s human-caused climate change continues to raise temperatures across the globe, understanding how birds regulate their temperature is vital for their conservation. But how much heat birds emit—an invisible spectrum of radiation known as mid-infrared—has never been studied, until now. Published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, a groundbreaking collaboration between material engineers and museum biologists explored the impact of mid-infrared on birds for the first time in history, reflecting the hidden prism of light, heat, and color in bird feathers.  

It’s long been known that habitat plays a role in bird coloration, a phenomenon described by biologists through things like Gloger’s rule, which predicts that animals like birds living in hot, humid areas will be visibly darker than those in dry, cool areas. Color is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a visible wavelength that humans can see part of (the visible spectrum), and birds can see even more of (the ultraviolet spectrum), but heat, or infrared, exists outside the bounds of what either humans or birds can see. Infrared is broken down into the heat animals absorb (near-infrared) but not the heat they emit (mid-infrared). The interdisciplinary team of scientists measured both in the new study.

Environmental and sustainability compliance reporting is getting increasingly dependent on geospatial data and workflows. However, understanding of the connection between new European Union (EU) regulations and existing Earth Observation (EO) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies is limited. A new review study highlights how close alignment of law, data, and corporate practices can ensure that the geospatial workflows are fit for purpose in environmental and sustainability compliance reporting.

New efforts to forecast space weather with greater accuracy and reliability are being led by Aberystwyth University academics. 

In one of the biggest surprises of NASA's University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission, its target asteroid, Bennu, turned out to be a jagged, rugged world covered in large boulders.

Researchers at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) analyzed nearly three decades of solar oscillation data to trace the Sun’s interior dynamics, and have now pointed to the likely location of the star’s magnetic engine deep beneath its surface — roughly 200,000 kilometers down, about the length of stacking 16 Earths end to end.

EPFL and CSEM researchers have achieved a record 30% efficiency for triple-junction solar cells, which combine two thin-film perovskite cells and one silicon cell on a single device. The milestone could advance affordable next-generation solar technologies for space and terrestrial applications.

Los Angeles, CA — March 17, 2026 — The Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation (TIBI) is proud to announce that Principal Investigator Dr. Aliesha O’Raw, Co-Founder of OnVagus, has been selected for the 2026 American Cancer Society (ACS) BrightEdge Entrepreneurs (BEE) Program cohort. The BrightEdge Entrepreneurs Program is a competitive program for startups in the cancer diagnostic and therapeutic space, providing mentorship and entrepreneur training alongside early-stage investment support, including a $100,000 SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) backed by ACS’ BrightEdge Investment Fund.

How does fine dust aggregate into building blocks that ultimately form entire planets like our Earth? A research team led by the University of Bern, with the participation of ETH Zurich, the University of Zurich and the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS has provided the first experimental evidence – obtained during parabolic flights in zero gravity – that a key physical process, known as shear-flow instability, actually occurs under conditions similar to those in planet formation regions. The study thus addresses an important gap in our understanding of the very first steps of planet formation.

Kyoto, Japan -- The stability of the iron atom's nucleus has made it one of the most abundant heavy elements in the universe. When excited, iron atoms emit distinctive fluorescent X-ray lines which can be identified using the Fe Kα emission line, an approximately 6.4 keV fluorescent line produced when an electron transitions from the 2p orbital to the 1s orbital of the atom.

The Fe Kα emission line is widely used as a diagnostic tool for understanding the physical conditions of matter across a variety of astronomical objects. The energy of an emission line depends on the ionization state of iron: the degree to which its electrons have been stripped away. As ionization progresses and electrons are removed, the effective electric attraction between each remaining electron and the atomic nucleus becomes stronger.

From this, one might expect the energy of the Fe Kα emission line to increase as ionization increases. However, theoretical studies have demonstrated that, for iron, there exists a limited range of low ionized states in which the energy of the Fe Kα line sees a slight decrease instead of an increase. This happens because during the removal of electrons from the 3d orbital, the repulsion between electrons within the 3d shell is reduced, and the 3d orbital contracts toward the nucleus. While the Fe Kα emission line corresponds to the 2p → 1s transition, the Fe Kβ line corresponds to the 3p → 1s transition, and this line increases almost uniformly with increasing ionization.