National Science Foundation
Scientists have just completed an unprecedented journey into the vast and little-explored "Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch."
On the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), researchers got the first detailed view of plastic debris floating in a remote ocean region.
BOULDER-Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - If it has already rained, it's going to continue to pour, according to a Purdue University study of how ocean-origin storms behave when they come ashore.
A new international research effort on the Greenland ice sheet with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution set a record for single-season deep ice-core drilling this summer, recovering more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future.
Known for their wide variety of vibrant plumage, birds have evolved various chemical and physical mechanisms to produce these beautiful colors over millions of years.
A team of paleontologists and ornithologists has now discovered evidence of vivid iridescent colors in fossil feathers more than 40 million years old.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- It takes just seconds for tall buildings to collapse during powerful earthquakes. Knowing precisely what's happening in those seconds can help engineers design buildings that are less prone to sustaining that kind of damage.
But the nature of collapse is not well understood.
Tropical lizards detect the effects of global warming in a climate where the smallest change makes a big difference, according to herpetologist Laurie Vitt, curator of reptiles and George Lynn Cross Research Professor at the University of Oklahoma's Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.
With a very lucky shot, scientists have captured a one-second image and the electrical fingerprint of huge lightning that flowed 40 miles upward from the top of a storm.
These rarely seen, highly charged meteorological events are known as gigantic jets, and they flash up to the lower levels of space, or ionosphere.
Pasadena, Calif. -- An investigation by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration has significantly advanced our understanding the early evolution of the universe.
Humans might not be walking the face of the Earth were it not for the ancient fusing of two prokaryotes -- tiny life forms that do not have a cellular nucleus. UCLA molecular biologist James A. Lake reports important new insights about prokaryotes and the evolution of life in the Aug. 20 advance online edition of the journal Nature.
SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 17, 2009 -- University of Utah mathematicians developed a new cloaking method, and it's unlikely to lead to invisibility cloaks like those used by Harry Potter or Romulan spaceships in "Star Trek." Instead, the new method someday might shield submarines from sonar, planes from radar, buildings from earthquakes, and oil rigs and coastal structures from tsunamis.
New evidence that early modern humans used fire in southern Africa in a controlled way to increase the quality and efficiency of stone tools is changing how researchers understand the evolution of human behavior, and in particular, the evolution of human brain power.
Curtis Marean, a paleoanthropologist with the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University, and an international te
A team of researchers from Boston University, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently made a discovery that changes a long held paradigm about how bacteria move through soft gels.
Taking advantage of advanced techniques to correct distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere, astronomers used the NSF-supported Gemini Observatory to capture the first images of clouds over the tropics of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
The images clarify a long-standing mystery linking Titan's weather and surface features, helping astronomers better understand the moon of Saturn, viewed by
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered that the circadian rhythms or biological "clocks" in some insects can make them far more susceptible to pesticides at some times of the day instead of others.
