PHYSorg

You can probably think of a time when you've used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play in solving complex problems such as curing a disease?

Conservation scientists at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have highlighted substantial gaps in the compensation for lost or downgraded protected areas. These gaps risk undermining global efforts for the protection of biodiversity and threaten the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets, which aim to conserve 30% of the planet by 2030.

Out of 225 people awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, only five have been women. This is a very small number, and certainly smaller than 50%—the percent of women in the human population.

If tens of thousands of miners turned up in the middle of a protected rainforest to mine for sapphires, you might expect that to cause lots of deforestation and harm local wildlife.

When millions of people went into lockdown during the pandemic, they went in search of new at-home hobbies to help cure their boredom. Among them was making sourdough bread. In addition to being sustainable for its use of natural ingredients and traditional methods which date back thousands of years to ancient Egypt, it is also valued for its nutritional benefits.

The complex shape of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is one hurdle limiting the development of treatments for an infection that leads to hospitalization or worse for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New images of the virus from researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison may hold the key to preventing or slowing RSV infections.

"Hotel Rwanda" was a critically acclaimed and commercially successful film, but not necessarily the best way to teach high school students about a topic as fraught as genocide. Yet, without guidance on how to approach genocide throughout history, showing the movie in class may be what teachers default to in covering difficult and uncomfortable subjects.

The rise of authoritarian populism in Brazil has weakened structures that stabilize democracy—mirroring trends in wider global society and potentially making it harder for the country to strengthen its democracy in future, a new study reveals. The findings are published in the journal Direito Público.

The genome inside each of our cells is modeled by tension and torsion—due in part to the activity of proteins that compact, loop, wrap and untwist DNA—but scientists know little about how those forces affect the transcription of genes.

Mindfulness, the meditation practice that brings one's attention to present experiences, is gaining traction in the business world.

A new survey of climate experts reveals that a majority believe the Earth to be headed for a rise in global temperatures far higher than the 2015 Paris Agreement targets of 1.5 to well-below 2°C.

Over the past decades, heavy and more frequent rainfall and dry spells in southern Africa have caused loss and damage to agriculture, livestock, the energy sector, food security and nutrition.

"Tropical rainforest" might conjure images of close-packed trees, dense humidity, and the din of animal calls. But rainforests host landscapes beyond that archetypal one, including vast, treeless clearings that seemingly appear out of nowhere.

Iyashikei is a Japanese genre that, according to Japanese studies scholar Paul Roquet, tells stories that are designed to comfort and heal weary readers by creating an aesthetic of calm. In order to achieve this, as Roquet articulates, these stories are presented as tales with little or no plot conflict.

Quick question: what do these titles have in common? A Dark Continent Seeking Light; Sure, Ebola is Bad. Africa has Worse, or; Magic and Cannibalism in the African Jungle. You guessed it—they're all about Africa. But the most correct answer is they're all headlines that have appeared in the prestigious New York Times newspaper.

Recently, the US ambassador to the United Nations announced America's support for the creation of two new permanent UN security council seats for African states. Gary Wilson, a scholar of international law and relations—specifically issues related to the United Nations—argues that although Africa's time may have come, there are still hurdles to overcome.

In accordance with the German Sustainability Strategy, new impervious surfaces are to be limited to less than 30 hectares per day nationwide. In order to verify whether this target is met, it must be possible to monitor soil sealing at regular intervals.

Humanity's rapacious consumption is more than Earth and its climate can handle, which is driving an ecological crisis. Australians are the worst offenders per person due to our excessive resource use.

The voice people use to address their dogs isn't just because of their big puppy eyes. Humans slow their own speech when talking to their dogs, and this slower tempo matches their pets' receptive abilities, allowing the dogs to better understand their commands, according to a study published October 1 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Eloïse Déaux of the University of Geneva in Switzerland and colleagues.

A new study led by an Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) expert has revealed alarming shortcomings in the UK's efforts to prosecute wildlife criminals.