A new approach to killing C. difficile that silences key bacterial genes while sparing other bacteria may provide a new way to treat the most common hospital-acquired bacterial infection in the United States, according to researchers.

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite saw the Eastern Pacific Ocean’s first tropical storm coming together. 

Tropical Depression 05W briefly reached tropical storm status overnight on June 5 into June 6, and then weakened back to a depression at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC). Once 05W reached tropical storm status it was named “Ewiniar.” NASA’s Aqua satellite captured infrared imagery that provided clues that the storm would strengthen.

Outside Asia, no country produces as much rice as does Brazil. It is the ninth largest rice producer in the world. Average annual yields are close to 15 million tons.

Humans can perform a vast array of mental operations and adjust their behavioral responses based on external instructions and internal beliefs. For example, to tap your feet to a musical beat, your brain has to process the incoming sound and also use your internal knowledge of how the song goes.

MIT neuroscientists have now identified a strategy that the brain uses to rapidly select and flexibly perform different mental operations. To make this discovery, they applied a mathematical framework known as dynamical systems analysis to understand the logic that governs the evolution of neural activity across large populations of neurons.

British Columbia’s premier shellfish farming region is heavily contaminated with microplastics, according to a new Simon Fraser University study.

In a remote region of the Indian Ocean lies the source of a mysterious weather pattern with tentacles that stretch across the tropics, influencing everything from monsoons in India to heat waves and flooding in the United States.

In a first, researchers from the University of California, Irvine – as well as Switzerland’s University of Zurich, IBM Research-Zurich and UC Santa Cruz – have obtained direct images of dissolved organic carbon molecules from the ocean, allowing better analysis and characterization of compounds that play an important role in the Earth’s changing climate.

Motion-sensor cameras are increasingly being used to track wildlife across the globe, from tigers in India to aardvarks in Africa. But combing through the millions of images captured by these systems is a time-consuming task. Now, scientists have discovered that artificial intelligence is as effective as human volunteers — and much faster — at identifying species in these largely untapped photo repositories.

Powerful Earth-observing instruments aboard NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites, launched in 1999 and 2002, respectively, have observed nearly two decades of planetary change. Now, for the first time, all that imagery — from the first operational image to imagery acquired today — is available for exploration in Worldview.