Malari-prevention strategies like bed nets are crucial in the fight against the infection
Hajarah Nalwadda/Getty Images
By the end of this century, malaria could be eradicated in West and Central Africa, two of the worst-affected regions. A modelling study suggests cases will plummet in these areas if the extreme heat caused by climate change makes them uninhabitable for mosquitoes. But this also means malaria is expected to become more pronounced in the cooler regions of Africa.
Urban parks are great places to soak in the outdoors without planning an elaborate trip. Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain
The modern workday unfolds largely indoors. Long hours spent commuting, sitting in meetings and staring at screens can make time outdoors feel like a luxury. Finding time for nature in an already packed workday can feel impossible, especially if you think nature only "counts" when it involves hiking boots and camping gear.
Comparison of color-composite images of IC 1101 obtained from different imaging surveys. From left to right: SDSS DR16, the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys DR9 based on DECaLS imaging, and the INT/WFC data presented in this work. Credit: Carlos Marrero-de la Rosa et al. (2026). DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.15340
Researchers have obtained the deepest images ever taken of IC 1101, allowing them to identify the galaxy's outer edge for the first time. The observations confirm it as the largest known galaxy, spanning roughly 520 kiloparsecs, or about 1.7 million light-years, and containing an estimated 3.4 trillion solar masses in stars. The paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on July 16.
In late June, whale watchers in southwest Western Australia sounded the alarm. They had seen far fewer humpback whales at a time when they normally migrate up from the Southern Ocean to calve and feed. Numbers were 60% below normal.
False color electron images of meteorite inclusions used in the study by Marquez et al. (2026). Note the bands of minerals at the edges of high-temperature oxides (light blue), which hint at the multiple episodes of crystal growth invoked by the study. Credit: R. Marquez
How did the first solids that made up planets, moons and asteroids form from the "hot soup" that characterized our solar system's earliest years? New research from Caltech analyzing pieces of a meteorite has found that, just as snowflakes crystallize around grains of dust, ancient stardust grains left over from long-gone suns may have been the seeds of our solar system's earliest solids.
Schematic diagram of moisture tracking with WAM2layersv3 and how ρ c , τ v , and d v are calculated from the E-DRoPS data set. Credit: Geophysical Research Letters (2026). DOI: 10.1029/2026gl122565
Before rain falls, the moisture that forms it may have traveled anywhere from just a few kilometers to hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away. It usually begins as water that evaporated from oceans, lakes, forests or fields. According to a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters, rain in parts of the United States is increasingly arriving from farther away.
For years, researchers have tried to harness the "twist" of light to transmit data. This property describes how light spirals as it travels forward, and because it can be molded into a virtually infinite number of different twists, it provides a massive, promising alphabet for high-capacity communication.
For around 12,000 years, the Earth has been in the Holocene epoch, a warmer period following a glacial period. During this epoch, however, there have been around 22 abrupt cold phases, each lasting up to several centuries and leading to the expansion of glaciers.
Artist's impression of exoplanet K2-18b. Credit: Hubble, M. Kornmesser
When astronomers talk about directly imaging an exoplanet orbiting a faraway star, the analogy they most commonly use is trying to spot a firefly next to a massive searchlight. An Earth-like exoplanet is incredibly dim—usually between 100 million and 10 billion times fainter than its host star.
A state-backed district cooling network in Dubai supplies more than 1700 buildings
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More than 77 million people in Europe enjoy district heating, where hot water is piped from a central plant to homes and buildings. The US has hundreds of these networks, mostly in multi-building campuses like universities, airports and business districts.