Curated News: Featured: SciWire

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For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth’s core. The new findings also challenge the theory that underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges are passive boundaries between moving plates. The findings show the East Pacific Rise, the Earth’s dominant mid-ocean ridge, is dynamic as heat is transferred.

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An international team of researchers conducted a comparative genomic analysis to gain insights into the genome structure and evolution of the diatom Fragillariopsis cylindrus, as well as its role in the Southern Ocean.

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Anthropologists at Université de Montréal have dated the oldest human settlement in Canada back 10,000 years.

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Fishing communities can survive ― and even thrive ― as fish abundance and market prices shift if they can catch a variety of species and nimbly move from one fishery to the next, a new University of Washington study finds.

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A team of seismologists analyzing the data from 671 earthquakes that occurred between 30 and 280 miles beneath the Earth's surface in the Pacific Plate as it descended into the Tonga Trench were surprised to find a zone of intense earthquake activity in the downgoing slab. The pattern of the activity along the slab provided strong evidence that the earthquakes are sparked by the release of water at depth.

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Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! The comets are plunging into the star HD 172555, which resides 95 light-years from Earth. The comets were not seen directly around the star. Astronomers inferred their presence when they used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to detect gas that is likely the vaporized remnants of their icy nuclei.

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More than 200 species of “true toads” have fully functional inner ears, but cannot fully use them because they have lost their tympanic middle ears, the part of the ear which transmits sound air pressures from the outside world to the inner ear. These “earless” toads rely on sounds to communicate, so why would they lose a sense that is key to their survival and reproduction?

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An analysis of the strongest tropical storms over the last half-century reveals that higher global temperatures have intensified the storms via enhanced rainfall. Rain that falls on the ocean reduces salinity and allows typhoons to grow stronger.

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Electronic components that can be elongated or twisted – known as “stretchable” electronics – could soon be used to power electronic gadgets, the onboard systems of vehicles, medical devices and other products.

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The study is the first to draw a link between RBC size and microscopic traces of blood vessels and bone cells inside bones. They found that extinct mammal and bird relatives had smaller RBCs and were likely better athletes than earlier terrestrial vertebrates. The timing of RBC-size reduction coincided with Earth's greatest mass extinction 252 mya.

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Most salamanders are homebodies when it comes to mating. But some of the beasts hit the road, traversing miles of rugged terrain unfit for an amphibian in pursuit of a partner from a far-away wetland. (With video of a salamander on a treadmill.)

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Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have captured two festive-looking nebulas, situated so as to appear as one. Known as NGC 248, the nebula resides in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite of our Milky Way galaxy.

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A Washington University physicist practiced at finding tiny diamonds in stardust from the pre-solar universe has repeatedly failed to find them in Younger Dryas sedimentary layers, effectively discrediting the hypothesis that an exploding comet caused the sudden climate reversal at the end of the last Ice Age.

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Cameras on the Dawn Space Probe have performed a very special feat: they have succeeded in taking photos of water ice deposits in places ruled by almost eternal darkness on the dwarf planet Ceres.

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An international team of scientists, including researchers from the University of Chicago, has made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth’s sun. Especially intriguing is the star’s unusual composition, which indicates it ingested some of its planets.

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New observations with ALMA contain compelling evidence that two newborn planets, each about the size of Saturn, are in orbit around a young star known as HD 163296.

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International project to make a diamond that's predicted to be harder than a jeweller's diamond and useful for cutting through ultra-solid materials on mining sites.

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Scientists have called superoxide out as the main culprit behind coral bleaching: The idea is that as this toxin build up inside coral cells, the corals fight back by ejecting the tiny energy- and color-producing algae living inside them. In doing so, they lose their vibrancy, turn a sickly white, and are left weak, damaged, and vulnerable to disease.

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New research opens up the deep history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, looking back millions of years farther than previous techniques allowed—and raises urgent questions about if the giant ice sheet might dramatically accelerate its melt-off in the near future.

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An analysis of 2,000-year-old human remains from several regions across the Italian peninsula has confirmed the presence of malaria during the Roman Empire, addressing a longstanding debate about its pervasiveness in this ancient civilization.

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The “reproducibility crisis” in biomedical research has led to questions about the scientific rigor in animal research, and thus the ethical justification of animal experiments. In research publishing in the Open Access journals PLOS Biology and PLOS ONE on December 2nd, 2016, researchers from the University of Bern have assessed scientific rigor in animal experimentation in Switzerland. The study, commissioned by the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (FSVO), found widespread deficiencies in the reporting of experimental methodology.

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In a new study, Columbia Engineering researchers looked at increasing trends in the severity of tornado outbreaks where they measured severity by the number of tornadoes per outbreak. They found that these trends are increasing fastest for the most extreme outbreaks.

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NIBIB-funded researchers have used fast fMR Ito image rapidly fluctuating brain activity during human thought. fMRI measures changes in blood oxygenation, which were previously thought to be too slow to detect the subtle neuronal activity associated with higher order brain functions. The new discovery is a significant step towards realizing a central goal of neuroscience research: mapping the brain networks responsible for human cognitive functions such as perception, attention, and awareness.

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Why do some animals have extravagant, showy ornaments -- think deer antlers, peacock feathers and horns on beetles -- that can be a liability to survival? Northwestern University researchers have a possible explanation for this puzzling phenomenon of evolution.

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A group of researchers have observed the transit of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet as it passes in front of its parent star.

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A laboratory study of four animal species and their microbiota finds that each species hosts a unique community of microbes that can significantly improve its health and fitness.

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A Northwestern University research team has developed a first-of-its-kind soft, flexible microfluidic device that easily adheres to the skin and measures the wearer’s sweat to show how his or her body is responding to exercise. A little larger than a quarter and about the same thickness, the simple, low-cost device analyzes key biomarkers to help a person decide quickly if any adjustments, such as drinking more water or replenishing electrolytes, need to be made or if something is medically awry.

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Humans, as well as many other organisms, possess internal clocks. The exact timing, however, can differ between individuals – for instance, some people are early risers whereas others are "night owls". Neurobiologist Kristin Tessmar-Raible and her team at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna investigated that underlie such timing variations or "chronotypes". The non-biting midge Clunio marinus has two internal clocks, since it times its reproduction according to sun and moon. The team around Tessmar-Raible and Postdoc Tobias Kaiser were now able to identify relevant genes for this adaptation, and published their results in the current issue of "Nature".

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New Study Finds Water Deeper In Planet than Scientists Previously Believed

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A paper in Nature Communications confirms a major feature in the formation of large igneous provinces — massive worldwide volcanic eruptions that created incredibly high volumes of lava and triggered environmental catastrophes and mass extinctions from 170 to 90 million years ago.

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Bats are not just skillful aviators, they can also reach record-breaking speeds.

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New findings suggest the rate at which CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere has plateaued in recent years because Earth’s vegetation is grabbing more carbon from the air than in previous decades.

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NEW YORK (November 3, 2016)—Recent surveys for hippos in Virunga National Park—the oldest protected area in Africa—have found that the beleaguered behemoths are finally recovering from decades of poaching and habitat loss in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to researchers from the Institut Congolais pour la Conservation de la Nature (ICCN) and WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) who conducted the research.

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The indirect effects of rising CO2 levels, such as changes in soil moisture and plant structure, can have a bigger impact on ecosystems than previously thought. Understanding their importance, in comparison to the direct effects, will improve our understanding of how ecosystems respond to climate change.

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Freshwater fish play a surprisingly crucial role in feeding some of the world’s most vulnerable people, according to a study published Monday (Oct. 24) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Teeth striations of Homo habilis fossil date back 1.8 million years.

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Severe 2012 drought could have been predicted months in advance.

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New research, led by the University of Southampton, has found that human activities such as shipping are having a noticeable impact on marine species and their native habitats.

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Using data from deep-space surveys taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, astronomers have performed a census of the number of galaxies in the universe. The team came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times as many galaxies in the observable universe than previously thought. The results have clear implications for our understanding of galaxy formation, and also helps shed light on an ancient astronomical paradox — why is the sky dark at night?

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Planets that revolve around two suns may surprisingly survive the violent late stages of the stars’ lives, according to new research out of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre and York University. The finding is surprising because planets orbiting close to a single sun, like Mercury and Venus in our solar system, would be destroyed when the aging star swells into a red giant.

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Biologists sequencing the genome of the WO virus, which infects the bacterial parasite Wolbachia, have discovered that the phage carries DNA that produces black widow spider toxin: the first time an animal-like DNA has been found in such a virus.

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The first documented evidence of wild chimpanzee mothers teaching their offspring to use tools has been captured by video cameras set to record chimpanzee tool-using activity at termite mounds in the Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, according to new research from anthropologists at Washington University in St.

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Will astronauts traveling to Mars remember much of it? That’s the question concerning University of California, Irvine scientists probing a phenomenon called “space brain.” UCI’s Charles Limoli and colleagues found that exposure to highly energetic charged particles – much like those found in the galactic cosmic rays that will bombard astronauts during extended spaceflights – causes significant long-term brain damage in test rodents, resulting in cognitive impairments and dementia.

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Spring is beginning earlier than its historical average in three-quarters of United States’ national parks studied in new research that employed models created by UWM climatologist Mark Schwartz.

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Tarsiers – tiny, carnivorous primates – are our distant cousins, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who sequenced and analyzed the tarsier genome. Their findings place tarsiers on the evolutionary branch that leads to monkeys, great apes and humans.

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Global Temperature Report: September 2016

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Hunting, deforestation, and cattle ranching in Mesoamerica have become a triad of trouble for the white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), an ecologically important species now threatened with regional extinction, according WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and a group of experts at a recently held meeting in Belize.

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Researchers has completed a comprehensive investigation of deep coral-reef environments throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago. The study spanned more than two decades and the researchers documented vast areas of 100% coral-cover at depths of 50-90 meters extending for tens of square kilometers, discovering that these deep-reef habitats are home to many unique species.

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The evidence found suggests the earliest ancestors of modern sea turtles may have come from the Deep South.

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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.