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A research team led by Kazunari Yamaura, chief researcher, Superconducting Properties Unit, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan, and Dr. Stuart Calder and others at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, jointly demonstrated that the strongest ever spin-phonon coupling was observed in osmium oxide synthesized for the first time in the world by NIMS in 2009.

Understanding fractions is a critical mathematical ability, and yet it’s one that continues to confound a lot of people well into adulthood. New research finds evidence for an innate ratio processing ability that may play a role in determining our aptitude for understanding fractions and other formal mathematical concepts.

The National Science Foundation’s premier data management platform for the life sciences has rebranded, shedding the project’s original label of iPlant Collaborative and donning the new name CyVerse. The rebrand emphasizes the project’s capacity to provide data management and computation services beyond plant sciences, for collaborations across scientific disciplines.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students in the U.S., and a new study suggests that students who play many hours of action video games in particular may be more capable of acting on suicidal thoughts. The study linking action video games, which usually involve violence and aggressive content, to acquired capability for suicide is published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

(Phys.org)—Quantum key distribution (QKD) may one day allow for nearly perfectly secure data communication on a large scale, but before this can happen, QKD networks must extend across distances that are large enough to connect cities and even span continents. Currently, QKD links are limited to about 400 km due to optical fiber losses, and these links can be extended using quantum repeaters, which are, however, challenging to implement at the moment.

The evidence for a new geological epoch which marks the impact of human activity on the Earth is now overwhelming according to a recent paper by an international group of geoscientists. The Anthropocene, which is argued to start in the mid-20th Century, is marked by the spread of materials such as aluminium, concrete, plastic, fly ash and fallout from nuclear testing across the planet, coincident with elevated greenhouse gas emissions and unprecedented trans-global species invasions.

From the Christian Crusades to the Paris attacks, countless conflicts and acts of violence have been claimed to be the result of differing religious beliefs. These faith-based opinions are thought to motivate aggressive behavior because of how they encourage group loyalty or spin ideologies that devalue the lives of non-believers.

It is never easy for interest groups with conflicting views to resolve public policy disagreements involving complex scientific issues. To successfully formulate complex treaties, such as the recent Paris Climate Change Agreement, countries must find a way to meet the interests of almost 200 national representatives, while simultaneously getting the science right.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA), which quietly passed its 42nd birthday last week, has shielded hundreds of species in the United States from extinction and dramatically achieved full recovery for a celebrated few. Flexibility of implementation is one of the ESA’s great strengths, allowing for adaptation in response to new knowledge and changing social and environmental conditions.

A new study finds that human activities are likely contributing far less nitrogen to the open ocean than many atmospheric models suggest. That’s generally good news, but it also nullifies a potential side benefit to additional nitrogen, says Meredith Hastings, associate professor of Earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown University and one of the study’s co-authors.