Restoring vegetation is widely promoted as a natural way to fight climate change, but new research shows that its effects on soil carbon are not always straightforward. A study published in Carbon Research by scientists Lei Deng and Zhouping Shangguan from Northwest A&F University, China, reveals that soil organic carbon (SOC) can either rise or fall in the early stages of vegetation restoration, depending largely on the soil’s initial carbon content.

UMD astronomer Megan Weiner Mansfield co-led the creation of the first-ever 3D temperature map of WASP-18b, a gas giant located 400 light-years from Earth. The new technique lays the groundwork for more detailed future explorations of faraway planets.

A Michigan State University researcher co-led a joint analysis between two major neutrino experiments, bringing scientists closer to understanding the mystery of how the universe evolved.

In the quest for more targeted lung cancer treatments, a researcher at the University of Missouri thinks the solution may lie in tiny bubble-shaped packages that cells use to talk to each other.

A pair of distant cosmic black hole mergers, measured just one month apart in late 2024, is improving how scientists understand the nature and evolution of the most violent deep-space collisions in our universe. Data collected from the mergers also validates, with unprecedented accuracy, fundamental laws of physics that were predicted more than 100 years ago by Albert Einstein and furthers the search for new and still unknown elementary particles with the potential to extract energy from black holes. 

In a new paper published Oct. 28 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration reports on the detection of two gravitational wave events in October and November of last year with unusual black hole spins. 

In Biointerphases, researchers take inspiration from a common houseplant to develop a better, safer copper IUD. The researchers noticed that pothos leaves are hydrophobic — a distinctive microstructure on the leaf’s surface causes water droplets to ball up and slide off. The team realized that mimicking this pattern on the surface of a copper IUD might repel uterine fluid. Less contact between the surface and fluid would decrease corrosion, releasing fewer copper ions and mitigating side effects.