First Pass

6 stories from 3 sources

Science pushes past old boundaries, from electron transfer to Arctic ecology

Day’s Recap

Supporting Articles

A total solar eclipse on August 12 will pass over Greenland, Iceland, Portugal and northern Spain, giving central and western Europe its first widely visible total eclipse since 1999. The event will offer observers a rare view of the Sun's corona and scientists a chance to study it.

8:39 AMBloomberg Markets

Chemists developed a catalyst that releases electrons directly into solution, bypassing a long-standing rule about which molecules receive electrons during chemical reactions. The method could enable reactions and chemical structures that conventional approaches cannot reach.

7:02 AMScienceDaily

A warming climate is allowing beavers to expand into Canada’s Arctic, where they are avoiding Inuit hunters and establishing themselves in unfamiliar terrain. Their arrival is reshaping the waterways and landscapes they occupy.

5:00 AMThe New York Times

Other Developments

A curated list of other prominent stories from this day.

Engravings on ostrich eggshells from southern Africa more than 60,000 years ago contain recurring grids, parallel lines, right angles and repeated shapes. Their consistency suggests the designs followed deliberate rules and may have been mentally planned before carving.

7:51 AMScienceDaily

Researchers used glycerol to stimulate bacteria in uranium-contaminated mine water, causing about 95% of the dissolved uranium to disappear within 130 days. The microbes converted it into an unusually stable uranium compound that is less likely to spread.

7:30 AMScienceDaily

New research suggests dinosaurs' lack of truly tiny species cannot be explained by physiology alone. Early mammals may have occupied small-bodied ecological niches, limiting the space available for mouse-sized dinosaurs even as dinosaurs constrained mammals from evolving into large land animals.

6:15 AMScienceDaily

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