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Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study provides the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.

Jet Stream reached northern latitudes never before recordedNew study provides first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification

Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study has provided the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.

Arctic amplification is the faster warming of the Arctic compared to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere as sea ice disappears.

At the center of a galaxy cluster, 1 billion light years from Earth, a voracious, supermassive black hole is preparing for a chilly feast.

Astronomers from Cardiff University are part of an international team that has, for the first time, detected billowy clouds of cold, clumpy gas streaming towards a supermassive black hole at speeds of up to 800,000 miles per hour and feeding into its bottomless well.

The observation, which was aided by the work of Dr Timothy Davis from the School of Physics and Astronomy, marks the first direct evidence to support the theory that black holes feed on clouds of cold gas.

The new ALMA observation is the first direct evidence that cold dense clouds can coalesce out of hot intergalactic gas and plunge into the heart of a galaxy to feed its central supermassive black hole. It also reshapes astronomers' views on how supermassive black holes feed, in a process known as accretion.

An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has witnessed a never-before-seen cosmic weather event -- a cluster of towering intergalactic gas clouds raining in on the supermassive black hole at the center of an elliptical galaxy one billion light-years from Earth.

New Haven, Conn. - An intergalactic gas cloud is sometimes a dish best served cold.

In a new study to be published June 9, 2016 in the journal Nature, a Yale-led team of astronomers found a supermassive black hole about to devour clouds of cold, clumpy gas hurtling toward it. Prior to this, scientists believed that supermassive black holes in the largest galaxies fed on a slow, steady diet of hot, ionized gas from the galaxy's halo.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - In previous generations, when professional sports franchises had athletes who were considered to be all-star caliber on their teams, those teams would experience a "star effect," which would result in long-term increases in publicity, fan interest, and merchandise and ticket sales. Now, University of Missouri researchers have analyzed the Twitter usage of Major League Baseball (MLB) teams, athletes and fans and discovered that the "star effect" had no long-term impacts on MLB teams' Twitter following and fan engagement.

Among elite athletes, practice accounts for a scant 1 percent of the difference in their performances--and starting sports at an early age does not necessarily provide athletes an upper hand--according to new research.

"While practice is necessary for elite athletes to reach a high level of competition, after a certain point, the amount of practice essentially stops differentiating who makes it far and who makes it to the very top," said Brooke Macnamara, assistant professor of psychological sciences at Case Western Reserve University and lead author of the study.

Pythons and boas are distantly related, but new research indicates that they have evolved convergent physical characteristics when living in similar habitats--meaning that they evolved similar solutions to similar problems.

For the research, investigators collected data on the head shape of 1,073 python and boa specimens from different habitats. Parallel adaptations to similar lifestyles resulted in the independent evolution of similar characteristics.

LISA Pathfinder, a mission led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with contributions from NASA, has successfully tested a key technology needed to build a space-based observatory for detecting gravitational waves. These tiny ripples in the fabric of space, predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago, were first seen last year by the ground-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

Tropical Depression 1E or TD1E continued to hug the coast of southwestern Mexico as NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and caught a look at the extent of the slow moving storm's clouds.

On June 6, 2016, NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible light image of Tropical Depression 1E over southwestern Mexico and Guatemala. In the image, the center of circulation appeared to be right over the coast. On June 7, 2016, the depression appeared disorganized over the Gulf Of Tehuantepec.

EAST LANSING, Mich. - A well-insulated home with a high-efficiency air conditioner and programmable thermostat are only as effective as the person using it.

A new study led by Michigan State University and published in the current issue of Procedia Engineering shows that people living in green dwellings who don't maximize their technology can lose half of the energy savings available to them.

Warm weather means beach vacations and pool-dipping for many of us. It also signals a season of slathering on sunscreen to avoid getting burned. Someday, those products could be enhanced with lignin, a natural material in plants and a major waste product of the paper industry. Scientists report their findings on what kind of lignin works well for this purpose in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

BROOKLYN, New York - In a world of 7 billion cell phones, wireless service providers are always searching for ways to maximize the efficiency of wireless spectrum to improve service. The so-called "half duplex" radios that comprise today's cellular base stations perform two functions: They send signals and receive signals. Yet, despite a decade of dizzying advances in speed, they still can only perform one of these functions at a time.