Populations of giant pandas in the wild are more fragmented and isolated than they were 30 years ago and many continue to face a high risk of extinction despite recent gains in the species’ overall numbers, a new study by Chinese and American scientists finds. Climate change, habitat loss and reduced breeding viability — an […]

Johns Hopkins University scientists have developed a new tool for predicting which patients suffering from a complex inflammatory heart disease are at risk of sudden cardiac arrest. Published in Science Advances, their method is the first to combine models of patients’ hearts built from multiple images with the power of machine learning. “This robust new personalized […]

Obesity is linked to several cardiometabolic abnormalities, such as high blood sugar and hypertension, which are considered to be risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Nearly 45 percent of Latino adults are obese, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health. In a new study, to be published […]

Watching X-rays flung out into the universe by the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy 800 million light-years away, Stanford University astrophysicist Dan Wilkins noticed an intriguing pattern. He observed a series of bright flares of X-rays – exciting, but not unprecedented – and then, the telescopes recorded something unexpected: additional flashes of X-rays […]

Subjectively, getting more sleep seems to provide big benefits: Many people find it gives them increased energy, emotional control, and an improved sense of well-being. But a new study co-authored by MIT economists complicates this picture, suggesting that more sleep, by itself, isn’t necessarily sufficient to bring about those kinds of appealing improvements. The study […]

[embedded content] A combination of a once-debunked 19th-century identification of a water-carrying iron mineral and the fact that these rocks are extremely common on Earth, suggests the existence of a substantial water reservoir on Mars, according to a team of geoscientists. “One of my student’s experiments was to crystalize hematite,” said Peter J. Heaney, professor […]

When Android and Apple operating system updates started giving users the option to put their smartphones in dark mode, the feature showed potential for saving the battery life of newer phones with screens that allow darker-colored pixels to use less power than lighter-colored pixels. But dark mode is unlikely to make a big difference to […]

A study led by the researcher Almudena Prieto, of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has discovered long narrow dust filaments which surround and feed black holes in the centres of galaxies, and which could be the natural cause of the darkening of the centres of many galaxies when their nuclear black holes are […]

Converting vacant urban lots into greenspaces can reduce blight and improve neighborhoods, and new research shows that certain types of such post-industrial reclamation efforts offer the added bonus of benefiting bees. Ohio State University researchers studying ways to encourage biodiversity in vacant urban lots found that experimental plots surrounded by 15 or more connected acres […]

Of all the creatures on Earth, humans manipulate their environments the most. But, how far can we push it before something drastic happens? Scientists are calling for a better understanding of past extreme climate change events in an attempt to anticipate future changes. Enter geoarchaeologist and anthropologist C. Michael Barton at Arizona State University. The School of Human Evolution […]