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A warming world will impact bacteria, fungi and other microbes that play key roles in ecosystems. So researchers are working to understand how climate change will affect microbes — and if humans can harness them to reduce its impacts.

Human-caused climate change is boosting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Using computer simulations, researchers calculated what wind speeds of recent hurricanes would have been without warming and then compared them with the hurricanes’ actual wind speeds. The team found that climate change boosted wind speeds by up to 47 kilometers per hour (28 miles per hour).

The relationship between speed and size has long stumped scientists. A study that surveyed how speed tracks with body size found that the make-or-break factor was the time it takes animals to achieve their theoretical top speed.

Tiny floating plankton can accidentally eat sediment particles kicked up by deep sea mining. Plankton that munch these nutrient-poor particles could starve, which could lead to a starvation cascade affecting creatures at higher levels of ocean food webs.

Directions for teachers:Since UFOs entered the spotlight in United States in the late 1940s, they’ve come to be dismissed as a hoax or irrational obsession and thus unworthy of study by scientists. But government agencies and officials are trying to change that attitude so that more pilots or citizens will report unusual phenomena that may […]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture unveiled an overhauled food pyramid on January 7. It differs drastically from decades of previous recommendations. To learn about the new guidelines’ strengths and weaknesses, Science News spoke with Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.

In the United States, chronic pain affects tens of millions of people — about 1 in 5 adults. So researchers are on a quest to find new pain treatments that aren’t as addictive as opioids, a therapy that has fueled an epidemic that kills tens of thousands of people each year.

Airlines often offer passengers the option to pay a few dollars for carbon credits that offset their share of the flight’s emissions. But those purchases might not be helping the climate because of problems with the voluntary carbon credit. Understanding how carbon credits work can help you decide what to do about your carbon footprint.

Using AI gobbles up an enormous amount of energy, and the power needs of data centers may already be helping to drive up electricity costs in some areas. So researchers are looking to compress AI models to a more manageable size, which would also allow them to run on devices instead of online in the cloud. One approach uses a mathematical structure called a tensor network.

A group of single-celled microbes that belong to the domain of life known as archaea may have been crucial to the evolution of complex life. Members of this group, known as Asgard archaea, seem to have evolved in several ways that primed them to give rise to multicellular life. This suggests that complex life may evolve more easily than biologists have thought, but researchers are still working out how exactly it could have happened.

Many people fear sharks even though it’s more likely for someone to be struck by lightning than bitten by a shark. People should instead fear for sharks, many of which are threatened. Researchers are working to convince people that sharks, which are vital to maintaining the ocean’s health, are more valuable alive than dead.

Sexual harassment of science students is widespread in the United States, according to a 2018 report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. To improve, universities need to change their culture and environment, and research and legislation could help guide their actions.