Scientists have documented the way a single gene in the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, Yersinia pestis, allowed it to survive hundreds of years by adjusting its virulence and the length of time ...

Long considered a disease brought to the Americas by European colonizers, leprosy may actually have a much older history on the American continent. Scientists reveal that a recently identified second ...

Scientists have developed a powerful new tool for finding the next generation of materials needed for large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing. The significant breakthrough means that, for the ...

A new study finds that if global warming exceeds the Paris Climate Agreement targets, the non-polar glacier mass will diminish significantly. However, if warming is limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius, at ...

Spring in the Arctic brings forth a plethora of peeps and downy hatchlings as millions of birds gather to raise their young. The same was true 73 million years ago, according to a new article. The ...

Anthropologists have examined the societal consequences of global glacier loss. In an important contribution from the social sciences, Rice University anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer ...

Lightweight, powerful lithium-ion batteries are crucial for the transition to electric vehicles, and global demand for lithium is set to grow rapidly over the next 25 years. A new analysis looks at ...

Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19th century is replanted, the total ...

A new study reveals that the aerobic nitrogen cycle in the ocean may have occurred about 100 million years before oxygen began to significantly accumulate in the atmosphere, based on nitrogen isotope ...

A new technique maintains structural integrity by essentially hiding openings in materials from surrounding forces. Rather than reinforcing an opening, such as a hole or a window, to protect against a ...

Common mental health conditions are more closely related to people's personalities than previously thought, a study suggests. Personality traits explain about a quarter of the overall risk of mental ...