However, to find food for their chicks, adult penguins must venture to an ocean boundary known as the Antarctic Polar Front, where cold Antarctic waters meet and sink beneath warmer waters from mid-latitude regions. And while king penguins, the second largest penguin species, can swim a 400-mile round trip during that time, they are traveling farther and farther from their nests on the islands near Antarctica, […]

It was morning in the universe and much colder than anyone had expected when light from the first stars began to tickle and excite their dark surroundings nearly 14 billion years ago. Astronomers using a small radio telescope in Australia reported on Wednesday that they had discerned effects of that first starlight on the universe […]

A federal environmental office that works to test the effects of chemical exposure on adults and children is being merged as part of a proposed consolidation at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) will no longer exist as a standalone entity following plans to combine three EPA offices, the agency confirmed to […]

A plan by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to close its overseas offices, first reported on the Science | Business website, is getting mixed reviews in the scientific community. Last week, NSF announced it would shutter its outposts in Beijing, Brussels, and Tokyo by summer; two U.S. staff will return to the agency’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, […]

Former McKinsey consultant Justin Whitmore was on the job as the first chief sustainability officer of Tyson Foods just one month when he disclosed his team’s intention to set science-based targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and to embrace “outcome-based” water conservation goals across the company’s operations and supply chain. It tapped World Resources Institute […]

North Hollywood High School bested the competition Saturday in the Los Angeles Department of Water’s 25th Annual Power Science Bowl regional competition. The San Fernando Valley school’s A Team took top honors, marking the 19th win in the last 21 years for North Hollywood High School, said Walter Zeisl, DWP’s manager of education outreach. The […]

The technology that drives science forward is forever accelerating, but the same can’t be said for science communication. The basic process still holds many vestiges from its early days — that is the 17th century. Some scientists are pressing to change that critical part of the scientific enterprise. Here’s what they’re confronting: When researchers studying […]

There may be more than 1.67 million unknown viruses infecting the animals of Earth — and scientists want to find them. In a research letter published in the journal Science this week, an international team of scientists described a sweeping new partnership called the Global Virome Project, scheduled to launch later this year. The project’s […]

Who ever said your Valentine had to be a human? At San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences, biologists are celebrating Valentine’s Day with African penguins, the Associated Press reports. A video shows them receiving big red felt hearts from their caretakers and wobbling around with them in their beaks. The California Academy of Sciences’ Vicki McCloskey told the […]

In sports like bobsled, luge, and snowboarding, where thousandths of a second make a difference, it’s not only athletes who are crucial. Hundreds of technicians work behind the scenes to help teams adjust to conditions that change by the day, if not the hour. States shook up the luge world order Sunday night, becoming the first non-European […]