World

Left/ESRF/Right/Overall anterolateral view of the skull of the coelacanth foetus imaged on beamline ID19. The brain is in yellow. Credit: H. Dutel et al.​ In 2019, scientists unveiled the first observations of how the skull and brain develop in the living coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, a deep-sea fish once thought extinct for seventy million years. A…

Green swordtail fish have taken part in a digital dating game to help scientists understand how animals choose their mates. Researchers from the University of Exeter placed individual fish in tanks with screens showing virtual partners. The fish could then spend time near the partner they preferred.Those choices were used to create new virtual fish…

Florida restored a degraded oyster reef in 2018; density rose to 91 per sq m in six months and 244 by year five (Image Credit: UF/IFAS) Florida’s Lone Cabbage Reef, once a productive oyster habitat that had deteriorated into a sandbar, began recovering after researchers and local oyster harvesters rebuilt it with dolomite limestone in…

Deep in the Florida Everglades, a vast and difficult landscape, scientists are trying a new way to find invasive Burmese pythons; they are looking from above. Researchers are testing small drones fitted with radio tracking equipment or cameras to locate snakes more efficiently, follow their movements across difficult terrain, and cut the cost of searching…

A Massachusetts dairy farmer once considered selling an awkward, hard-to-farm patch of his property to Walmart. Instead, he turned the 11-acre slice into a solar field that now provides a steady lease income, while rooftop panels have nearly wiped out the farm’s $1,400 monthly electricity bill. The story was told by John Nagy in Notre…

An eight-year-old boy in Indiana has received recognition from a volunteer fire department after noticing a smoking camper trailer and alerting people nearby, helping ensure firefighters were called before the situation became more serious. According to local broadcaster Eagle Country 99.3 and the Blooming Grove Volunteer Fire Department, Carter Hicks was presented with a department…

Raccoons have long been credited with outwitting latches, and a study has tested that reputation. University of British Columbia researchers Hannah Griebling and Dr Sarah Benson-Amram gave captive raccoons a custom puzzle box with nine entry points, grouped as easy, medium and hard. Each 20-minute trial held a single marshmallow; the raccoons often kept opening…

Representative Image of hydrogels, charcoal briquettes, and the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge logo in a collage (AI Generated Image) Twin eighth-graders from Riverside, California, have tested nine hydrogels in a project exploring whether a sprayable gel could help stop burned areas from reigniting after a wildfire. Brothers Henry and Jack Grover, students at…

Wall contractors in San Ygnacio, Texas (PC: Elsa Hull) Currently, there’s a battle going on in a small Texas town along the US-Mexico border. Now this particular land battle has also brought a forgotten chapter of history back to life. In 1951, residents of San Ygnacio successfully persuaded the US government to spare their community…