Science

Representative Image of a vibrant topiary garden featuring living sculptures shaped like trees, fish, and abstract forms in Bishopville (AI Generated Image) A cleared cornfield in Bishopville, South Carolina, became the setting for one of America’s most distinctive topiary gardens. In the early 1980s, Pearl Fryar began transforming the land around his home without any…

Clinical trials will be needed to establish whether urolithin A can safely improve heart relaxation and symptoms in people with HFpEF. A compound made naturally by the body after eating certain foods may offer a new way to tackle one of the more difficult forms of heart failure. In early experiments, urolithin A, a substance…

Asian elephants can abandon a familiar way of reaching food when it stops working, as per a new study conducted in Thailand. In tests with 16 animals, researchers found evidence of inhibitory control, the ability to hold back an unhelpful response and switch to a successful one in seconds.The research, published in PLOS One on…

Researchers in Florida have tested whether Burmese python pheromones could work as a lure, because low detectability has hampered efforts to remove the snakes from the Everglades. The United States Geological Survey and the National Park Service have both described pheromone studies, though neither reports results. According to the study published in the BioOne Digital…

PC: Journal of Systematic Palaeontology A fossil bird from Denmark is helping researchers understand how the unusual feet of modern trogons evolved. The fossil belongs to a species called Daniatrogon kochi, which lived about 55 million years ago during the Early Eocene. Researchers found the fossil in 1989 on the Danish island of Mors in…

Passive rewilding, an emerging concept in restoration ecology, typically involves the cessation of management in plantations, removing both fertiliser inputs and biomass harvest. Researchers writing in the Journal of Plant Ecology examined Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) forests across rewilding durations of 0, 10, 20 and 30 years, tracking the growth of more than 4,000 culms….

Image: Left/Ronnie Howard/Right/Canva Beavers can reshape streams simply by building dams, slowing flowing water and creating ponds that become useful habitat for wildlife. Scientists have now found that structures designed to mimic those effects can also change how animals use degraded streams. A 2026 study published in Restoration Ecology examined beaver dam analogues (BDAs), human-built…

Rice husk ash, a waste material from rice mills, may help make asphalt stiffer and more resistant to heat, according to a new study. Researchers tested asphalt mixed with different amounts of the ash to see how it behaved at different temperatures. The results showed that adding rice husk ash increased the asphalt’s stiffness, elasticity,…

Not just humans, even raccoons are being trained for survival in boot camps now. In a wildlife centre in Mississippi, a dedicated staff is braving mud, sweat and at times, blood, all to train their raccoon soldiers. But unlike what it seems, this boot camp is truly for their own benefit. It runs with the…

A 300-foot beach on a tiny island in the Maldives was slowly eroding away. In order to solve the problem, a Marriott resort on the island experimented with something different. Instead of dredging sand, they used an artificial reef designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers to repair the beach.Coastal Assembly, a startup that spun…