UC San Diego biologists have unraveled the genetic adaptation that gave butterflies the ability to see rich, vivid color in their environment. The genetic change produces an additional photoreceptor that expands color vision for locating nectar and other butterflies.

A record-breaking cosmic signal has offered a rare glimpse of the early Universe as astronomers have detected and traced the most distant fast radio burst ever recorded, a powerful flash of radio waves that travelled for more than 10 billion years across the cosmos before reaching Earth.

Researchers developed a new way to make perovskite solar cells — a promising next-generation solar technology — more efficient and durable. Their crystallization technique produced more uniform perovskites with fewer defects, which boosted the performance of lab-made solar cells and LEDs. 

Majestic African antelopes known as gemsbok have been roaming the U.S. southwest since their introduction in the 1960s and 1970s. Brought to New Mexico as game species for hunting, gemsbok quickly settled in, expanding more than 100 kilometers from their introduction point. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers say that’s due to their exceptional adaptations to arid conditions, which they predict will dramatically expand under climate change.

Researchers have created an aquatic soft robot inspired by marine invertebrates called feather stars. The feather star robot is able to move through the water in all three dimensions, powered by only two actuators.

Some of the giant marine reptiles that ruled the seas during the age of dinosaurs were better built for surprise attacks, while their relatives were better suited to chasing prey through open water, according to a Rutgers-led study.

These animals, known as mosasaurs, were a group of lizards adapted to life in the ocean. Researchers reconstructed the bodies of four kinds of mosasaurs from their fossil skeletons, then applied principles of physics to estimate how quickly each could surge forward with a single powerful sweep of its tail. The research was published in the latest edition of Current Biology.

A University of Texas at Dallas scientist and her colleagues have discovered an unusual atomic pattern in a uranium-based material that gives it a rare combination of magnetic properties, a finding that could open new pathways for designing advanced electronic and computer memory devices.

Luis Escobar, associate professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech, has received a $400,000 award from the National Science Foundation to lead a nationwide investigation into how environmental shifts and virus evolution cause hantaviruses to leap from wildlife to humans in a process termed "spillover transmission." Escobar is also a member of the Pandemic Prediction and Prevention Destination Area that funded pilot work for this NSF project.

With a microscopy technique she developed, Purdue University’s Libai Huang is able to see quantum particles moving through materials at a rate of up to 1 quadrillion (that’s 1,000,000,000,000,000) images per second, helping to establish the rules that advance computer chips, solar cells and LEDs, and quantum computing.