Idaho’s Silver Valley has produced about 1.2 billion ounces of silver since the late 1800s, enough to cast a solid cube roughly as tall as a five-story building, along with huge amounts of lead and zinc. Now a new study led by Washington State University researchers helps explain how mineral deposits in the Silver Valley and other mineralized parts of the Belt Supergroup began to form more than 1.2 billion years ago. The Belt Supergroup is a massive stack of rocks stretching across eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana that also hosts the Idaho Cobalt Belt, the most significantly mineralized cobalt district in the United States.

Researchers have discovered a new species of baby dinosaur in South Korea, and have named it Doolysaurus after the iconic South Korean cartoon Dooly the Little Dinosaur. The dinosaur is the first new dinosaur species discovered in Korea in 15 years and the first Korean dinosaur fossil found with portions of its skull. The skull bones were revealed when the fossil underwent a scientific micro-CT scan at the University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography (UTCT) facility.

Salk scientists debut gene expression atlas of plant leaves across development, comparing normal versus drought conditions, revealing that drought accelerates leaf aging; pinpoints a gene that helps leaves keep growing under stress. The study clears the path to more drought-tolerant crops, which would protect yields and reduce farmer losses during mild droughts.

Using machine learning regression models, we predict porosity (measure of potential storage volume) and permeability (measure of fluid flow property in porous media) based on petrographic thin section analysis. Histogram-based Gradient Boosting algorithms successfully predict porosity (RMSE=2.23%) and permeability (RMSE=0.64 (orders of magnitude)) based on textural mineralogical properties recorded in petrographic samples. This may in the future allow to reduce the amount of resource- and time-intensive retrieval of core material in certain use cases, as the same methods can be applied to cuttings, produced as a by-product of any drilling operation worldwide.

A new long-term study reveals that biochar, a carbon-rich material derived from crop residues, can significantly enhance soil carbon storage, but its effectiveness depends strongly on land use and soil type.

The City College of New York's Professor Kaveh Madani and Director of the UN's Think Tank on Water, has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate in recognition of his groundbreaking work linking water science, policy, diplomacy, and public outreach, including his influential “water bankruptcy” concept and fundamental contributions to integrating game theory into water resource modeling. Known as the ‘Nobel Prize of Water’, the Stockholm Water Prize is the world’s most prestigious water award.