Science

You can't walk very far through a forest in this part of the United States without stumbling upon a mushroom, an eruption from a vast fungal kingdom that all life depends on, but about which we know very little.

Some are tall and thin with a helmet top, others are great flourishes of brain-like folds; some seem like they should be sheltering fairies in a storybook.

Decades of mismanagement of water resources, deforestation, and the fossil fuel-driven crisis of global warming have put "unprecedented stress" on the Earth's water systems, according to a new report, and have thrown the world's hydrological cycle out of balance "for the first time in human history."

The Global Commission on the Economics of Water, affiliated with the Dutch government and comprised of global experts, published the study on Thursday, warning that policymakers must urgently "reframe the hydrological cycle as a global common good," recognizing that it is "deeply interlinked with the climate and biodiversity crises."

World-respected British primate expert Jane Goodall wants a coming United Nations summit on biodiversity to lead to action rather than "words and false promises".

As officials from around 200 countries meet in the Colombian city of Cali for the COP16 meeting starting Monday, the indefatigable zoologist said there was little time left to reverse the downward slide.

A global coral bleaching event that began last year has quickly grown to the largest on record, according to a U.S. agency, with the impacted reef area continuing to grow.

From the beginning of 2023 through October 10, 2024, "roughly 77 percent of the world's reef area has experienced bleaching-level heat stress," Derek Manzello of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told AFP on Friday.

For Deaf people, train travel can be a gamble. On an average day, nothing goes wrong: they catch their train to their destination and carry on with their business.

But when something out of the ordinary happens, the situation can quickly get scary, because most updates are only delivered by audio announcements. A Deaf traveller may miss their train because it was moved to a different platform, or watch as their station whizzes by because the train isn’t stopping there today. They may also remain on a train carriage in an emergency after everyone else has evacuated, and have to be rescued by station staff.

Fall for me as a teenager meant football games, homecoming dresses – and haunted houses. My friends organized group trips to the local fairground, where barn sheds were turned into halls of horror, and masked men nipped at our ankles with (chainless) chain saws as we waited in line, anticipating deeper frights to come once we were inside.

I’m not the only one who loves a good scare. Halloween attractions company America Haunts estimates Americans are spending upward of US$500 million annually on haunted house entrance fees simply for the privilege of being frightened. And lots of fright fans don’t limit their horror entertainment to spooky season, gorging horror movies, shows and books all year long.

We know that boys and girls are produced in much the same frequency. But how – and why – is this 1:1 ratio achieved?

A new paper searches huge human data sets for gene variants that throw the 1:1 sex ratio off balance, and test the biological and theoretical rules of sex ratio.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine goes to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, tiny biological molecules that tell the cells in your body what kind of cell to be by turning on and off certain genes.

The Conversation Weekly podcast caught up with Victor Ambros from his lab at the UMass Chan Medical School to learn more about the Nobel-winning research and what comes next. Below are edited excerpts from the podcast.

How did you start thinking about this fundamental question at the heart of the discovery of microRNA, about how cells get the instructions to do what they do?

The paper that described this discovery was published in 1993. In the late 1980s, we were working in the field of developmental biology, studying C. elegans as a model organism for animal development. We were using genetic approaches, where mutations that caused developmental abnormalities were then followed up to try to understand what the gene was that was mutated and what the gene product was.

It was well understood that proteins could mediate changes in gene expression as cells differentiate, divide.

We were not looking for the involvement of any sort of unexpected kind of molecular mechanisms. The fact that the microRNA was the product of this gene that was regulating this other gene in this context was a complete surprise.

There was no reason to postulate that there should be such regulators of gene expression. This is one of those examples where the expectations are that you’re going to find out about more complexity and nuance about mechanisms that we already know about.

But sometimes surprises emerge, and in fact, surprises emerge perhaps surprisingly often.

Colorized scanning electron microscope image of a C. elegans nematode worm – one of the most studied animals in biological research. Steve Gschmeissner/Science Photo Library via Getty Images

These C. elegans worms, nematodes, is there something about them that allows you to work with their genetic material more easily? Why are they so key to this type of science?

C. elegans was developed as an experimental organism that people could use easily to, first, identify mutants and then study the development.

It only has about a thousand cells, and all those cells can be seen easily through a microscope in the living animal. But still it has all the various parts that are important to all animals: intestine, skin, muscles, a brain, sensory systems and complex behavior. So it’s quite an amazing system to study developmental processes and mechanisms really on the level of individual cells and what those cells do as they divide and differentiate during development.

Bottlenose dolphins in Sarasota Bay in Florida and Barataria Bay in Louisiana are exhaling microplastic fibers, according to our new research published in the journal PLOS One.

Tiny plastic pieces have spread all over the planet – on land, in the air and even in clouds. An estimated 170 trillion bits of microplastic are estimated to be in the oceans alone. Across the globe, research has found people and wildlife are exposed to microplastics mainly through eating and drinking, but also through breathing.

In my research focused on early farmers of Europe, I have often wondered about a curious pattern through time: Farmers lived in large dense villages, then dispersed for centuries, then later formed cities again, only to abandon those as well. Why?

Archaeologists often explain what we call urban collapse in terms of climate change, overpopulation, social pressures or some combination of these. Each likely has been true at different points in time.

Far beneath the lush landscape of southern China, a sprawling subterranean laboratory aims to be the world's first to crack a deep scientific enigma.

China has emerged as a science powerhouse in recent years, with the country's Communist leadership ploughing billions of dollars into advanced research to contend with the United States and other rivals.

Mosquito-borne illnesses are a growing concern in Northeastern states, with health officials monitoring cases and advising residents to avoid outdoor activities near standing water and other environments prone to mosquito spread.

Of particular concern is eastern equine encephalitis, a rare disease that can lead to serious and fatal illness, caused by mosquitoes carrying the virus.

The robot artist Ai-Da, a humanoid powered by artificial intelligence, will be the first of its kind to have a painting sold at a major auction house, organisers said Wednesday.

The work, due to go under the hammer at Sotheby's in London next month, is described as a "haunting" portrait of the English mathematician Alan Turing, considered one of the fathers of modern computing.