Researchers have discovered a surprising new source of carbon dioxide emissions -- bicarbonates hidden in the lake water used to irrigate local orchards.
Paleobiologists have shed new light on a jaw-snapping species of prehistoric worm using half-a-billion-year-old fossils kept at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
After a limb amputation, brain areas responsible for movement and sensation alter their functional communication. This is the conclusion of a new study. The findings may help to understand why some patients report phantom sensations and others do not.
Bacteria in the gut do far more than help digest food in the stomachs of their hosts; they can also tell the genes in their mammalian hosts what to do. A study describes a form of 'interspecies communication' in which bacteria secrete a specific molecule -- nitric oxide -- that allows them to communicate with and control their hosts' DNA, and suggests that the conversation between the two may broadly influence human health.
Scientists have obtained more precise dates for the Deccan Traps volcanic lava flows, linking peak activity more closely to the asteroid or comet impact 66 million years ago and the coincident mass extinction. But if greenhouse gases emitted before the impact created a hothouse climate that set life up for a fall when the impact cooled the planet, those gases did not coincide with the largest lava flows from the Deccan Traps.
The smelling of food affects physiology and aging, according to research conducted on the model organism, the roundworm. Surprisingly, this relationship is due to a single pair of olfactory neurons.
Fairy circles are round gaps in arid grassland that are distributed very uniformly over the landscape and only occur along the Namib Desert in southern Africa and in parts of Australia. Scientists have got to the bottom of this with soil investigations and drones. The results suggest Australian fairy circles were caused by processes like the weathering of the soil by heavy rainfall, extreme heat and evaporation.
Researchers have documented a group of tanner crabs vigorously feeding at a methane seep on the seafloor off British Columbia -- one of the first times a commercially harvested species has been seen using this energy source.
A newly discovered, diminutive -- by T. rex standards -- relative of the tyrant king of dinosaurs reveals crucial new information about when and how T. rex came to rule the North American roost.
A female stickleback fish, nick-named 'Mary,' has produced offspring from eggs that appear to have been fertilized while they were still inside her, according to scientists.
When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind careens onto the moon's surface at 450 kilometers per second (or nearly 1 million miles per hour), they enrich the moon's surface in ingredients that could make water, scientists have found.
Flip a lobster on its back, and you'll see that the underside of its tail is split in segments connected by a translucent membrane that appears rather vulnerable when compared with the armor-like carapace that shields the rest of the crustacean. But engineers have found that this soft membrane is surprisingly tough, with a microscopic, layered, plywood-like structure that makes it remarkably tolerant to scrapes and cuts.
A group of researchers has recently developed a new software aimed at the analysis of energy generation systems based on kites and drones. They used the software to study the behavior of these systems while transforming the kinetic energy of the wind into useful electrical energy.
Scientists have discovered tadpole-shaped jets coming out of the Sun that may help explain why the corona (the wispy upper atmosphere of our star) is so inexplicably hot.
A researcher searching the shoreline of the Panama Canal for fossil plants instead found an ancient sea cow. An 'emergency fossil excavation' due to rising water levels yielded a remarkably complete skeleton of a new genus and species of dugong, estimated to be about 20 million years old, the first evidence of a marine mammal from the Pacific side of the canal.
Glowing urine may replace the biopsy needle: In detecting organ transplant rejection, a new nanoparticle has proven much faster and more thorough in the lab than a biopsy. When T cells mount their first attack on the organ's cells, the nanoparticle sends an alarm signal into the urine that makes it fluoresce.
