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Approximately 75% of flowering plants—including about a third of agricultural food crops—depend on the distribution of pollen by an array of animals known collectively as pollinators. These animals include insects such as bees and wasps…

The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest remnant of previous ice-age glaciations. Glaciers flow out from this ice sheet and feed into floating ice shelves along one-third of the Antarctic coastline. One of the largest ice shelves is the Filchner-Ronne…

In a breakthrough in the global fight against malaria, the World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending widespread administration of the first-ever malaria vaccine. This first-generation vaccine is intended for children considered to be at high…

Pasta comes in various sizes and shapes, ranging from long and flat (such as linguine and spaghetti) to short types in the shape of shells (conchiglie), corkscrews (fusilli), and many others. Shaped pastas contain a larger volume of air, resulting…

In recent years, researchers have made considerable progress toward producing renewable energy in the form of hydrogen fuel through the electrolysis of water. In the most basic electrolytic cell, an electric current drives a chemical reaction at two…

Black holes pack an extraordinary amount of mass into a small spatial volume, resulting in gravitational fields so powerful that not even light can escape. These extreme objects occur as two distinct populations in the universe. The first, called…

The Hudson River estuary in the United States experiences a tide from New York Harbor (river kilometer 0/river mile 0) to Troy, New York (river kilometer 244/river mile 152). In the lower 60 kilometers (37 miles) of the Hudson River, the water is…

Atmospheric ozone plays a critical role in the biosphere by absorbing harmful ultraviolet radiation in the stratosphere—the layer of the atmosphere about 10 to 50 km (6 to 30 mi) above Earth’s surface. Since the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in…

The spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta)—one of three species of hyenas found in Africa—is a highly social mammal that lives in large groups, or clans, containing at least 90 individuals. The social organization of spotted hyenas is more complex than the…

In a potential watershed moment for physics, the first results from the Muon g-2 (pronounced gee minus two) experiment have strongly indicated that particles called muons deviate from precise predictions of their behavior in the standard model of…