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

Much of the field of sociology treats systemic racism as its default explanation for racial disparities rather than as an open question that requires further investigation and evidence, according to a recent position paper. The assumptions and moralization surrounding the origins

For decades, fisheries managers have struggled to restore recruitment in wild lake trout populations across the Great Lakes region, with limited success. Returning this species to its former abundance is hampered by overfishing, sea lamprey predation, invasive species and habitat

A new global review of observed climate change impacts on plant communities reveals major gaps in where and how we monitor some of the world's most climate-vulnerable ecosystems.

Galactic black holes are cosmic mitochondria, powerhouses of the universe. Most of the energy these supermassive black holes produce comes from the material surrounding them: superheated plasma in their accretion disks interacting with tremendous magnetic fields. But there is a m

More than half of the Ecuadorian Amazon has been marked for oil drilling, overlapping with Indigenous territories and areas of high biodiversity. The ecological and cultural impacts of oil extraction are well documented and have fueled some of Latin America's most prominent envir

Isaac Larsen, an associate professor in the College of Natural Sciences' Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, is a lead author of "Status of the World's Soil Resources 2026," a new report produced by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (F

Why does the expansion of wind energy sometimes meet with local resistance, even though renewable energy generally enjoys broad support? RIFS researcher Jörg Radtke used a representative survey of 6,284 people in North Rhine-Westphalia to investigate which social characteristics

In "Bloons Tower Defense," the goal is to stop balloons from reaching the end of a track by strategically placing towers along the route. These towers vary in cost, range and attack power, and they also take up valuable space. The game becomes increasingly difficult with each rou

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