Developing a robot that can go where humans fear to tread

It sounds like a science fiction scenario: a nuclear reactor is racing toward meltdown, and someone needs to close a valve to stop cooling water from leaking out of the reactor. Unfortunately, radiation levels near the valve ...

A nanokelvin microwave freezer for molecules

When a highly diluted gas is cooled to extremely low temperatures, bizarre properties are revealed. Thus, some gases form a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate—a type of matter in which all atoms move in unison. Another ...

Ecosystems get increasingly thirsty due to climate change

A new study shows that future ecosystem functioning will increasingly depend on water availability. Using recent simulations from climate models, an international team of scientists found several "hot spot regions" where ...

Turned-down temperatures boost crops' penchant for production

Drought and heat put stress on plants and reduce grain yield. For some farmers, irrigation is the answer. Many of us assume the practice boosts crop yields by delivering soil water, but it turns out irrigation's cooling effect ...

Satellite data shows sustained severe drought in Europe

Europe has been experiencing a severe drought for years. Across the continent, groundwater levels have been consistently low since 2018, even if extreme weather events with flooding temporarily give a different picture. The ...

EXPLAINER: Why Tonga eruption was so big and what's next

People around the world looked on in awe at the spectacular satellite images of an undersea volcano erupting in a giant mushroom cloud in the Pacific. Many wondered why the blast was so big, how the resulting tsunami traveled ...

Nordic seas cooled 500,000 years before global oceans

The cooling of the Nordic Seas towards modern temperatures started in the early Pliocene, half a million years before the global oceans cooled. A new study of fossil marine plankton published in Nature Communications today ...

Mimivirus isolated, genome amputated

In the absence of competition with other microorganisms, Mimivirus, the largest known DNA virus, loses 17% of its genome. This has recently been demonstrated by a French-American collaboration including researchers from CNRS, ...

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