solar system bodies for signs of past or present life, scientists have mainly focused on planets that have (or had) a liquid surface similar to Earth

As one moves north, Maine

Algae have a habit of turning up where they

Korean researchers have developed a recyclable flame-retardant composite that overcomes a fundamental limitation of conventional flame-retardant composites, which cannot be recycled once cured, while maintaining excellent flame resistance.

Resources such as sea level rise viewers, heat maps and flood prediction services are crucial tools in a changing climate. NASA Earth Observations (NASA EO) datasets provide important information on these and other natural hazards, but many communities that may benefit from these tools face barriers to accessing them.

The tide came in last week carrying thousands of dead sardines onto South Africa

On hearing the first cuckoo of spring, the poet

Fermented cocoa occasionally exhibits off-flavors that can compromise the quality of chocolate and other cocoa products. But what causes these undesirable flavors? Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Food Systems Biology at the Technical University of Munich have now shown that overfermentation of cocoa beans can cause smoky, leathery and cheesy off-flavors. Smoky flavors, therefore, are not necessarily attributable to smoke contamination.

Earlier this summer, the four of us spent three days in a room with a dozen others whose jobs sound nothing like ours, or like each other

Data from many sources, including NASA, have shown a significant decrease in Arctic sea ice since 1979. However, the processes driving the melting and freezing of sea ice are complex, and fluctuations occur throughout the year. Short-term variations in temperature, winds, ocean convection and water salinity within a certain region can also affect how much ice can reform or melt.

August always feels like one long Sunday to me. It is also a time of year when parents across Canada begin the ritual of preparing their children for September.

The catastrophic flood that killed hundreds of people in Nepal on Aug. 26, 2026, and left many more missing likely began with falling ice and rock crashing into the river below, but that wasn

Researchers use tightly focused laser beams to image biological samples, shape materials with microscopic precision and generate displays. But using those beams in three dimensions requires more than sweeping light from side to side, as the light must also rapidly refocus at different depths.

The kind of technology that can deliver sound to a single listener

The ancient Romans were a deeply religious and superstitious people, worshiping dozens of cults

An international team led by Canadian researchers has found evidence explaining why snake embryos form a curious spiral. This ability to coil as embryos enables snakes to hatch with the longest bodies of all vertebrates.

The Tasmanian tiger hunted more like a fox than its fearsome namesake, according to a new UniSC biomechanics study of predatory animals across the globe. The University of the Sunshine Coast-led research, published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, featured the thylacine in a comparison of 48 living and extinct predatory mammal species, from domestic dogs to African wildcats.

Researchers at the University of Idaho have identified a new species of spider in the mountains of northern Idaho and given it a name that pays tribute to the university itself: Hexura vandal. The spider belongs to a small group of funnel-web spiders related to tarantulas. Until now, only two species in this genus were known, both living hundreds of miles away in the coastal forests and mountains of Oregon and Washington.

A team of scientists from the Department of Organic Chemistry at the Faculty of Science, Charles University, Prague, has reported a new method that simplifies the preparation of complex molecules. The work was published in the journal Organic Letters. Such molecules are related to natural compounds known for their anticancer and anti-inflammatory effects. The new approach could help scientists prepare different variants of these compounds and study their biological effects.

In computer vision and robotics, ensuring that AI systems remain reliable under real-world conditions is a growing challenge. Deep neural network (DNN)-based vision systems are increasingly used in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving, where misinterpreting a traffic sign could lead to unsafe decisions. Everyday wear and tear can subtly alter traffic signs, raising questions about whether naturally occurring damage could also expose vulnerabilities in AI-based recognition syst

Who has not dreamed of an invisibility cloak like the one used by Harry Potter? It sounds like magic, but it could become reality with the help of so-called metamaterials. In the summer of 2026, some of the world

Giving robot companions animal-like or anime-style faces and voices could maximize their emotional appeal to users, according to new research that could help guide the growing field of social robotics.

The ability to precisely adjust the expression of genes inside the human body

Europe is no stranger to powerful windstorms, but some storms capable of causing serious damage have an unusual origin. Tropical cyclones can occasionally travel north from lower latitudes and reach Europe, where they can bring damaging winds and heavy rain even after losing some of their tropical characteristics.

In a promising milestone for nanotechnology, Constructor University has contributed to a study demonstrating self-assembling nanopores capable of detecting disease proteins associated with illnesses like Parkinson

Cats, dogs, wolves and other agile four-legged animals can easily jump and squeeze through tight spaces while moving at high speed. Reproducing similar agile motions and skills in quadrupedal robots has so far proved challenging.

Carnegie Mellon University scientists have uncovered a new phenomenon that challenges a longstanding assumption about how electronic materials respond to magnetic fields. The discovery broadens the fundamental understanding of the Hall effect, a principle widely used to measure the magnetic and electronic properties of materials.

3D printers that once could only produce rigid objects can now create products as soft and stretchable as rubber. A team of Korean researchers used AI to identify the optimal

The United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, meaning that religious exemptions can sometimes be granted if a law infringes on someone

For 30 years, the World Wide Web has run on a surprisingly profound social contract: Most sites are free for search engines to access, but if you use their content, you give credit by linking to the source.

On an August morning last year, an American couple soon to embark on a European river cruise awoke in a luxury hotel in Lisbon.

Irish whiskey is one of Ireland

Astronomers may have finally solved the mystery behind a nearly two-decade-old cosmic explosion that seemed to break the rules of physics. The energy output of a powerful gamma-ray burst, GRB 061201, discovered in 2006, did not match well-established patterns seen in other similar explosions. Now, in a new study published in the Astrophysical Journal on Aug. 3, astronomers have revealed why.

The 1960s were a time of great change in technology, culture and politics. Television was radically altering the media environment, and nobody was quite sure how to think about it.

The lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza is rapidly spreading along the coast of southern Australia, where it has killed thousands of wild birds and infected at least two long-nosed fur seals.

Humans have been observing the sky for thousands of years. Our ancestors were undoubtedly fascinated by it, but observing the heavens also had practical uses: It helped people measure time, both over the course of the day and through the changing seasons, and became especially important with the spread of agriculture. What is now seen as scientific frontiers, such as cosmology and astrophysics, are in fact only the latest chapter in an evolving history of observing and interpreting the sky.