Science, engineering, and discovery — the research and breakthroughs that matter.

Public environmental measurements for 288 places and more — today's news signal.

EarthPortal.com publishes public data service for 288 global locations

What are the chances of finding extraterrestrial life in our solar system? Frank Postberg, a professor of planetary science at Freie Universität Berlin, has published a study in Science Advances with an international team of researchers. They present new evidence that it is easie

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have teamed up with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company to uncover how storage conditions affect mRNA lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines and other treatments, and how to make them more effe

A research team led by Professor Hitoshi Yamamoto of Rissho University experimentally examined how people evaluate others when a person's public reputation conflicts with their own experience with that person. The study was published Sept. 14, 2026, in the journal Evolution and H

Since 1995, archaeologists have excavated hundreds of human bones from Göbeklitepe, an archaeological site in southeastern Türkiye. The ancient remains are around 10,000 years old and date to a time when humans were beginning to settle into permanent farming communities.

What happens when loneliness follows a young person from the school hallway into the workplace? New research suggests that feeling lonely during adolescence may be linked to a greater risk of unstable or less secure employment in young adulthood.

Scientists at Cornell University have found a human genetic element in a poxvirus and discovered that it is both an important gene for brain function and a jumping gene capable of moving and inserting itself into genomes. A study published in Science reports that the gene, called

An electron's charge is normally fixed, like a coin you can't break into pieces. But if electrons are cooled close to absolute zero and trapped in a two-dimensional layer under a powerful magnetic field, they organize into a collective state of "quasiparticles" that seem to hold

Bacteria suspected in deaths of hundreds of baby whales off Argentina and more — today's news signal.

A bacterial infection is suspected of killing hundreds of baby whales in the southern Argentine region of Patagonia, a marine mammal expert told AFP on Thursday.

A magnet-producing bacterium extended the average lifespan of C. elegans worms by more than 43% while helping protect their neurological and intestinal health. Researchers traced much of the effect to suppression of ferroptosis, a damaging form of cell death linked to iron buildu

In China, young people are encountering a myriad of challenges, from societal pressures around success to life in a highly surveilled society, that have led them to turn to the internet in search of a balm to soothe their pain. What has emerged is a host of content called "digita

The funniest post you saw this week may not have come from a friend; it may have come from a brand. Whether it is Kohl's, Wendy's, or Netflix, brands are behaving more like internet users than traditional advertisers.

The Surinam toad is one of the strangest frogs on Earth. Flat-bodied, tiny-eyed and adapted to the murky waters of the Amazon basin, it hunts well despite having very poor vision. When a fish swims close, the frog suddenly opens its mouth and sucks the prey inside in a fraction o

When you walk into a bakery and smell fresh cookies, the enticing smell draws you in. After you eat a handful of cookies, though, the same smell likely doesn't send you back for more. Researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis sought t

Moving large animals around is a seductive idea in conservation. If there are plenty of animals in one place and too few in another, moving some between the two seems an obvious solution. Sometimes it is. But with animals as large, mobile and socially complicated as elephants and

The universe may be trapped in its own comfort zone, and a researcher in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has helped explain why it cannot seem to leave. A new study suggests the universe could be locked into its current state by the same kinds of quantum effects t

Since Labor won the 2024 general election, policy focused on children in the early years—from birth to school age—and their parents has moved sharply up the political agenda.

A new study finds that coastal forest loss in North Carolina's Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula began accelerating after 2010 and may still be speeding up. The study also found that North Carolina lost more than 20% of its coastal forest between 1985 and 2021.

Imagine two candidates with identical qualifications interviewing for the same job. One arrives carrying a bottle of water, while the other walks in with an iced coffee. Should that difference matter?

Some 99 million years ago, during the age of the dinosaurs, a tiny insect belonging to a species previously unknown to science became trapped in tree resin. The resin hardened and turned into amber, and the fossil preserved within it has now enabled a team of researchers from the

Popular culture often depicts people with psychopathy as cold, emotionless and hollow, but a recent University of Mississippi study found that the language associated with psychopathic traits is more complicated than often described.

Forest soils store an estimated 40% of the world's terrestrial carbon, but estimates suggest that around 15–30% of that soil carbon is lost when a forest is harvested. Tracking such losses can be tricky: wildfires, insects, disease and past forest management can all affect forest