New research shows how migratory birds are declining globally because of the way that humans have modified the landscape in recent decades. A total of 103 species of migrating birds were studied, including rapidly declining species like the Turtle Dove and the Common Cuckoo, using large-scale datasets. Advances in satellite imagery allowed the team to map threats across Europe, Africa and Western Asia. The study reveals that declines have been greatest among species that migrate to areas with more human infrastructure - roads, buildings, power lines, wind turbines - as well as higher population densities and hunting levels. The research team hope their work will help inform how best to target conservation efforts.

An innovative scientific instrument, the Compact Color Biofinder, developed by a team of University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa researchers, may change the game in the search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

UC San Diego researchers describe how the microbiomes of people and the homes they live in interact and change each other.

A research team around Peter Turchin from the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) tests various theories on what drove human socio-cultural evolution in the Holocene. The scientists analyze a vast body of data from Seshat: Global History Databank. They find the best explanation to be a combination of increasing agricultural productivity and the invention, or adoption, of military technologies (most notably, the invention of iron weapons and cavalry in the first millennium BCE).

As the climate crisis looms, scientists are racing to find solutions to common clean energy problems, including solar energy storage. Currently, solar is converted to electricity in solar cells, which cannot store the energy long-term, and separate battery storage systems are inconvenient and expensive. To solve this problem, researchers are trying to find ways to combine the power conversion and storage capacity needs of solar energy into one device. Significant progress has been made in combining these elements into a single device, which shares elements and significantly cuts down on the problems of previous designs.

Climate change influences the likelihood and duration of armed conflicts in Africa. This is the result of a study carried out by a team from the INGENIO Institute, a joint centre of the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), together with the University of Rome III and the University of Urbino Carlo Bo, published in the latest issue of the journal Economía Política.