From orbit, today’s space-based laser instruments measure Earth’s forests and terrain one narrow line at a time. Between those lines are enormous gaps that include millions of acres of land scientists never directly measure. NASA’s CASALS instrument will blend machine learning with an ultra-compact lidar instrument to adaptively ‘sweep’ large swaths of Earth’s surface. This
Denmark and other Scandinavian countries are seen as top destinations for PhD candidates from other European nations.Credit: Bumble Dee/Shutterstock How much do PhD students earn? The first comprehensive overview of PhD income shows vast imbalances across much of Europe1. The report, which investigated the earnings of first-year doctoral candidates in 2024–25 across 26 countries, was
One in five reptile species and two in five amphibian species are threatened with extinction1,2, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In Central America, for instance, numbers of variable harlequin frogs (Atelopus varius) have fallen by more than 80% since the 1980s. In the Seychelles, the population of giant bronze geckos
