Abundant geological evidence demonstrates that Earth’s climate has experienced millennial-scale variability superimposed on glacial-interglacial fluctuations through the Pleistocene. The magnitude of millennial climate variability has been linked to glacial cycles over the past 800 thousand years (kyr). For the period before the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, when global glaciations were less pronounced but more frequent, scientists had been […]

Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese technique that has been used for millennia to treat chronic pain and other health problems associated with inflammation, yet the scientific basis of the technique remains poorly understood. Now, a team of researchers led by neuroscientists at Harvard Medical School has elucidated the underlying neuroanatomy of acupuncture that activa In […]

Imagine hopping into a zero carbon emission, personal aircraft and zipping skyward over the traffic and congestion to land conveniently right at the office. It’s long been the stuff of science fiction but a team of WSU researchers is testing components that one day might make that dream of a personal, electric flying machine a reality. “I would say if you’ve ever tried to drive from downtown Seattle to the airport, I think that’s probably enough justification for the project right […]

Vehicular collisions are a common cause of death for animals such as the endangered Florida panther and the state’s black bears, and a new international study has quantified how big of a threat roads can be to the survival of animal populations around the world. The study has identified four animal populations globally that are […]

A new study adds to the evidence that chemotherapy enhances cancer’s spread beyond the primary tumor, showing how one chemo drug allows breast cancer cells to squeeze through and attach to blood vessel linings in the lungs. The research in mice leaves no doubt that the chemo drug caused changes to non-cancer cells that enable […]

Women are less likely than men to ask for more time to complete projects with adjustable deadlines at work or school, new research finds. Compared to men, women were more concerned that they would be burdening others by asking for an extension, and that they would be seen as incompetent, the study showed. Prior research […]

Johns Hopkins University researchers discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark. Their creation of a web-building playbook or algorithm brings new understanding of how creatures with brains a fraction of the size of […]

Many parents fretted over their children’s screen use during the pandemic with good reason, according to a new study in JAMA Pediatrics. UC San Francisco-led researchers found that 12- to 13-year-old children in the United States doubled their non-school-related screen time to 7.7 hours a day in May 2020, compared to 3.8 hours a day before the […]

A Duke University-led initiative to predict and prevent malaria outbreaks in the Amazon has received a $3.4 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The grant will support the research team’s efforts to develop new and more reliable methods to forecast where and when a malaria outbreak will occur, weeks […]

A clearer understanding of how a type of brain cell known as astrocytes function and can be emulated in the physics of hardware devices, may result in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that autonomously self-repairs and consumes much less energy than the technologies currently do, according to a team of Penn State researchers. Astrocytes are named for their star shape and are a type […]