People can die simply because they’ve given up, life has beaten them and they feel defeat is inescapable, according to new research.

With the smoke of summer wildfires still dimming skies over much of the West, NOAA has announced funding for development of an improved global map of smoke, dust and other aerosol particles that promises to help improve air quality monitoring and forecasting.

NASA-NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite passed over the Eastern Pacific Ocean as Tropical Storm Rosa was strengthening into that ocean basin’s tenth hurricane.

Scientists investigating how human-induced increases in atmospheric methane also increase the amount of solar energy absorbed by that gas in our climate system have discovered that this absorption is 10 times stronger over desert regions such as the Sahara Desert and Arabian Peninsula than elsewhere on Earth, and nearly three times more powerful in the presence of clouds.

Social media sites often present users with social exclusion information that may actually inhibit intelligent thought, according to the co-author of a University at Buffalo study that takes a critical look not just at Facebook and other similar platforms, but at the peculiarities of the systems on which these sites operate.

Plants in the Arctic are growing taller because of climate change, according to research from a global scientific collaboration.

A University of Adelaide-led team of researchers has found a link between sudden cardiac death (when the heart suddenly stops beating) and a common heart condition known as mitral valve prolapse that affects around 12 in every 1000 people worldwide.

The Sherpa people of the Himalayas have long been recognized for their unique ability to excel physically in the thin air of higher altitudes. But new research from UBC’s Okanagan campus, published last week in the Journal of Physiology, now suggests that their specially adapted muscles give them up to twice the resistance to muscle fatigue of lowlanders.

One of the major sources of uncertainty about the future climate is whether ecosystems will continue to take up carbon dioxide or release it to the atmosphere. University of Montana researchers and co-authors confronted this problem using atmospheric measurements and satellite observations to test model simulations in a recent study published on Sept. 5 in Nature Communications.

With bee populations in decline, a new study offers hope for a relatively simple mechanism to promote bee health and well-being: providing bees access to sunflowers.