Porpoises are entirely dependent on their hearing for survival. They navigate, hunt, and communicate by emitting rapid click sounds and listening to the returning echoes. However, with increasingly noisy oceans, it is getting harder for porpoises to "hear their way." Noise from shipping is a particular problem. While ship engines primarily emit low-frequency noise, they also produce high-frequency sounds that can drown out the porpoises' own clicks. These clicks are sharp, brief, and only travel limited distances, making them highly vulnerable to noise sources in their immediate vicinity.

In 2022, a Russian whale researcher made a remarkable discovery on Bering Island off Russia's Pacific coast: a severed killer whale fin marked with the teeth of another killer whale. In 2024, it happened again. The two finds were two kilometers apart.

No "sticky ends"? No problem. A new study by NYU chemists finds that DNA tiles can assemble into 3D structures without the sticky cohesion of hydrogen bonding. This finding, published in Nature Communications, turns a fundamental paradigm in the field of DNA self-assembly on its head.

How do you keep a copper catalyst from losing its oomph? Just add a dusting of platinum, says a new study published in Nature Materials. A team of researchers, including scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, investigated a class of metal nanoparticles used as catalysts in major industrial processes. They found that adding a trace amount of platinum to copper nanoparticles greatly reduced an effect known as "sintering," which causes these catalysts to degrade over time.

Using future climate scenarios based on wildfire damages in North America, scientists estimate that up to 10,000 or more lives may be saved annually in the United States if society is able to mitigate climate change by keeping the global mean surface temperature (GMST) at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial age (1850-1900) levels. Currently, the GMST is at 1.3 to 1.4 degrees C but is projected to reach 3 degrees C with the current direction of climate change. The findings are detailed in a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

During their search for food, most insects head specifically for the flowers that promise the highest reward. But how do they know which ones to choose? Researchers from the University of Konstanz and the University of Würzburg have now studied how bumblebees process information about their food sources.

A Florida State University chemist has developed a method to rapidly assemble significantly complex natural molecules with potential for biomedical applications, opening the door for novel drug therapies based on the molecule's structure. James Frederich, the Warner Herz Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and his team are the first to fully synthesize fusicoccadiene, a precursor to an emerging treatment in cancer chemotherapy. Their work is published in the Journal Of The American Chemical Society.

An international group of researchers have investigated the role of memory in quantum systems and dynamics. Their findings show that a quantum process can appear memoryless from one perspective while retaining memory from another. The discovery opens new research avenues into quantum systems and technologies.

Strange things happen to materials when you peel them down, layer by layer, from thick chunks all the way to sheets just an atom thick. Reporting in the journal Nature Materials, a team led by physicists at The University of Texas at Austin has experimentally demonstrated a sequence of exotic magnetic phases in an ultrathin material that fully realizes, for the first time, a theoretical model of two-dimensional magnetism first proposed in the 1970s. The researchers say the advance might inspire new ultracompact technologies.

As Texas Democrats finalize their nominee for the U.S. Senate in Tuesday's primary, President Donald Trump and national Republicans are watching closely, particularly amid growing concern that if Democrat state Rep. James Talarico wins...