Earth Sciences

Conflict-driven farmland abandonment in Syria leads to land uplift, study finds

The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, caused widespread population displacement and infrastructure damage. However, it has also led to an unintended environmental effect with notable changes in the country's landscape, ...

Genetic overlap between several mental health disorders could help predict vulnerability

Psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), schizophrenia and anxiety disorders, adversely affect the daily functioning and well-being of millions of people worldwide. Understanding ...

Researchers present first fossilized 'emperor' butterfly

Butterfly fossils are rare, and finds that preserve fine anatomical details and wing patterns are an absolute exception. An international research team from Sweden, the U.S., and Germany, led by Dr. Hossein Rajaei, lepidopterist ...

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Why subduction zones act as the Earth's 'gold kitchens'

Earth's "gold kitchen" lies deep beneath the seafloor. Island arcs, whose volcanoes form above subduction zones where one oceanic plate sinks beneath another, are often particularly rich in gold. The reasons for this have ...

Ghost bat dialects emerge across colonies, study suggests

Accents are usually thought of as a human trait, indicating where a person has grown up or the communities they belong—and new research shows the same dialects can also occur in Australia's largest carnivorous bat.

Going from serving the nation to serving a prison sentence

As Australia faces renewed strategic tension and the heightened prospect of conflict abroad, new Flinders University research warns that many veterans and their families—the very people relied upon to protect the nation—are ...

Fifty years of measuring the world's cleanest air

Australia marks 50 years of monitoring the world's cleanest air in remote northwest Tasmania at Kennaook / Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, supporting global efforts to track human-driven changes to the atmosphere.

Rethinking Europe's nature reserves

Natura 2000 is regarded as a milestone in nature conservation: this network of around 27,000 protected areas across the EU is designed to preserve wild plant and animal species and their habitats. It is the world's largest ...

Mercury scout mission concept with solar sail propulsion

The planet Mercury is the closest planet to the sun, and also the most difficult for spacecraft to visit and explore. This is because as spacecraft get closer to Mercury, the sun's enormous gravity pulls in the spacecraft, ...

Cannabis and tobacco use linked to smaller brain volume

Cannabis and tobacco—whether used on their own or together—can affect the brain's structure. A recent study involving systematic review and meta-analysis of more than 103 studies found that both substances are linked to reduced ...

New memory chip survives temperatures hotter than lava

The electronics inside your phone, your car, and every satellite currently orbiting Earth share one critical weakness: heat. Push them past about 200 degrees Celsius and they start to fail. For decades, that thermal ceiling ...

Crushing soda cans and the mathematics of corrugation formation

Many people have likely found themselves watching oddly satisfying videos of random objects being squashed by a powerful hydraulic press, but rarely do people consider why things squash the way they do. One object that caught ...

NASA probe data suggests a more complex sun's magnetic engine

A Southwest Research Institute-led study found that protons and heavy ions react differently to solar magnetic reconnection events, revealing a more complex magnetic engine powering the solar wind. Magnetic reconnection converts ...

Freed whale gets stranded again off German coast

A humpback whale struggling in shallow waters off Germany's northern Baltic Sea coast has become stranded for a third time, experts said on Sunday, just hours after the animal had freed itself from a sandbank.

In world first, antimatter taken on test drive at CERN

CERN scientists on Tuesday pulled off the unprecedented feat of transporting antiprotons by road, successfully test-driving the world's first antimatter delivery system, with an eye to one day supplying research labs across ...

The time capsule in the salt flat

There is a place in northern Chile, 3,500 meters above sea level in the Andean Altiplano, where almost nothing survives. The Salar de Pajonales is a salt flat of savage extremes temperatures swinging from −23°C to 26°C, solar ...

The world's waste mountain is rising at an alarming rate

The world is struggling to deal with ever-growing quantities of waste. A new World Bank Group report, What a Waste 3.0, shows that more than 2.6 billion tonnes of municipal solid waste (which includes rubbish from households, ...