Drywood termites are remarkably good at disappearing into the very material they destroy. Instead of building obvious nests, they can spend nearly their entire lives hidden inside beams, framing, furniture, and other dry…
Mars' innermost moon, Phobos, has puzzled planetary scientists for decades. One of the biggest unanswered questions is where it came from. Some researchers think Phobos is an asteroid that was captured by Mars, while oth…
Microorganisms are capable of some extraordinary chemistry. One example is nitrogen fixation, a process that converts nitrogen gas (N2) into a form living organisms can actually use. Nitrogen makes up about 78 percent of…
A tiny aquatic organism made of just one cell can compress its body to one quarter of its original length in under five milliseconds, hundreds of times faster than a person can blink. Scientists have now identified the u…
Perfection may not always be the best recipe for stability, especially in complex systems such as electrical grids, ecosystems, and advanced materials. For years, researchers often worked from the assumption that network…
More than half a century after scientists first encountered a mysterious marker on human red blood cells, researchers finally traced it to its genetic source. The breakthrough established MAL as a human blood group syste…
Paleontologists have identified the first known evidence of Diplodocus outside North America, a discovery that changes scientists' understanding of where the iconic dinosaur lived during the Late Jurassic. The sauropod f…
Coal ash, red mud, and mine tailings are usually treated as major waste problems. Yet these enormous waste streams also contain valuable materials, including silica, rare earth elements, and other critical minerals. A re…
Scientists uncover a cellular survival mechanism that helps severely damaged tissue regenerate and may also reveal why some cancers return after treatment. Tissues such as skin, along with the epithelial layers that cove…
Slash, also known as Saul Hudson, is famous worldwide as the guitarist for Guns N' Roses. But music is only part of his story. He has also been fascinated by reptiles for most of his life and has long supported zoos, mus…
Light can transmit huge amounts of information at extraordinary speed, which is why photonic technologies are being explored for faster communications, more powerful computing, and highly sensitive sensors. To make those…
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope may be able to operate for far longer than originally expected. An exceptionally precise first mid-course correction, combined with other fuel savings, could more than double the …