Science

The discovery also has implications far beyond Lassen Volcanic National Park. Astrobiologists study extremophiles to understand the physical and chemical boundaries within which life can survive In the steaming pools of California’s Lassen Volcanic National Park, life has found a way to thrive where most cells would begin to fall apart. Hidden in geothermal waters,…

The new setup can pump groundwater seven days a week, without relying on electricity from the grid or a generator. That has allowed the cleanup operation to run more consistently while increasing the volume of water that can be removed from the affected area. A small shift in how groundwater is collected is making a…

Representative Image of a subalpine grassland transitioning from grasses to shrubs under warming conditions over 29 years (AI Generated Image) A 29-year climate-warming experiment in Colorado has documented a major shift in a subalpine grassland, with shrubs increasing by 150% while grasses and forbs, including wildflowers, declined by about 28%. The findings come from one…

For years, sand dredged from the Mississippi River was removed to keep one of America’s most important waterways navigable. At one restoration site, engineers found another use for that material, building islands. The US Army Corps of Engineers has completed a $25 million habitat restoration project at McGregor Lake in Wisconsin, where about 500,000 cubic…

Representative Image of a pair of white dwarfs orbiting closely, surrounded by a cosmic background and X-ray emissions (AI Generated Image) An international team led by Indian astronomers has identified a pair of white dwarfs locked in an extraordinarily tight orbit that is shrinking faster than that of two other well-known systems of the same…

PC: Dr Joshua Copping/ University of Cambridge Solar farms can provide renewable electricity while also supporting wildlife when managed carefully. A study of six solar farms in the East Anglian Fens found that bird abundance and species richness varied with site management. Researchers surveyed 23.2 km of transects across the solar farms and 15.2 km…

David Beckham took up beekeeping during lockdown, inspired by his son Cruz.Image credit: Millie Pilkington / Country Life​ David Beckham, the football icon who took up beekeeping during the Covid-19 lockdowns, now produces his own honey at his Cotswolds home, according to The Standard. His hobby comes as experts discuss the potential effects of managed…

High in California’s Sierra Nevada, a conservation project changed the future of a disappearing amphibian. In 2001, staff at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks began removing non-native trout from selected lakes and streams, restoring water bodies that had historically been home to mountain yellow-legged frogs but were naturally fishless. By 2011, nearly 44,000 trout…

Representative Image of a subalpine meadow shifting from herbaceous plants to shrub-dominated vegetation due to climate warming (AI-generated image) For 29 years, researchers artificially warmed a subalpine meadow at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado, to examine how sustained temperature increases affect ecosystems above and below ground. The results, published in the Proceedings…

Carbon dioxide is abundant but chemically inert, which makes it difficult to turn into useful polymers. A study describes a closed-loop platform that uses carbon dioxide with bicycloalkanes to make high-performance, recyclable polyesters. They used bicyclic butane, or BCB, and bicyclic pentane, or BCP, monomers in a direct alternating copolymerization. A simple organic catalyst initiated…