Curated News: Featured: SciWire

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A study published in today's Nature gives estimates of sea levels rising twice what previous studies have warned. The rapid melting of Antarctic's Ice Sheet could raise the sea level as much as three feet by the end of this century. The newer model suggests that sea levels could rise as much as 13 meters by 2500 should the Antarctic Ice Shelf, roughly the size of Mexico, continue to melt.

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A changing climate and reduced snow cover across the north is squeezing the snowshoe hare out of its historic range, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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An international team of astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, has obtained the most detailed 'fingerprint' of a rocky planet outside our solar system to date, and found a planet of two halves: one that is almost completely molten, and the other which is almost completely solid.

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Scientists have captured the first high-resolution 3-D images from individual double-helix DNA segments attached to gold nanoparticles, which could aid in the use of DNA segments for nanoscale drug-delivery systems, markers for biological research, and components for electronic devices.

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The earliest instrumental records of Earth’s climate, as measured by thermometers and other tools, start in the 1850s. To look further back in time, scientists investigate air bubbles trapped in ice cores, which expands the window to less than a million years. But to study Earth’s history over tens to hundreds of millions of years, researchers examine the chemical and biological signatures of deep sea sediment archives.

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Researchers describe a new species, "Psychrophrynella chirihampatu," from the Peruvian Andes.

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The Cassini spacecraft has observed geysers erupting on Saturn’s moon Enceladus since 2005. Now, scientists at the University of Chicago and Princeton University have pinpointed a mechanism by which cyclical tidal stresses exerted by Saturn can drive Enceladus’s long-lived eruptions.

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Berkeley Lab scientists have discovered a family of nature-inspired polymers that, when placed in water, spontaneously assemble into hollow crystalline nanotubes. What’s more, the nanotubes can be tuned to all have the same diameter of between five and ten nanometers, depending on the length of the polymer chain.

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UAB researchers use novel approach with historic film to discover just how endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are.

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Researchers have identified a single, universal facial expression that is interpreted across many cultures as the embodiment of negative emotion. The look proved identical for native speakers of English, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language (ASL). It consists of a furrowed brow, pressed lips and raised chin, and because we make it when we convey negative sentiments, such as “I do not agree,” researchers are calling it the “not face.”

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Saving seagrass isn’t just a pipefish dream. That’s the claim of a new Practitioners perspective article written by researchers from Swansea University and Cardiff University who help run the marine conservation charity Project Seagrass.

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According to a recent study, the size of a common ground-nesting bee – an important crop pollinator – has grown smaller in heavily farmed landscapes.

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Ancient lunar ice indicates the moon's axis slowly shifted by 125 miles, or 6 degrees, over 1 billion years. Earth's moon now a member of solar system's exclusive 'true polar wander' club, which includes just a handful of other planetary bodies

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Could the moon once have flopped over on its side like a child’s top? Yes, says a University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) scientist in Nature magazine, after he and collaborators discovered water deposits that may indicate its poles have shifted.

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Research led by Johns Hopkins University scientists has found new persuasive evidence that could help solve a longstanding mystery in astrophysics: Why did the pace of star formation in the universe slow down some 11 billion years ago?

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Solar storms trigger Jupiter’s intense ‘Northern Lights’ by generating a new X-ray aurora that is eight times brighter than normal and hundreds of times more energetic than Earth’s aurora borealis, finds new research involving the University of Southampton.

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UWM paleontologist Stephen Dornbos is on an international research team that has found fossilized multicellular marine algae, or seaweed, dating back more than 555 million years, ranking among the oldest examples of multicellular life on Earth.

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Lester Loschky, associate professor of psychological sciences, recently published a study in PLOS ONE, which suggests viewers may have limited cognitive control of their eye movements while trying to understand films.

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For the first time, a "shock breakout" in an exploding supergiant star has been discovered at visible wavelengths.An international team of astrophysicists led by Peter Garnavich, professor of astrophysics at the University of Notre Dame, has caught two supernovae in the act of exploding.

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Birds living in urban environments are smarter than birds from rural environments. But, why do city birds have the edge over their country friends? They adapted to their urban environments enabling them to exploit new resources more favorably then their rural counterparts, say a team of all-McGill University researchers.

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In December, the ATLAS and CMS experiments reported what could be the first hint of a new massive particle that spits out two photons as it decays. Now, physicists are presenting their latest analyses at the Moriond conference in La Thuile, Italy, including a full investigation of this mysterious bump. After carefully checking, cross-checking and rechecking the data, both experiments have come to the same conclusion—the bump is still there.

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New research by astrophysicists has revealed the fastest ultraviolet winds ever detected near a supermassive black hole more than 10 billion light-years away.

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Russian astronomers who created a global network of robotelescopes MASTER detected that a bright star TYC 2505-672-1 has actually faded significantly.

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NSU's Guy Harvey Research Institute has been tagging and tracking sharks and billfish for years - and they continue to amaze and surprise researchers.

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President Obama announced plans to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Now two scholars are proposing to transform the naval base into a marine research center and international peace park.

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The ability to recognize our offspring and provide preferential care to our own young is nothing unusual for us. This is much more difficult for the poison frog Allobates femoralis, a highly polygamous species that produces rather indistinguishable tadpoles. According to a study conducted by the Messerli Research Institute of Vetmeduni Vienna, male and female frogs have different strategies for offspring discrimination.

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Experienced bumblebees prefer not to share their foraging knowledge with newbies. Two bees were allowed to visit the flowers at a time – one more experienced resident and one newcomer. When the newcomer bees tried to copy the choices of seasoned foragers, the more experienced bees frequently attacked them and tried to evict them from flowers.

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Nearly four billion years ago, life arose on Earth. Life appeared because our planet had a rocky surface, liquid water, and a blanketing atmosphere. But life thrived thanks to another necessary ingredient: the presence of a protective magnetic field. A new study of the young, Sun-like star Kappa Ceti shows that a magnetic field plays a key role in making a planet conducive to life.

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Scientists at Florida State University’s National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) have demonstrated a way to improve the performance of the powerful building blocks of quantum computers by reducing interference from the environment.

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Key factors that can combine to produce a Zika virus outbreak are expected to be present in a number of U.S. cities during peak summer months, new research shows.

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Described in a study published by IEEE Sensors Journal, AutoDietary is like Fitbit and other wearable devices. Only instead of tracking burned calories, it monitors caloric intake – in other words, what we eat – at the neck.

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Snapping shrimps, the loudest invertebrate in the ocean, may be silenced under increasing ocean acidification, a University of Adelaide study has found.

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White storks are addicted to junk food and make round-trips of almost 100km to get their fix – according to new research from the University of East Anglia.

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UM Rosenstiel School researchers evaluated movements of highly mobile sharks in relation to protected areas.

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The remains of a new species of horse-sized dinosaur reveal how Tyrannosaurus rex became one of Earth's top predators, a study suggests.

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Microbes in soil – organisms that exert enormous influence over our planet’s carbon cycle – may not be as adaptable to climate change as most scientists have presumed, according to the results of a 17-year “soil transplant” on a mountainside in eastern Washington.

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UCR study shows biomass grown in areas of poor air quality releases more pollutants when burned than biomass grown in clean air.

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An interview with Mike Vecchione, a zoologist with the NOAA Fisheries National Systematics Lab and an expert on deep-water cephalopods (a group that includes octopods, squids, and cuttlefishes). In this interview, Vecchione describes this mysterious species, and what its discovery says about our understanding of life on Earth.

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The species has been identified from a mostly complete and well preserved fossil skull that the team has named Teyujagua paradoxa.

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Researchers at Princeton University have observed a bizarre behavior in a strange new crystal that could hold the key for future electronic technologies. Unlike most materials in which electrons travel on the surface, in these new materials the electrons sink into the depths of the crystal through special conductive channels.

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Evidence of grid cell activity has been seen in healthy volunteers asked to imagine moving through an environment in new UCL research, which could help to explain why people with Alzheimer's can have problems imagining as well as remembering things.

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A team of researchers from India and the National University of Singapore has discovered a new species of narrow-mouthed frog in the laterite rock formations of India’s coastal plains. The frog, which is the size of a thumbnail, was named Microhyla laterite after its natural habitat.

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More people live close to sea coast than earlier estimated, assess researchers in a new study. These people are the most vulnerable to the rise of the sea level as well as to the increased number of floods and intensified storms. By using recent increased resolution datasets, Aalto University researchers estimate that 1.9 billion inhabitants, or 28% of the world's total population, live closer than 100 km from the coast in areas less than 100 meters above the present sea level.

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If you have trouble sleeping, the neurons in your brain may be firing like those in roundworms randomly seeking food in the absence of clues, says University of Oregon biologist Shawn R. Lockery.

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One of the most critical questions surrounding climate change is how it might affect the food supply for a growing global population. A new study by researchers from Brown and Tufts universities suggests that researchers have been overlooking how two key human responses to climate -- how much land people choose to farm, and the number of crops they plant -- will impact food production in the future.

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Researchers have launched U.S. News Map, a database of more than 10 million newspaper pages that is helping researchers see history with spatial information that hadn’t been available before. Using digitized newspaper articles and cutting-edge search technology, the project is helping researchers see the nation’s history in new ways.

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Warthogs living in Uganda have learned to rid themselves of annoying ticks by seeking out the grooming services of some accommodating neighbors: a group of mongooses looking for snacks.

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Sometimes, a nematode worm just needs to take a nap. In fact, its life may depend on it. New research has identified a protein that promotes a sleep-like state in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Without the snooze-inducing molecule, worms are more likely to die when confronted with stressful conditions, report researchers in the March 7, 2016 issue of the journal GENETICS.

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University of Chicago scientists have discovered evidence in a meteorite that a rare element, curium, was present during the formation of the solar system. This finding ends a 35-year-old debate on the possible presence of curium in the early solar system.

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Small numbers are processed in the right side of the brain, while large numbers are processed in the left side of the brain, new research suggests.