For The Better

The glaciers of Nanga Parbat – one of the highest mountains in the world – have been shrinking slightly but continually since the 1930s. This loss in surface area is evidenced by a long-term study. The geographers combined historical photographs, surve…

DNA analysis has revealed the presence of ‘Yersinia Pestis’ – the pathogen that causes plague – in skeletal remains from individual burials in medieval Cambridgeshire, confirming for the first time that not all plague victims were buried in mass graves…

Chemical engineers have answered longstanding questions about the underlying processes that determine the life cycle of liquid foams. The breakthrough could help improve the commercial production and application of foams in a broad range of industries.

A faster method for collecting pure malaria parasites from infected mosquitos could accelerate the development of new, more potent malaria vaccines.

Nitrogen from agriculture, vehicle emissions and industry is endangering butterflies in Switzerland. The element is deposited in the soil via the air and has an impact on vegetation — to the detriment of the butterflies, as researchers have discovered.

Researchers demonstrate highly chirped pulses created by a using a spectral filter in a Kerr resonator, enabling them to widen a laser pulse wavefront by separating the beam’s colors. The chirped pulses remain stable even with more than 90% energy loss.

Chronic stress could be one reason why some animal orphans have shorter lives and less offspring. Researchers assessed if, as orphan humans, orphan chimpanzees are exposed to chronic stress. They found that maternal loss is stressful but orphans experi…

Peatlands are an important ecosystem that contribute to the regulation of the atmospheric carbon cycle. A multidisciplinary group of researchers investigated the climate response of a permafrost peatland located in Russia during the past 3,000 years. U…

Outside the breeding season many parrots live in dynamic social systems in which individuals travel and forage. These flocks are characterized by frequent changes in composition and their dynamic nature entails a unique set of challenges, such as poten…