Science

Plastic alternatives made from renewable materials often struggle to match the strength, heat resistance and processing ability of conventional plastics. A new bamboo-based bioplastic takes a different approach, reorganising cellulose at the molecular level to produce a material that is both strong and easier to shape. The researchers used a hydrated zinc chloride and formic…

Romania has placed its energy sector under a nationwide 30-day state of alert after the Danube river levels fell to exceptionally low levels. This has forced Unit 1 at the Cernavodă nuclear plant offline and put Unit 2 under continuous review.Emergency river works have kept Unit 2 online for now, but the latest hydrological outlook…

Representative Image (AI-generated) Sixteen years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill injured extensive coral habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists are developing new ways to help these fragile ecosystems recover. According to NOAA Fisheries, a recent restoration mission combined laboratory-reared corals, specialised technical diving and newly designed equipment to return corals to the deep…

MIT researchers melt resin pellets and spin them into thin, stretchy fibres designed for repeated recycling. MIT engineers have developed a new elastic yarn made from polyethylene that could offer a more recyclable alternative to conventional stretchy fibres such as spandex. The material is designed so its components can be melted together and processed into…

A decade ago, more than 99% of sunflower sea stars vanished from the depths of the ocean. Now, the discovery of a long-lost colony of these organisms is offering new hope for the region’s kelp forests.Sunflower sea stars, known as Pycnopodia helianthoides, may look like an aesthetic and purely decorative feature on the ocean floor,…

The only total solar eclipse of 2026 is happening today, 12 August, as the Moon passes directly between Earth and the Sun, casting its shadow across the Northern Hemisphere. The main path of totality will stretch through Greenland, Iceland, northern Russia, the Atlantic Ocean, Spain and a small part of Portugal.For people standing inside that…

In 1922, biologist Olaus J. Murie entered Alaska’s vast wilderness to study caribou, beginning a body of field research that would eventually influence how scientists and park managers understood wildlife as part of interconnected ecosystems. Murie had been hired by the US Biological Survey as a wildlife biologist and spent much of the early 1920s…

Across the United States, glyphosate is applied across an enormous area of farmland each year. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, an average of 298 million acres of cropland receives glyphosate applications annually, giving a sense of how routinely the herbicide enters agricultural landscapes. Much of the attention around glyphosate has centred on weeds…

Brian Ekstrom and Lance Downing pulling the beach seine to collect juvenile fish at a restoration site on the lower Columbia River A routine dredging project on the Lower Columbia River has become a major long-term experiment to see whether dredged sediment can be used to restore lost wildlife habitat.In October 2020, engineers pumped 225,000…

On 21 August 2017, the afternoon light at Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, began to fade. For the people gathered there, the approaching darkness was an astronomical spectacle. For the animals living outside in the zoo’s enclosures, it was something rather different: daylight was suddenly behaving as if evening had arrived. Researchers had prepared…

Representative Image of a fast-setting underwater glue engineered to become stronger with age (AI-generated image) Modern life runs on adhesives, from the soles of shoes to the joints that hold furniture together, yet most of them share one stubborn weakness: they fail when water gets involved. A thin layer of water molecules naturally coats any…

A gas stove can look completely harmless when its burners are switched off. There is no flame, no heat and apparently no activity at all. But research has found that natural-gas stoves can continue releasing methane (CH₄) even when they are not being used.A study published in Environmental Science & Technology examined 53 homes in…