An evolutionary biologist has spent more than three decades studying the skulls of many species of large carnivores — including wolves, lions and tigers — that lived from 50,000 years ago to the present. She reports today the answer to a puzzling question.
Read moreNew research has resulted in a reactive copper-nitrene catalyst that pries apart carbon-hydrogen (C-H) bonds and transforms them into carbon-nitrogen (C-N) bonds, which are a crucial building block for chemical synthesis, especially in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Read moreReading about a child abuse case or someone burglarizing homes often stirs feelings of disgust, anger and disbelief when it's learned the perpetrator's family or friends did nothing to stop it or report it to police.
Read moreThe cells of our immune system constantly communicate with one another by exchanging complex protein molecules. A team has now revealed how dedicated cellular control proteins, referred to as chaperones, detect immature immune signaling proteins and prevent them from leaving the cell.
Read moreResearchers discovered new clues that provide a better understanding of why children with Down syndrome have an increased risk of leukemia.
Read moreHomeowner guidance and fire behavior models are largely based on the idea that natural grass, bushes and trees fuel fire in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Researchers found that over nearly three decades, half of all buildings destroyed by wildfire in California were located in an area of the WUI with less natural vegetation.
Read moreGeologists have improved upon methods to map seabed rocks, helping us better understand underwater earthquakes and the tsunamis they can cause.
Read moreA provocative new study looks at the resource utilization and technological strategies that would be needed to make a Mars population of one million people food self-sufficient.
Read moreHey, physicists and materials scientists: You'd better reevaluate your work if you study iridium-based materials — members of the platinum family — when they are ultra-thin. Iridium 'loses its identity' and its electrons act oddly in an ultra-thin film when interfaced with nickel-based layers, which have an unexpectedly strong impact on iridium ions.
Read moreBeing able to accurately forecast how much solar energy reaches the surface of the Earth is key to guiding decisions for running solar power plants and new work looks to provide a standard of reference to the field. A researcher proposes an improved way to assess day-ahead solar forecasting, which combines two popular reference methods for weather forecasting, namely persistence and climatology. His approach provides a new way to gauge the skill of a forecaster.
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