Curated News: Featured: SciWire

• share
• favorite_border

A research team led by Wayne State University, in collaboration with Michigan State University, has identified a single gene in honeybees that separates the queens from the workers. The scientists unraveled the gene’s inner workings and published the results in the current issue of Biology Letters. The gene, which is responsible for leg and wing development, plays a crucial role in the evolution of bees’ ability to carry pollen.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of researchers at the University of Delaware has developed a highly selective catalyst capable of electrochemically converting carbon dioxide — a greenhouse gas — to carbon monoxide with 92 percent efficiency. The carbon monoxide then can be used to develop useful chemicals. The researchers recently reported their findings in Nature Communications.

• share
• favorite_border

A “one-size-fits-all” model to predict the effects of climate change on savanna vegetation isn’t as effective as examining individual savannas by continent, according to research published in Science this week.

• share
• favorite_border

An international research team has determined the distribution of species of vegetation over nearly half the world’s land area could be affected by predicted global warming.

• share
• favorite_border

A small, secretive creature with unlikely qualifications for defying gravity may hold the answer to an entirely new way of getting off the ground. Analysis of high-speed film reveals how salamanders—or at least several species of the Plethodontidae family—achieve vertical lift.

• share
• favorite_border

After careful research, a Texas Tech paleontologist says he and others have discovered a new species of the Triassic-age monster in the wilds of West Texas.

• share
• favorite_border

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, Europe's Herschel Space Observatory, and numerous ground-based telescopes have pieced together the evolutionary sequence of compact elliptical galaxies that erupted and burned out early in the history of the universe.

• share
• favorite_border

During his lifetime, Henry G. Molaison (H.M.) was the best-known and possibly the most-studied patient of modern neuroscience. Now, thanks to the postmortem study of his brain, based on histological sectioning and digital three-dimensional construction led by Jacopo Annese, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, scientists around the globe will finally have insight into the neurological basis of the case that defined modern studies of human memory.

• share
• favorite_border

The piping plover, a threatened shorebird, is expected to capitalize on new habitat created by Hurricane Sandy on hard-hit Long Island, N.Y. The storm created wider sandy beaches, the plover’s preferred habitat.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of scientists has discovered that two of the world’s most devastating plagues – the plague of Justinian and the Black Death, each responsible for killing as many as half the people in Europe—were caused by distinct strains of the same pathogen, one that faded out on its own, the other leading to worldwide spread and re-emergence in the late 1800s. These findings suggest a new strain of plague could emerge again in humans in the future.

• share
• favorite_border

Using the National Science Foundation’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT), astronomer D.J. Pisano from West Virginia University has discovered what could be a never-before-seen river of hydrogen flowing through space. This very faint, very tenuous filament of gas is streaming into the nearby galaxy NGC 6946 and may help explain how certain spiral galaxies keep up their steady pace of star formation.

• share
• favorite_border

Some coral reefs in the Pacific Ocean can not only survive but thrive in waters that have high levels of acidification, according to a Texas A&M University researcher.

• share
• favorite_border

Dr. Ruth Shahack-Gross of Weizmann’s Kimmel Center for Archeological Science, part of a team of Israeli scientists, used high-tech tools to identify proof of repeated fire-building over time. The ancient hearth, found in the Qesem Cave in central Israel, helps answer questions such as, “when did people begin to control and use fire?”

• share
• favorite_border

For the three-toed sloth, a trip to the restroom is no rest at all. It’s a long, slow descent into mortal danger from the safety of home among the upper branches of the forest.

• share
• favorite_border

Sorry, boys. In the end, mothers favor daughters – at least when it comes to Holstein dairy cows and how much milk they produce for their offspring, according to a new study by Kansas State University and Harvard University researchers. The research may have implications for humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Ten years ago, on Jan. 24, 2004, the Opportunity rover landed on a flat plain in the southern highlands of the planet Mars and rolled into an impact crater scientists didn’t even know existed. Cheered on by enthusiastic students, Ray Arvidson, deputy principal investigator of the dual-rover mission, recently took an audience on a whirlwind tour of the rover’s adventures over the next 10 years.

• share
• favorite_border

Setting the stage for possible advances in pain treatment, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland report they have pinpointed two molecules involved in perpetuating chronic pain in mice. The molecules, they say, also appear to have a role in the phenomenon that causes uninjured areas of the body to be more sensitive to pain when an area nearby has been hurt.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately – an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin grafts and implanted ligaments and tendons.

• share
• favorite_border

The gradual warming of the North and Tropical Atlantic Ocean is contributing to climate change in Antarctica, a team of New York University scientists has concluded. The findings, which rely on more than three decades of atmospheric data, show new ways in which distant regional conditions are contributing to Antarctic climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

Using a simple study of eye movements, Johns Hopkins scientists report evidence that people who are less patient tend to move their eyes with greater speed. The findings, the researchers say, suggest that the weight people give to the passage of time may be a trait consistently used throughout their brains, affecting the speed with which they make movements, as well as the way they make certain decisions.

• share
• favorite_border

Extreme air pollution in Asia is affecting the world’s weather and climate patterns, according to a study by Texas A&M University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers.

• share
• favorite_border

The recent Arctic blast that gripped much of the nation will likely contribute to a healthy rise in Great Lakes water levels in 2014, new research shows. But the processes responsible for that welcome outcome are not as simple and straightforward as you might think.

• share
• favorite_border

Until recently measuring a 27-dimensional quantum state would have been a time-consuming, multistage process using a technique called quantum tomography, which is similar to creating a 3D image from many 2D ones. Researchers at the University of Rochester have been able to apply a recently developed, alternative method called direct measurement to do this in a single experiment with no post-processing.

• share
• favorite_border

In studying the differences in brain interactions between religious and non-religious subjects, researchers conclude there must be a biological basis for the evolution of religion in human societies.

• share
• favorite_border

Dogs were domesticated between 9,000 and 34,000 years ago, most likely while humans were still hunting and gathering – before the advent of agriculture.

• share
• favorite_border

ANDRILL team discovers new species while using camera-equipped robot to explore the waters beneath 250-meter thick Ross Ice Shelf.

• share
• favorite_border

Like the strings on a violin or the pipes of an organ, the proteins in the human body vibrate in different patterns, scientists have long suspected. Now, a new study provides what researchers say is the first conclusive evidence that this is true.

• share
• favorite_border

A study of marine life in the temperate coastal waters of the northeast Pacific Ocean shows a reversal of competitive dominance among species of algae, suggesting that increased ocean acidification caused by global climate change is altering biodiversity.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists studying the atmosphere above Barrow, Alaska, have discovered unprecedented levels of molecular chlorine in the air, a new study reports.

• share
• favorite_border

A fascinating paper released today from a team of leading scientists, including Dr. Joel Berger of the Wildlife Conservation Society and University of Montana, reports on the current status of large carnivores and the ecological roles they play in regulating ecosystems worldwide, and finds that a world without these species is certainly scarier than a world with them.

• share
• favorite_border

Electric cars could travel farther on a single charge and more renewable energy could be saved for a rainy day if lithium-sulfur batteries can last longer. PNNL has developed a novel anode that could quadruple the lifespan of these promising batteries.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of “hypervelocity stars” – solitary stars moving fast enough to escape the gravitational grasp of the Milky Way galaxy.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study published in the January 8 issue of PLOS One by Christopher Gobler, Professor in the School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University and colleagues, has found that low pH levels within these regions represent an additional, previously unappreciated, threat to ocean animals.

• share
• favorite_border

Working with a nearly 200-year-old sample of preserved intestine, researchers at McMaster University and the University of Sydney have traced the bacterium behind a global cholera pandemic that killed millions – a version of the same bug that continues to strike vulnerable populations in the world’s poorest regions.

• share
• favorite_border

Competition may have a high cost for at least one species of tropical seaweed. Researchers examining the chemical warfare taking place on Fijian coral reefs have found that one species of seaweed increases its production of noxious anti-coral compounds when placed into contact with reef-building corals, but at the same time becomes more attractive to herbivorous fish.

• share
• favorite_border

An international team of researchers has sequenced the genome of the elephant shark, a curious-looking fish with a snout that resembles the end of an elephant’s trunk. An analysis of the creature’s genome, is published Jan. 9 in the journal Nature.

• share
• favorite_border

The first of a set of unprecedented, super-deep views of the universe contain images of some of the intrinsically faintest and youngest galaxies ever detected. This is just the first of several primary target fields in The Frontier Fields program. The immense gravity in this foreground galaxy cluster, Abell 2744, warps space to brighten and magnify images of far-more-distant background galaxies as they looked over 12 billion years ago, not long after the big bang.

• share
• favorite_border

Like salmon in reverse, long-snouted Bandringa sharks migrated downstream from freshwater swamps to a tropical coastline to spawn 310 million years ago, leaving behind fossil evidence of one of the earliest known shark nurseries.

• share
• favorite_border

After nearly a decade of development, construction, and testing, the world’s most advanced instrument for directly imaging and analyzing planets around other stars is pointing skyward and collecting light from distant worlds.

• share
• favorite_border

Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter's "Great Red Spot."

• share
• favorite_border

Striking new observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope capture, for the first time, the remains of a recent supernova brimming with freshly formed dust. If enough of this dust makes the perilous transition into interstellar space, it could explain how many galaxies acquired their dusty, dusky appearance.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have developed a technique for creating nanoparticles that carry two different cancer-killing drugs into the body and deliver those drugs to separate parts of the cancer cell where they will be most effective.

• share
• favorite_border

Last year’s gigantic landslide at a Utah copper mine probably was the biggest nonvolcanic slide in North America’s modern history, and included two rock avalanches that happened 90 minutes apart and surprisingly triggered 16 small earthquakes, University of Utah scientists discovered.

• share
• favorite_border

Most adults remember their first success in learning to swim using the ‘dog paddle’. This classic maneuver has been used to describe swimming in armadillos, turtles, even humans – just about everything except dogs. Dr. Frank Fish, a professor of biology at West Chester University, set out with his colleagues to understand how real dogs perform the dog paddle. Fish has spent most of his career studying the swimming of marine mammals such as whales. But looking at swimming in dogs afforded Fish the opportunity to investigate how swimming in marine mammals may have evolved from walking in their terrestrial ancestors.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of scientists led by researchers in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago report they have definitively characterized the atmosphere of a super-Earth class planet orbiting another star for the first time.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have developed a way to microscopically view battery electrodes while they are bathed in wet electrolytes, mimicking realistic conditions inside actual batteries.

• share
• favorite_border

University at Buffalo research published today in Infection and Immunity shows that Streptococcus pneumoniae and Streptococcus pyogenes persist on surfaces for far longer than has been appreciated.

• share
• favorite_border

The naked mole rat has been named Vertebrate of the Year by Science Magazine, thanks to the work of University of Rochester biologists Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have found an extensive reservoir in the Greenland Ice Sheet that holds water year round. A surprising discovery, the existence of the 27,000 square mile aquifer adds important information to sea level rise calculations.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists using GPS to study changes in the Earth’s shape accurately forecasted the size and location of the magnitude 7.6 Nicoya earthquake that occurred in 2012 in Costa Rica.