Hit a glitch in your research? Some ‘night science’ thinking could move it forward

In materials science, if you can understand the "texture" of a material—how its internal patterns form and shift—you can begin to design how it behaves. That's the focus of the work of Zhenglu Li, assistant professor in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at USC Viterbi School of Engineering. Li's recently published paper in PNAS, titled "Moiré excitons in generalized Wigner crystals," demonstrates that the way electrons organize themselves inside a material

As he threaded his way through the scrub in Serbia's southern hills, Slobodan Velickovic stopped to inspect the small indigo berries that have made the Balkans a key part of the global gin industry.

By 2085, 36% of species' current habitats on land could be exposed to multiple types of climate-driven extreme events such as heat waves, fire or floods if warming continues to rise into the latter half of the century. The findings are part of a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, authored by an international team of 18 scientists, and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Flames from raging wildfires in northern Japan were spreading towards the center of a town Friday, with authorities urging more than 2,500 people to evacuate their homes, media reports and the government said.