Ecologists have estimated that invasive (non-native) insects cost humanity tens of billions of dollars a year – and are likely to increase under climate change and growing international trade.
New findings from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show suspected water plumes erupting from Jupiter's icy moon Europa. These observations bolster earlier Hubble work suggesting that Europa is venting water vapor. A team of astronomers, led by William Sparks of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, observed these finger-like projections while viewing Europa's limb as the moon passed in front of Jupiter. The study will be published on Sept. 29 in The Astrophysical Journal.
An expert comments on a new study on the Greenland Ice Sheet that provides valuable insight on climate change. The research uses unique research methods to establish new estimates of ice loss for both modern and ancient times, the expert explains.
Your eyes begin to open after a good night of sleep, but something feels weird. You try to take a deep breath but can’t draw air. You can’t sit up, and you may even see a shadow in the corner of the room. This isn’t a nightmare or a medical emergency—you likely just had a case of sleep paralysis.
Addressing fundamental unknowns about the earliest history of Earth’s crust, scientists have precisely dated the world’s oldest rock unit at 4.02 billion years old. Driven by the University of Alberta, the findings suggest that early Earth was largely covered with an oceanic crust-like surface.
Astronomers have captured the sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart 67 million miles from Earth, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This study of Comet 332P is published online in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
A George Washington University researcher has identified a 6,200-year-old indigo-blue fabric from Huaca, Peru, making it one of the oldest-known cotton textiles in the world and the oldest known textile decorated with indigo blue.
A new University of Washington study finds a trend toward earlier sea ice melt in the spring and later ice growth in the fall across all 19 polar bear populations, which can negatively impact the feeding and breeding capabilities of the bears. The paper is the first to quantify the sea ice changes in each polar bear subpopulation across the entire Arctic region using metrics that are specifically relevant to polar bear biology.
Children with mild, persistent asthma did not have worse asthma symptoms after taking acetaminophen (e.g., Tylenol) for pain or fever, compared to using ibuprofen (e.g., Advil), according to the results of a randomized, double-blind clinical trial recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A new study led by the University of Minnesota shows that monkeys in captivity lose much of their native gut bacteria diversity and their gut bacteria ends up resembling those of humans. The results suggest that switching to a low-fiber, Western diet may have the power to deplete most normal primate gut microbes in favor of a less diverse set of bacteria.
According to NAU Scientists, and their new study, global warming began in the Arctic and tropical oceans before thermometers were widespread enough to record the early signal.
If you really want a drink right now, the source of your craving may be a pea-sized structure deep inside the right side of your brain, according to scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
A research team at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has generated functional human and mouse tissue-engineered liver from adult stem and progenitor cells. Tissue-engineered Liver (TELi) was found to contain normal structural components such as hepatocytes, bile ducts and blood vessels.
The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A new study shows that 6 million years ago, when the first human ancestors known as hominins walked the Earth, our galaxy's core blazed forth furiously. The evidence for this active phase came from a search for the galaxy's missing mass.
The University of Washington and The Nature Conservancy have created an animated map showing where mammals, birds and amphibians are projected to move in the Western Hemisphere in response to climate change.
A potentially habitable planet – Proxima Centauri b – has been found virtually next door to Earth: about four light years away. The Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Aviv Ofir is a member of the “Pale Red Dot” project; the team found that the new planet may have balmy temperatures and liquid water, albeit a fast orbit. Can it host life? Further research is underway.
Neuroscientists believe they have figured out how rats solve certain navigational problems. If there’s a “reward” at the end of the trip, specialized neurons in the hippocampus of the brain “replay” the route taken to get it, but backward. And the greater the reward, the more often the rats’ brains replay it.
MIAMI--An international team of scientists used a state-of-the-art computer model, a high-powered supercomputer, and five billion 'virtual' coral larvae to test Charles Darwin's 1880 hypothesis that marine species cannot cross the Eastern Pacific's "impassable" marine barrier. The team, which included University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Associate Professor Claire Paris, found that Darwin's theory still hold true today even under extreme El Niño conditions known to speed up ocean currents.
The fossil remains of a new tiny species of marsupial lion which prowled the lush rainforests of northern Australia about 18 million years ago have been unearthed in the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of remote north-western Queensland.
Beetles with cyclops eyes have given Indiana University scientists insight into how new traits may evolve through the recruitment of existing genes -- even if these genes are already carrying out critical functions.
Paleontologists with the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture have discovered a Tyrannosaurus rex, including a very complete skull. The find, which paleontologists estimate to be about 20 percent of the animal, includes vertebrae, ribs, hips and lower jaw bones.
New research reveals that 50-million-year-old bird fossil specimens, some of which are on display in the Museum’s special exhibition Dinosaurs Among Us, are from a previously unknown relative of the modern-day ostrich.
Scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Málaga have proposed that the long extinct marsupial lion hunted in a very unique way - by using its teeth to hold prey before dispatching them with its huge claws.
Seven milliliters of a king cobra’s venom can kill 20 people. But what exactly is in the snake’s venom? Researchers have pursued that question for decades.
Recent findings indicating the possible discovery of a previously unknown subatomic particle may be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters by theoretical physicists at the University of California, Irvine.
Cambridge, MA -
The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ours. However, new theoretical work suggests that present-day life is actually premature from a cosmic perspective.
A new gem has been added to the vast treasure of Mexican reptiles. Mexican scientists recently described a new and strikingly colored species of earth snake from the mountains of Puebla and Veracruz in east-central Mexico.
Hubble has captured the glow of new stars in the small, ancient galaxies Pisces A and Pisces B. They should've produced the bulk of their stars long ago, but these dwarf galaxies dwelled for billions of years in the Local Void, a region of the universe sparsely populated with galaxies. Now the tiny galaxies have moved into a region packed with galaxies and intergalactic gas triggering star birth.
Dublin, Ireland, Thursday 11th August, 2016 - Scientists have discovered macabre fossil evidence suggesting that 300 million-year-old sharks ate their own young, as fossil poop of adult Orthacanthus sharks contained the tiny teeth of juveniles. These fearsome marine predators used protected coastal lagoons to rear their babies, but it seems they also resorted to cannibalising them when other food sources became scarce.
Venus may have had a shallow liquid-water ocean and habitable surface temperatures for up to 2 billion years of its early history, according to computer modeling of the planet's ancient climate by scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
A solar storm that jammed radar and radio communications at the height of the Cold War could have led to a disastrous military conflict if not for the U.S. Air Force's budding efforts to monitor the sun's activity, a new study finds.
The Gulf of Maine coastline, historically home to one of the richest shellfish populations in the U.S., is undergoing a dramatic change, with once-flourishing wild blue mussels all but disappearing, according to a study led by University of California, Irvine ecologists.
Researchers from Aalto University and the University of Wisconsin utilised a TMS-EEG device, which combines transcranial magnetic stimulation and EEG, to examine how the brain activity of people in the restful non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is affected by whether they dream or do not dream.
Looking different to your parents can provide species with a way to escape evolutionary dead ends, according to new research from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
Scientists have tracked the flight paths of a group of bumblebees throughout their entire lives to find out how they explore their environment and search for food.
New research, using computer models of wave chaos, has shown that three-dimensional tangled vortex filaments can in fact be knotted in many highly complex ways.
In a study published in Scientific Reports, scientists discovered impressive abundance and diversity among the creatures living on the seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ)--an area in the equatorial Pacific Ocean being targeted for deep-sea mining. The study, lead authored by Diva Amon, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), found that more than half of the species they collected were new to science, reiterating how little is known about life on the seafloor in this region.
A study led by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis concludes that as researchers turn to the internet to find study participants, current health-care disparities may persist. They found that getting individuals to go online was difficult, particularly if subjects didn't have high school educations, had incomes below the poverty line or were African-American.
Resveratrol, given to Alzheimer’s patients, appears to restore the integrity of the blood-brain barrier, reducing the ability of harmful immune molecules secreted by immune cells to infiltrate from the body into brain tissues, say researchers. The reduction in neuronal inflammation slowed the cognitive decline of patients, compared to a matching group of placebo-treated patients with the disorder.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified antibodies capable of protecting against Zika virus infection, a significant step toward developing a vaccine, better diagnostic tests and possibly new antibody-based therapies.