August 2026

Representative Image (AI-generated) Sixteen years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill injured extensive coral habitats in the Gulf of Mexico, scientists are developing new ways to help these fragile ecosystems recover. According to NOAA Fisheries, a recent restoration mission combined laboratory-reared corals, specialised technical diving and newly designed equipment to return corals to the deep…

Scientists have pieced together the deepest genetic history of the North American bison ever assembled, using DNA drawn from 115 animals that lived before the species was pushed to near extinction in the 20th century. As per the findings, led by researchers at the University of California, and featured on the cover of the 6…

Oyster farmers across Hiroshima Prefecture are pulling up their rafts this season to find that most of what they cultivated has not survived. In several coastal districts, mortality rates have reached as high as 90%, far above the usual seasonal loss of 30% to 50%. Producers in the city of Higashihiroshima have reported losses at…

Not everyone who closes their eyes and hits the bed at night goes to sleep. Some end up transitioning into a dream-like state that has them waking up while feeling hazy, lazy and heavy, with no feelings of rest and freshness. But is it the dreams that weigh you out or does it have something…

MIT researchers melt resin pellets and spin them into thin, stretchy fibres designed for repeated recycling. MIT engineers have developed a new elastic yarn made from polyethylene that could offer a more recyclable alternative to conventional stretchy fibres such as spandex. The material is designed so its components can be melted together and processed into…

Quote of the day by Nikola Tesla (Image: Wikipedia) Every generation grows up surrounded by things that would have seemed genuinely impossible only a few decades earlier. A technology that once amazed an entire population can become so ordinary that people stop noticing it exists at all. Nikola Tesla, the inventor and engineer whose work…

Dog parents, this is your ‘told you’ moment! All those times you felt your dog sensed your mood before you even said a word, that wasn’t nothing. The time when you were crying your heart out and your baby just rested on your lap? That was him reading you. Not guessing. Not just picking up…

A decade ago, more than 99% of sunflower sea stars vanished from the depths of the ocean. Now, the discovery of a long-lost colony of these organisms is offering new hope for the region’s kelp forests.Sunflower sea stars, known as Pycnopodia helianthoides, may look like an aesthetic and purely decorative feature on the ocean floor,…

In 1922, biologist Olaus J. Murie entered Alaska’s vast wilderness to study caribou, beginning a body of field research that would eventually influence how scientists and park managers understood wildlife as part of interconnected ecosystems. Murie had been hired by the US Biological Survey as a wildlife biologist and spent much of the early 1920s…

Brian Ekstrom and Lance Downing pulling the beach seine to collect juvenile fish at a restoration site on the lower Columbia River A routine dredging project on the Lower Columbia River has become a major long-term experiment to see whether dredged sediment can be used to restore lost wildlife habitat.In October 2020, engineers pumped 225,000…