Every day beneath our feet, microbial decomposers tussle with soil minerals over a vast reservoir of carbon stored in the ground — and scientists know almost nothing about how this jostling plays out ...

MADISON — In the rogues' gallery of microscopic infectious agents, the prion is the toughest hombre in town. Warped pathogens that lack both DNA and RNA, prions are believed to cause such fatal brain ...

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our ...

Minerals can be either primary or secondary. Primary means they were formed as igneous rocks in the form of molten extrusive lava, which cools quickly, or as intrusive subsurface bodies that cool ...

Soil stores more carbon than Earth's atmosphere and plants combined, which makes the speed of soil carbon's decomposition an important variable in models used to predict changes to our climate.

Plants need phosphorus to grow. Farmers’ use of mineral phosphorus fertilisers has greatly increased soil phosphorus fertility and, consequently, crop yields. However, these fertilisers are made from ...

There are many reports on soil parameters that have both yield-reducing and yield-favouring potential. However, only a few are available on the index soil properties of fibrous minerals containing ...

New research has shown that water movement in clay-rich soils can lift stone artifacts toward the surface—exerting a natural influence on how archaeological materials are distributed across the ...