Curated News: Featured: SciWire

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A pair of Georgia Tech studies take a closer look at puzzling summertime streak, trying to understand the nature of these features: water-related or not?

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Among polar bears, only pregnant females den up for the colder months. So how do the rest survive the extreme Arctic winters? New research points to one potential answer: genetic adaptations related to production of nitric oxide, a compound cells use to help convert nutrients into energy or heat.

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WCS and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) announced today an online tool that will allow law enforcement officials to access a database that tracks offenders of wildlife crime in real-time and across the country.

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Genetic adaptations for life at high elevations found in residents of the Tibetan plateau likely originated around 30,000 years ago in peoples related to contemporary Sherpa. These genes were passed on to more recent migrants from lower elevations via population mixing, and then amplified by natural selection in the modern Tibetan gene pool, according to a new study by scientists from the University of Chicago and Case Western Reserve University, published in Nature Communications on Feb. 10. The transfer of beneficial mutations between human populations and selective enrichment of these genes in descendent generations represents a novel mechanism for adaptation to new environments.

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A scientific team from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has made a surprising discovery about the brain's hunger-inducing neurons, a finding with important implications for the treatment of obesity

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An international team of researchers has discovered that a process that turns on photosynthesis in plants likely developed on Earth in ancient microbes 2.5 billion years ago, long before oxygen became available.

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Using electrons more like photons could provide the foundation for a new type of electronic device that would capitalize on the ability of graphene to carry electrons with almost no resistance even at room temperature – a property known as ballistic transport.

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Minimizing a person’s sight for as little as a week may help improve the brain’s ability to process hearing.

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Humans living in densely populated urban areas have a profound impact not only on their physical environment, but also on the health and fitness of native wildlife. For the first time, scientists have found a direct link between the degree of urbanization and the prevalence and severity of two distinct parasites in wild house finches.

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A team of Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) scientists created maps of habitat corridors connecting protected areas in the tropics to incorporate biodiversity co-benefits into climate change mitigation strategies. Drs. Patrick Jantz, Scott Goetz, and Nadine Laporte describe their findings in an article entitled, “Carbon stock corridors to mitigate climate change and promote biodiversity in the tropics,” available online in the journal Nature Climate Change on January 26.

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Imagine living on a planet with seasons so erratic you would hardly know whether to wear Bermuda shorts or a heavy overcoat. That is the situation on a weird, wobbly world called Kepler-413b found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope.

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All creatures great and small, including fruitflies, need sleep. The timing of when we sleep versus are awake is controlled by cells in tune with circadian rhythms of light and dark. Most of the molecular components of that internal clock have been worked out. On the other hand, what drives how much we sleep is less well understood. Researchers report a new protein involved in the homeostatic regulation of sleep in the fruitfly.

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The capacity of our working memory is better explained by the quality of memories we can store than by their number, a team of psychology researchers has concluded.

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Researchers from UT and the University of Arizona, Tucson, studied how forces such as volatile market conditions and technological substitutes affect the value of pest control services provided by Mexican free-tailed bats on cotton production in the U.S. They found the services are impacted by the forces to the tune of millions of dollars.

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A study has found that the time it takes neural networks in the brain to make decisions is remarkably stable regardless of size: a finding that could make it easier to achieve the goal of the President's BRAIN Initiative established last spring.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.