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Scientists at Ames Laboratory’s Institute for Cooperative Upcycling of Plastics (iCOUP) have discovered a chemical method that turns recycled plastics into biodegradable, use chemicals that can be used as surfactants and detergents in a variety of applications. Plastics may have more sustainable and cost-effective lifecycles as a result of this process. (Photo : Magda Ehlers)

Los Alamos in New Mexico, a major nuclear-weapons site during the Second World War.Credit: John Dambik/Alamy Restricted Data: The History of Nuclear Secrecy in the United States Alex Wellerstein Univ. Chicago Press (2021) In March 1950, an official from the Atomic Energy Commission — then the guardian of US nuclear secrets — oversaw the burning

A nurse in Italy prepares a dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.Credit: Pasquale Senatore/Pacific Press/Shutterstock It has been a difficult week for two COVID-19 vaccines. On 13 April, US regulators urged health-care providers to temporarily stop using a vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson (J&J) of New Brunswick, New Jersey, because of 6 suspected cases of

Qualities of the family of cats were apparently next to godliness. The ancient Egyptians are well known for their love of all things feline. There’s no scarcity of artifacts that are cat-themed – from bigger-than-life statues to complex jewelry – that have got through the millennia since the pharaohs led the Nile. (Photo : Getty

US President Joe Biden is hosting a virtual climate summit around Earth Day next week.Credit: Amr Alfiky/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty The United States has a new president, and is rolling out new plans for fighting climate change. Last month, President Joe Biden revealed a mammoth infrastructure proposal that would invest heavily in clean-energy

New Zealand has declared laws that will compel large companies to uncover the climate impact of their acts in a move they hope will bring about a global precedent. All Aoteroa/New Zealand companies from 2023 with assets of more than US$700 million (NZ$1billion) will have to give a report on the effects of their actions

Research on fetal tissue, such as the lung tissue shown here, has drawn controversy for years.Credit: Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library The United States is reversing restrictions on fetal-tissue research set by former president Donald Trump’s administration, allowing government scientists to resume studies using the biological material, and cancelling an extra ethics review of grant proposals

Noah Baker and Heidi Ledford discuss COVID vaccines, blood clots and risks Your browser does not support the audio element. Download MP3 Reports of rare and unusual blood clots have resulted in several vaccine roll outs being paused while scientists scramble to work out if the vaccines are responsible and if so how. The unusual

Discover some of the weirdest creatures in the ocean, from the shapeless blobfish to the scary goblin shark – indeed, you’ll be delighted these scary ocean creatures are not terrestrial animals. The oceans of the earth are a collection of diverse and vast ecosystems that stays extensively a mystery to this day. Indeed, only about

Scientists extract an ice core from the Col du Dome glacier near the top of Mont Blanc in the French Alps. A similar core documents changes in emissions of an ozone-depleting gas. Credit: Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Atmospheric science 16 April 2021 Ice on the Alps’s highest peak details a pollutant’s rise A glacier on Mont Blanc

There’s no doubt that travel has a positive effect on the environment, from growing cultural awareness to assisting in wildlife conservation. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the travel industry is one of the strongest in the world, employing 10% of the global workforce, or 313 million people.  (Photo : 5 Tips To

In Europe, bumblebees pollinate the flowers called foxgloves, but foxgloves that spread to the Americas are also pollinated by hummingbirds and have evolved as a result. Credit: Getty Ecology 16 April 2021 Flowers adapt to welcome the birds — but not the bees Once in the Americas, foxgloves swiftly evolved under pressure by pollinating hummingbirds.

Jupiter’s aurora glows blue in this composite image. A newly detected radio signal might be the signature of a similar aurora on a planet in another solar system. Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Nichols, Univ. Leicester Astronomy and astrophysics 16 April 2021 Wiggly signal hints of an aurora on a planet far from the Solar System A vast

A Sydney couple was very frightened when they found an uncommon venomous snake in a bag of supermarket lettuce – but they recovered and then used the fresh produce in a salad wrap. After discovering the baby pale-headed snake, Alexander White had so many thoughts that were troubling: ‘What if the snake came from something

Red Sea Research Center (RSRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia Carlos M. Duarte, Susana Agusti & Milica Predragovic Arctic Research Centre, Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Carlos M. Duarte Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Thuwal, Saudi Arabia Carlos M. Duarte Department of Economics, Colorado

Eight shipping container-sized boxes were assembled in Hellisheii, Iceland, in January 2021, next to the world’s third-largest geothermal power station. Later this year, the twelve massive fans installed on the exterior of each box will begin spinning. (Photo : Pixabay) The Orca facility is designed to remove about 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the

The Komodo dragon, which weighs on average some 70 kilograms, is an example of an island species that evolved outsize proportions. Credit: Alamy Evolution 15 April 2021 Animals around the world follow the ‘island rule’ to a curious fate Small animals that move to islands tend to evolve into giants, but big animals that do

Anti-vaccine protesters voice their disapproval outside pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s New York City headquarters. Credit: Matthew McDermott/Polaris/eyevine In March, Twitter put its foot down: users who repeatedly spread false information about COVID-19 vaccines will have their accounts suspended or shut down. It was a new front in a high-stakes battle over misinformation that could help to

A recent study has recognized a powerful correlation between changes in the seismicity rate of Taiwan and its seasonal fluctuations in the water cycle, suggesting that many faults in this area are so pressured that even little shifts in strain brought about by changes in the storage of groundwater can provoke earthquakes. (Photo : Getty

The brain of an Indian jumping worker ant (above, guarding pupae and larvae) becomes smaller if she starts to lay eggs but can regrow to its old size if she stops reproducing. Credit: Martin Dohrn/Nature Picture Library Neuroscience 15 April 2021 Ants shrink their brains for motherhood — but can enlarge them when egg-laying ends

Humans have a higher density of sweat glands found in their skin than chimps and macaques. In fact, they have 10 times that of chimps and macaques. Penn Medicine experts have now learned how this unique, hyper-cooling feature developed in the human genome. (Photo : Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash)Sweating Researchers found that the higher density of

A health worker in the Democratic Republic of the Congo prepares to care for people infected with Ebola virus during the 2018–20 outbreak, which prompted an extensive genomic analysis. Credit: John Wessels/AFP/Getty Genomics 15 April 2021 An unprecedented genomic analysis helped to curb an Ebola outbreak Despite extraordinary challenges, scientists managed to sequence a high

People wait to receive a COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination centre in Mumbai.Credit: Indranil Mukherjee/AFP via Getty India, one of the world’s biggest suppliers of vaccines, is facing a COVID-19 vaccine crunch, partly due to an explosion of cases linked to new variants. This spells trouble for many countries relying on Indian-made vaccines supplied through

Most animals are misunderstood, tortured by fallacies about their behaviors and traits. Some falsehoods are centered on old legends. Others outcome of distortions, exaggerations, misunderstandings, and even intentional fabrications put together by self-serving humans. Yet even when scientific study reveals these misguided beliefs for what they are, many remain surprisingly difficult to eliminate. Chances are

Listen to the latest science news, with Nick Petrić Howe and Shamini Bundell. Your browser does not support the audio element. Download MP3 In this episode: 00:45 How failing sanitation infrastructure is causing a US public health crisis In the US, huge numbers of people live without access to adequate sanitation. Environmental-health advocate Catherine Coleman

In the last decade, more than 4 million square kilometers of land have been declared as protected areas around the world, with little evidence of how good these areas are at being protected. Protected Areas (Photo : Wikimedia Commons) Protected areas, also known as conservation areas, are areas that have been designated as such due

The SLS boosters are stacked at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Credit: NASA NASA assembles powerful deep-space rocket Engineers have assembled the twin booster rockets for NASA’s massive Space Launch System (SLS) — the first deep-space rocket since Saturn V, which sent astronauts to the Moon. Since November, workers have been using a huge crane

Thomas Mboa inspects an incubator he built with his team.Credit: Mboalab Alfredo Giron-Nava didn’t spot many peers at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development. The postdoctoral researcher was one of only six junior scientists at the event, held in Copenhagen in May 2019. Four of them began

Some forces on Earth are as pure as a dog’s love for its keeper. Wolves’ domestication (which may have started in this cave) change later generations of dogs, changing them from hostile predators into a bunch of human-loving joy (except Prancer). (Photo : Alice Castro) Pedigree or Breed of Dogs Our friends with four-legs now

The Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in the eastern Himalayas is the deepest canyon in the world, and one of the longest.Credit: Dong Lei/NaturePL As China sets about designating its first national parks, we propose that the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in the eastern Himalayas on the Brahmaputra River, close to the Indian border, should be

As winter storms threaten to make driving risky, residents often use salt to melt snow and ice on roads, intersections, and sidewalks. Since thousands of people die or are hospitalized every year due to weather-related collisions, road salt is an effective safety tool. (Photo : Skitterphoto/pexels.com) However, a recent study led by the University of

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here President Joe Biden released his first proposed budget for the United States on 9 April.Credit: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty A giant boost for US science spending US President Joe Biden has unveiled his first proposed budget,

A ground-floor gallery space at the Francis Crick Institute in London, where I’m 18 months into my PhD, opened as a COVID-19 vaccination centre in January. It operates from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., 7 days a week. I signed up immediately as a part-time staff volunteer; we number more than 300. Our training was

The blobfish is a deep-sea creature that lives in waters just above the sea bed at depths of 2,000 to 3,900 feet (600 to 1,200 meters), off the coasts of mainland Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. They have been reported as the ugliest fish in the world, although, this known impression is because of the

Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), The Barcelona Institute for Science and Technology (BIST), Barcelona, Spain Ernest Latorre, Laura Casares, Manuel Gómez-González, Marina Uroz, Léo Valon, Elena Garreta, Nuria Montserrat, Marino Arroyo & Xavier Trepat LaCàN, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya-BarcelonaTech, Barcelona, Spain Ernest Latorre, Sohan Kale & Marino Arroyo INM-Leibniz Institut für Neue Materialien, Saarbrücken, Germany Roshna V. Nair & Aránzazu del Campo Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red

Climate change would have a significant effect on global food production and health.  According to new studies, if consumers, agricultural companies, governments, and foreign organizations do little, climate change would have a significant effect on global food supply and health. (Photo : Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Call for Climate Action (Photo : Pixabay) The

Experiments to find Majorana signals are performed by loading a nanowire into a dilution refrigerator capable of cooling it down to close to absolute zero.Credit: HGA Architects and Engineers A shadow has fallen over the race to detect a new type of quantum particle, the Majorana fermion, that could power quantum computers. As someone who

Startup of Elon Musk’s brain-implant Neuralink shares a video showing a monkey making use of its device to play ” Ping Pong” with its mind  (Photo : Simon) Neuralink’s Devices  Neuralink named the experiment an “initial demonstration of the potential capabilities” of its high-tech brain chips, although it’s not clear whether the outcomes will be

 According to a research analysis in April 2020 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the loud rushing noise of the wind through a stretch of forest, birds alarming to one another as they alight on tree branches, the burble of a brook over a rocky bed – these are the types of sounds that

Plan S is helping to drive a shift among publishers towards open-access business models.Credit: Yang Qing/Xinhua via Zuma Wire In 2018, an influential group of research funders announced a bold pledge: the scientists they fund should publish their peer-reviewed papers outside journal paywalls. The initiative, called Plan S, caused an instant uproar over its aim

Hello Nature readers, would you like to get this Briefing in your inbox free every day? Sign up here The storage-ring magnet used for the g − 2 experiment at Fermilab.Credit: Reidar Hahn/Fermilab Thrilling muon result shakes up physics Muons — massive, unstable cousins of the electron — seem to be more magnetic than the

Companies in search of breakthrough products tend to disregard the greatest invention machine in the world: life’s over three-billion-year evolution history by natural selection. By observing dogs, birds, sharks, and other creatures of the wild, scientists and engineers have developed many new products whose inspiration came from these animals and their physical characteristics. (Photo :

President Joe Biden released his first proposed budget for the United States on 9 April.Credit: Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty US President Joe Biden unveiled his first proposed budget on 9 April, and it signaled strong support for research and development. The spending plan would provide across-the-board increases in science funding and inject billions into the

The orcas were biting the jaw of the blue whale, trying to get hold of its tongue. In a struggle for about an hour, as many as 70 killer whales tracked down and killed a blue whale off the southwestern coast of Australia, according to a marine biologist who witnessed the “astonishing, a bit of disturbing

A nurse immunizes a teacher in Granada, Spain, with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.Credit: Carlos Gil Andreu/Getty The very rare occurrence of a mysterious blood-clotting disorder among some recipients of the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine has researchers scrambling to uncover whether and how the inoculation could trigger such an unusual reaction. After weeks of investigation, the European Medicines

Noah Baker and Amy Maxmen talk whistle-blowers, politics and COVID surveillance Your browser does not support the audio element. Download MP3 Rick Bright exposed former president Trump’s political meddling in the US COVID response. Now he is championing a new privately funded initiative to track viral spread and combat new variants. We discuss the challenges

As sea ice melts earlier in the year due to climate change, polar bears have begun their hunt for food on land, like bird eggs. They are not too good at it, a  recent drone-based study shows. That could be another bad sign for the ability of bears to survive in a changing world, researchers

Fresh scientific collaborations lead to exciting results. Credit: Getty Human behaviour 09 April 2021 Want fresh results? Analysis of thousands of papers suggests trying new teammates A deep dive into the physical-science literature links the most original research with the most recently formed teams of co-authors. Share on Twitter Share on Twitter Share on Facebook