Force

Tsetse flies transmit some of Africa's most persistent parasitic diseases. They have affected human health, livestock production and rural development for generations, across a region spanning millions of square kilometers in 37 sub-Saharan countries.

Astronomers have discovered the fastest known star in our galaxy, the Milky Way, orbiting the black hole at its center. The star, named S301, was detected with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO's VLTI) and reaches speeds of 25,000 km/s (15,500 miles per second) as it travels around the four-million-solar-mass black hole. It comes closer to it than any other star observed before, so close that it feels the effects of the black hole's rotation.

Despite science's best efforts to classify the vast menagerie of subatomic particles discovered over the past few decades, some exotic varieties defy explanation. Now, nuclear physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have found evidence of two unexpected structures that could help better sort the zoo of exotic particles.

Many materials, both living and engineered, are powered from within. Scientists have thoroughly investigated how such 'active' materials operate, but so far, mostly in circumstances where the curvature of the environment does not play a role. In research published in Physical Review Letters this week, a team of physicists proposes a framework to describe how active materials operate in the presence of curvature. The framework explains striking biological observations and may lead to geometry as […]

Economists have long used measures of public sentiment about the economy to forecast a wide range of key financial outcomes, like consumer spending and gross domestic product growth. Now, researchers at Penn State, Florida International University, the University of Cincinnati and California State University, Fresno, have used an artificial intelligence-driven approach that analyzes media coverage data and uncovered a significant connection between the public's perception of the economy and […]