When you think of living creatures, the first things that come to mind are probably lush plants and big animals. However, most lifeforms on Earth are microscopic, and for most of the Earth’s history, such microbes ruled the planet. Plants and animals have only been... click to read more

You probably don’t spend much time thinking about nitrogen. If you do, maybe you think of it as a pollutant. Fertilizer running off farm fields, livestock manure giving off ammonia, and burning fossil fuels all add nitrogen to the environment. This nitrogen contributes to the... click to read more

Insects are critical for the functioning of life on earth. They support the provisioning of a wide variety of ecosystem services including pollination, pest control and decomposition. Therefore, the growing number of peer-reviewed studies publishing reports of steep insect declines should be of pressing concern.... click to read more

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) operating since 2018, monitors the brightness variations of hundreds of thousands of objects in the sky. Amongst the targets we monitor are a few hundred accreting white dwarfs. Three of these have revealed rapid and energetic bursts of light... click to read more

 Historical and contemporary data show that ordinary hazards turn into disasters in poor and less prepared nations. It is true of earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions etc. Examples include the more than 80,000 deaths resulting from the magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan in 2005, and... click to read more