The world is way behind on its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and nations need to act immediately if they want to stave off the worst effects of climate change, an international study finds. Humans must reduce emissions by 2.7 percent each year from 2020 to 2030 just to achieve the goal set […] More
Earth’s cooling climate, Science News, November 15, 1969 — The average temperature for the entire Earth rose gradually from the 1880s until the early 1940s. At that time, a cooling trend suddenly set in which is continuing today.… The amount of dust and other particulate matter in the atmosphere has increased dramatically in recent decades, […] More
Lead performs under pressure. Under normal conditions, the metal is relatively soft, easily scratched with a fingernail. But when compressed under extreme pressures, lead becomes hard and strong — even stronger than steel, scientists report November 11 in Physical Review Letters. To study how lead’s strength changed under pressure, researchers rapidly compressed a lead sample […] More
Plastics can enter the food web at an unexpected point: larval fish as small as the tip of a pencil. Larval fish congregate in ocean slicks — ribbons of calm water that form naturally on the ocean’s surface — to feast on an abundance of prey. Prey-sized plastics also accumulate in these fish nurseries, outnumbering […] More
Power lines could be messing with honeybees by emitting electromagnetic fields that can alter the insects’ behavior and ability to learn. In the lab, honeybees (Apis mellifera) were more aggressive toward other bees after being exposed to electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, at strengths similar to what they might experience at ground level under electricity transmission […] More
As the sun moves across the sky, sunflowers continually orient themselves to soak up the most light (SN: 8/4/16). Now a type of human-made material can do that, too. This is the first artificial material capable of phototropism, researchers report November 4 in Nature Nanotechnology. Stemlike cylinders of the material, dubbed SunBOTs, maneuvered to capture […] More
Jian Zhong Wang’s home in the southern Chinese city of Nanning is an inviting place. Light spills in through large bay windows, which offer a stunning view of the garden of thick-stemmed banana plants and chest-high cacti. The room is packed with intricately carved furniture: a dining table flanked by eight straight-backed chairs, a coffee […] More
When things heat up, most solids expand as higher temperatures cause atoms to vibrate more dramatically, necessitating more space. But some solid crystals, like scandium fluoride, shrink when heated — a phenomenon called negative thermal expansion. Now, by measuring distances between atoms in scandium fluoride crystals, scientists think that they have figured out how that […] More
