A major fire at a footwear factory in China’s eastern Fujian province caused “heavy human losses” on Thursday, state media reported, as rescue teams continued search and firefighting operations.The blaze broke out at around 12.04 pm at a shoe factory in Jiangtou Village, Chendai Township, in Jinjiang city, according to Xinhua. CCTV reported that several…

Imagine a material that can cling firmly to wet surfaces, repair itself after being damaged and remain flexible under demanding conditions. That vision has moved closer to reality thanks to researchers in Japan, who have developed a new AI-designed super-adhesive hydrogel with exceptional underwater bonding strength. The breakthrough combines machine learning with laboratory experiments to…

Bumblebees may be carrying a far heavier burden of toxic metals than honeybees, even when both species forage in the same countryside. The research found that pollen collected by bumblebees contained between two and seven times higher concentrations of several harmful metals, including arsenic, chromium, lead and tin, compared with pollen gathered by nearby honeybees….

When a wildfire is tearing through a conifer forest, the assumption is usually that trees are simply fuel, more vegetation means a bigger, faster moving fire. Two recent studies, one covering the southwestern United States and another examining Canada’s entire boreal forest, suggest that assumption does not hold for every tree species. Aspen, a fast…