Prolonged drought likely helped to fuel civil conflict and the eventual political collapse of Mayapan, the ancient capital city of the Maya on the Yucatán Peninsula, suggests a new study that was published with the help of a University at Albany archeologist.
A previously overlooked factor — the position of continents — helps fill Earth’s oceans with life-supporting oxygen. Continental movement could ultimately have the opposite effect, killing most deep ocean creatures.
The reconstructed megadolon (Otodus megalodon) was 16 meters long and weighed over 61 tons. It was estimated that it could swim at around 1.4 meters per second, require over 98,000 kilo calories every day and have stomach volume of almost 10,000 liters.
Lungs are essential to many vertebrates including humans. However, four living amphibian clades have independently eliminated pulmonary respiration and lack lungs, breathing primarily through their wet skin. Little is known of the developmental basis of lung loss in these clades.
Children who enter preschool with good vocabulary and attention skills do better in class, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Early Education and Development. The findings based on 900 four-year-olds from eight US states show how a child’s ability to engage with teachers and peers is affected by the range of words they know.
Consuming methylmercury-contaminated fish poses a hazard to human health. New research published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry may help environmental resource management officials predict which regions are likely to have fish with high concentrations of this toxin, without the need for extensive testing.
It is common for young animals, in particular mammals, to play. Researchers at Linköping University (LiU), Sweden, have for the first time mapped the development of play in young chickens. The results show that the young chickens spend lots of time playing in different ways – just like puppies and kittens.
Researchers for the first time have identified the parts of the brain involved in a less-commonly studied trigger of misophonia, a condition associated with an extreme aversion to certain sounds.
A first-in-human multicenter trial involving Mayo Clinic used a new ablation technique for patients with ventricular tachycardia, an abnormally rapid heart rhythm that is a leading cause of sudden cardiac death worldwide.
A new study released in the European Journal of Ageing found that having a partner had a greater impact than having children in helping to stave off loneliness among older adults during the pandemic’s first wave. Researchers at the University of Rhode Island, University of Florence, University of Maryland Baltimore County and the SGH Warsaw School of Economics analyzed data on more than 35,000 adults aged 50 and older from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to examine if unpartnered and childless older adults reported more loneliness and how that changed over the course of the pandemic.
Researchers have devised a plasma-based way to produce and separate oxygen within the Martian environment. It's a complementary approach to NASA's Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment and may deliver high rates of molecule production per kilogram of instrumentation sent to space. In the Journal of Applied Physics, the team presents the method for harnessing and processing local resources to generate products on Mars.
Researchers at NSU’s Guy Harvey Research Institute (GHRI) used high-tech sensors to track billfish – and now we now have, for the first time, a detailed view of exactly how these fish behave after they are caught and released.
For birds that inhabit developed areas of the Pacific Northwest, the reduction in noise and commotion from COVID-19 lockdowns may have allowed them to use a wider range of habitats in cities, a new study finds.
As the effects of climate change mount, ecosystem restoration in the US West has garnered significant public attention, bolstered by President Joe Biden's America the Beautiful plan to conserve 30% of US land and water by 2030. Writing in BioScience, William J. Ripple and 19 colleagues follow up on the Biden plan with a proposal for a "Western Rewilding Network," comprising 11 large reserve areas already owned by the federal government.
So-called "aromatic" blueberries taste better. With new research, University of Florida scientists now know why, and their findings will help future plant breeding efforts.
Using highly detailed simulations, a collaborative team led by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin has made a breakthrough discovery that star formation is a self-regulatory process, knowledge that may allow researchers to understand star formation within our own and far away galaxies.