Science

Nasa astronaut Chris Williams, left, Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, center, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergei Mikaev are seen inside the Soyuz MS-28 spacecraft after they landed in Kazakhstan (AP) A joint US-Russian crew safely returned to Earth on Sunday after spending more than eight months aboard the International Space Station (ISS), marking another milestone in continued…

Maya Biosphere Reserve covers about 2.1 million hectares in Guatemala’s northern PetEn province Logging is one of the biggest reasons forests are disappearing. When trees are cut faster than they can grow back, wildlife loses its habitat, and local communities are impacted. But in northern Guatemala, one protected forest is showing that logging does not…

Mangroves-A forest that would not vanish across the globe Mangroves have long been considered one of the planet’s most threatened ecosystems. These dense forests along tropical and subtropical coastlines were steadily being lost to urban expansion, shrimp farming, agriculture, pollution and climate change. Each year thousands of hectares were lost, threatening wildlife, fisheries and coastal…

Unwritten social rules, not government oversight, help keep forest land sustainable Slash-and-burn farming was blamed for destroying rainforests, but a study of 18,000 forest patches found community rules can limit clearing and allow trees to return.Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research shows that unwritten social rules in small communities…

A new waterscape has been created on the Holnicote Estate in Somerset (National Trust photos) Just one year after work completing a river restoration project in south-west England, researchers say the restored landscape has reduced flood peaks downstream, improved water quality and created new habitats for many species.The project took place on the National Trust’s…

According to the research, a birdsong is shaped by both evolution and the environment. (Nature TTL) Birds may sound different depending, but scientists have now found that many of their songs are built from the same basic set of sound patterns. A new global study has identified eight recurring motifs that appear in the songs…

If many bats are sending out similar sound waves at the same time, their signals can overlap. (National geographic photo) Bats rely on echolocation to move through the dark and hunt insects. They send out high-pitched sound waves that bounce off nearby objects and return as echoes which helps them judge where things are.But when…

A tiny freshwater fish found only in Oregon quietly made conservation history after decades of being pushed to the brink of extinction. The Oregon chub, a species once reduced to fewer than 1,000 individuals across just eight known populations, was threatened by wetland destruction, river engineering and invasive fish. Many believed its future was bleak….

Alexander Fleming (Image: Wikipedia) Some of the world’s most important discoveries were never part of the original plan. History shows that breakthroughs often happen when curious minds remain open to the unexpected instead of focusing only on what they hoped to find. Alexander Fleming’s insightful observation, “You do not know what you will find, you…

zebra mussels (Representative image by Canva) In the late 1980s, an aquatic invader quietly entered North America through an unlikely route: a ship’s ballast water. That species was the zebra mussel, and within a decade it had spread across all five Great Lakes, triggering one of the most notorious invasive-species stories on the continent. More…