Science & Technology

A new study by geobiologists traces the cause of the first known mass extinction of animals to decreased global oxygen availability, leading to the loss of a majority of animals present near the end of the Ediacaran Period some 550 million years ago.

Researchers flip nature’s script by engineering a virus to carry a CRISPR system to change a bacterium’s genes.

A national study is shedding light on how to more effectively treat atrial fibrillation (AF) — a common heart rhythm problem associated with increased risk of stroke and heart failure. The study shows that early intervention with cryoballoon catheter …

A litany of negative environmental pressures have had little to no effect on sand dollars and heart urchins in the Florida Keys, a new study shows. Scientists arrived at this unexpected conclusion after surveying 27 sites along a 20-mile stretch of coa…

Propofol is the most commonly used drug to induce general anesthesia. Despite its frequent clinical application, it is poorly understood how propofol causes anesthesia.

Incidence of myocarditis, pericarditis or myopericarditis is two- to threefold higher after a second dose of the Moderna Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine when compared to the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine; however, overall cases of heart inflammation with …

Yeast is not the simple single-celled microorganism we once thought, but a competitive killer. When starved of glucose, yeast releases a toxin that will poison other microorganisms that have entered its surrounding habitat, even its own clones. This ve…

Discovering a new species is always exciting, but so is finding one alive that everyone assumed had been lost to the passage of time. A small clam, previously known only from fossils, has recently been found living at Naples Point, near Santa Barbara.

Computer simulations by Rice University scientists and their collaborators are the first to integrate a model of planet formation and evolution that explains two puzzling observations of exoplanets orbiting distant stars: the rarity of worlds about 1.8…

Using a combination of computational and robophysical modeling, as well as fluid dynamics experiments, the researchers were able to see for the first time the mechanics of springtail movement. They determined how springtails control their jump, self-ri…

COVID-19 patients placed on ventilators can take a long time to regain consciousness. New research is now illustrating that these delays may serve a purpose: protecting the brain from oxygen deprivation.

A new species of exciton with novel characteristics has been discovered in moiré crystal superlattice. Scientists have developed a pristine unit-cell matrix projection method that reduces computationally a million-fold without loss of accuracy. Superco…

The earliest morphological traces of life on Earth are often highly controversial, both because non-biological processes can produce relatively similar structures and because such fossils have often been subjected to advanced alteration and metamorphis…

A machine learning algorithm automatically extracts information to speed up — and extend — the study of materials with X-ray pulse pairs.

A new treatment may significantly enhance the efficacy of chemotherapy in breast cancer patients, reducing the risk for lung metastasis following chemo from 52% to only 6%. Conducted in an animal model, the study identified the mechanism that generates…

Researchers examined how rogue waves form and analyzed the likelihood that a ship would encounter them while navigating the rough waters of intense storms.