Phys.org

A brush with low doses of the herbicide dicamba spurs oxalis, a weed commonly known as wood sorrel, to produce more flowers, University of Michigan researchers have discovered. The finding suggests that farmers and homeowners are inadvertently making weeds growing around the perimeter of their fields or lawns stronger, the researchers say. The study results are published in the journal New Phytologist.

When corals are stressed by pollution, high water temperatures or other environmental changes, they can lose the microscopic algae living inside them and on which they depend for food. As a result, they turn white, a phenomenon known as coral bleaching. They will not die straight away, but it will be game over if the stress continues long enough for them to starve.

The coastline near the southern tip of Africa looked vastly different between about 400,000 years ago and 70,000 years ago, compared with today. At times it lay as much as 100km (62 miles) south of its present location, exposing the vast Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, which contained an extensive habitat for large mammals. At other times the sea level was briefly as much as 13 meters (43 feet) higher than today's mean level.

Somatic mutations, the DNA changes that occur as our bodies grow and age, not only hold an important key to cancer but are emerging as the seeds of a wide range of common, noncancerous diseases. The Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) Network, a National Institutes of Health Common Fund initiative to catalog all the normal processes of somatic mutation, has published its first comprehensive benchmarking study in the journal Cell.

Twenty-three Indiana University undergraduates are co-authors on a new study examining how the pandemic reshaped college grading, the result of a semester-long research seminar that took them from a classroom question to a published paper in a national academic journal.

The University of Bristol–led study, published in Nature Communications, could help millions of people living in earthquake-prone countries make better-informed decisions about seismic risk, particularly during ongoing periods of increased earthquake activity.

A super El Niño fueling record ocean temperatures poses a "terrifying" threat to the world's fragile coral reefs, the chair of the U.N.'s expert nature panel told AFP.

Chitin, a chain of repeating sugar molecules, is the main building block of fungal cell walls. When fungi grow or are broken down, fragments of chitin chains of different lengths end up in the soil, and plants detect them to monitor the microbes around them.

Earlier this fall, researchers Sara Kalucza (Department of Sociology) and Anna Baranowska-Rataj (Center for Demographic and Aging Research, CEDAR) at Umeå University published a research article showing a connection between young people's school-to-work transitions and parental health. The research used data from CEDAR's demographic database.

Salty soil is a growing threat to crops worldwide. Hotter, drier weather has increased evaporation rates, drawing moisture from the soil and leaving behind concentrated mineral salts. At the same time, water shortages are forcing farmers to irrigate using water from lower-quality, saline or recycled sources. Scientists estimate that around half of the world's irrigated farmland is now affected by salinity to some degree.

A new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) provides the most comprehensive observational analysis yet of the towering ice cliffs that fringe Earth's ice sheets, giving scientists new evidence to evaluate a long-debated process that could influence future sea level rise. Improving these projections is increasingly important as rising seas threaten coastal communities and infrastructure worldwide.

My recent discovery of a Roman fort and its extraordinary connection with medieval folklore was the fruition of many hours of painstaking research.

An international study has overturned a longstanding textbook view of how much energy animals use to travel, revealing that flying can sometimes be cheaper than swimming.

In an effort to conserve the world's plants and animals, governments have pledged to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030. Official figures suggest that attempts to reach this target on land have stalled, but a new study led by the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom shows 27% of land may already be conserved for biodiversity if you also count areas that aren't globally recognized but still support wildlife.

Americans who trust science and reason more than their churches' teachings, but still believe in God or attend services, are also more likely to believe in magic than those who prioritize religious teachings.

The spectacled cobra (Naja naja) is one of India's "big four" snakes responsible for most serious snakebite cases. It is currently considered one species, which lives across much of South Asia, with regional differences in color, hood markings and venom. However, it's still unclear which regional cobra populations represent separate evolutionary groups. A new study published in Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution has helped parse out which groups have different lineages, and when and where they may have diverged from their ancestors.

Nearly 50 million Americans ages 18 to 29 are eligible to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, and about 60% say they plan to. If they follow through, it would break midterm turnout records for voters under 30.

Three answers, three countries, one open-ended question: "Teaching is similar to what other occupation or activity?"

Physicists at Auburn University have used flashes of laser light to bring order to tiny electrically charged "islands" inside a crystal. The discovery helps answer a decades-old question about how the material organizes itself and shows how light could be used to control its behavior—a step toward exploring new technologies for processing and storing information.

For centuries, people across South and Southeast Asia recorded religious teachings, literary works, legal regulations and scientific knowledge on palm leaves. Before they could be inscribed or written on, the leaves had to undergo extensive preparation, with processing techniques varying across regions and potentially leaving distinct material signatures.