SCIENCE

Scientists from the University of Leicester have shed new light on why mass extinctions have occurred through history — and how this knowledge could help in predicting upcoming ecological catastrophes. The international team has investigated sudden ecological transitions throughout history, from mass mortality events in the far past to more ... Read More »

Evidence from the teeth of Anglo Saxon children could help identify modern children most at risk from conditions such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Researchers from the University of Bradford found that analysis of milk teeth of children’s skeletons from a 10th Century site in Northamptonshire, England, gave a ... Read More »

Semi-autonomous and autonomous machines and robots can become moral machines using annotated decision trees containing ethical assumptions or justifications for interactions with animals. Machine ethics is a young, dynamic discipline, which primarily targets people, not animals. However, it is important that animals are kept from harm when encountering these machines ... Read More »

Asian colobine monkeys are unable to taste natural sugars, and in fact have a generally poor sense of taste. This is according to research led by Emiko Nishi of the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan. Nishi and her colleagues found that the receptors on the tongues of ... Read More »

The mystery behind lunar swirls, one of the solar system’s most beautiful optical anomalies, may finally be solved thanks to a joint Rutgers University and University of California Berkeley study. The solution hints at the dynamism of the moon’s ancient past as a place with volcanic activity and an internally ... Read More »

New research published in Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry reveals that low doses of a commonly used pesticide potentially harm the Northern Leopard frog by inhibiting their brain development. The pesticide chlorpyifos, which has been used since 1965 in both agricultural and non-agricultural areas, had clear effects on Northern Leopard tadpoles’ ... Read More »

Hydropower can generate electricity without emitting greenhouse gases but can cause environmental and social harms, such as damaged wildlife habitat, impaired water quality, impeded fish migration, reduced sediment transport, and diminished cultural and recreation benefits of rivers. A new River Research and Applications study considers these issues as they relate ... Read More »

Wiley. “What are the effects of alcohol access on risky behaviors in young adults?.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 6 September 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180906082037.htm>. Wiley. (2018, September 6). What are the effects of alcohol access on risky behaviors in young adults?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 6, 2018 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180906082037.htm Wiley. “What are the effects of ... Read More »

Statins are not associated with a reduction in cardiovascular disease (conditions affecting the heart and blood vessels) or death in healthy people aged over 75, finds a study published by The BMJ today. However, in those with type 2 diabetes, statins were related to a reduction in cardiovascular disease and ... Read More »

Routine testing for prostate cancer is not recommended for most men because the benefit is small and uncertain and there are clear harms, say a panel of international experts in The BMJ today. But they acknowledge that some men, such as those with a family history of prostate cancer, may ... Read More »

Solar-powered water splitting is a promising means of generating clean and storable energy. A novel catalyst based on semiconductor nanoparticles has now been shown to facilitate all the reactions needed for ‘artificial photosynthesis’. In the light of global climate change, there is an urgent need to develop efficient ways of ... Read More »

56 million years ago, the Earth experienced an exceptional episode of global warming. In a very short time on a geological scale, within 10 to 20’000 years, the average temperature increased by 5 to 8 degrees, only returning to its original level a few hundred thousand years later. Based on ... Read More »

Dr Max Ortiz Catalan of Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has developed a new theory for the origin of the mysterious condition, ‘phantom limb pain’. Published in the journal Frontiers in Neurology, his hypothesis builds upon his previous work on a revolutionary treatment for the condition, that uses machine learning ... Read More »

In 1962, an Alemannic burial site containing human skeletal remains was discovered in Niederstotzingen (Baden-Württemberg, Germany). Researchers at the Eurac Research Centre in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, and at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, have now examined the DNA of these skeletal remains. This ... Read More »

Wolf 503b, an exoplanet twice the size of Earth, has been discovered by an international team of Canadian, American and German researchers using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The find is described in a new study whose lead author is Merrin Peterson, an Institute for research on exoplanets (iREx) ... Read More »

Analysis of fatty residue in pottery from the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia revealed evidence of fermented dairy products — soft cheeses and yogurts — from about 7,200 years ago, according to an international team of researchers. “This pushes back cheese-making by 4,000 years,” said Sarah B. McClure, associate professor of ... Read More »

A census of annual pup production by Australian fur seal populations revealed the first reduction since species-wide protection was implemented in 1975, according to a study published September 5 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rebecca McIntosh of the Phillip Island Nature Parks in Victoria, Australia, and colleagues. The ... Read More »

Bottlenose dolphins are being exposed to chemical compounds added to many common cleaning products, cosmetics, personal care products and plastics, according to a new study in GeoHealth, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The new research found evidence of exposure to these chemical compounds, called phthalates, in 71 percent ... Read More »

Ever wondered how groups of cells managed to build your tissues and organs while you were just an embryo? Using state-of-the-art techniques he developed, UC Santa Barbara researcher Otger Campàs and his group have cracked this longstanding mystery, revealing the astonishing innerworkings of how embryos are physically constructed. Not only ... Read More »

Yale University researchers have demonstrated one of the key steps in building the architecture for modular quantum computers: the “teleportation” of a quantum gate between two qubits, on demand. The findings appear online Sept. 5 in the journal Nature. The key principle behind this new work is quantum teleportation, a ... Read More »