EUREKA ALERT! - Scientists have uncovered what may be the earliest evidence of “right-handedness” in the animal kingdom, dating back more than half a billion years. The discovery comes from the fossil record of Spriggina floundersi, an organism from the Ediacaran Period that lived about 550 million years ago. New research published today in the...
LIVE SCIENCE - Astronomers have reconstructed the "skeleton" of the cosmos in unprecedented detail, thanks to the largest-ever survey conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The resulting map reveals how galaxies have evolved since the universe's infancy around 13 billion years ago and how they fall together in a vast structure called the...
BBC WILDLIFE MAGAZINE - While studying California dryland biocrusts (communities of living organisms which inhabit the surface of soils), researchers from University of California, Riverside found something unlikely inside moss. Not only could the discovery completely rewrite what we know about moss biology, but it could also offer an insight into how plants first moved...
THE NEW YORK TIMES - Any large earthquake can be dangerous, but the residents of Caracas and Venezuelan coastal cities like La Guaira and Catia La Mar were victims of several unlucky factors. Two quakes in rapid succession, a fault that ruptured toward more populated areas, soft ground and the shallow depth of the temblors...
By James Glanz, Helmuth Rosales and Marco Hernandez | The New York Times |
CNN - Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told residents to brace themselves for an “extraordinarily challenging summer.” A flesh-eating parasite that did hundreds of millions of dollars of damage across the state in the 1960s and ’70s, one that had been considered eradicated from the US for decades, has come back and poses...
EARTH.COM - Moss seems to get by on almost nothing. It colonizes bare rock, survives near-total desiccation, and springs back minutes after rain. The vast majority of land plants form underground partnerships with fungi, trading sugars for nutrients they can’t reach alone. Mosses had always been treated as the exception. New research from California’s desert...
SCITECHDAILY - In some of the driest places on Earth, the ground itself can be alive. What looks like a thin, dark crust on desert soil may actually be a miniature ecosystem, packed with mosses, fungi, bacteria, algae, and tiny animals. These biological soil crusts help hold fragile landscapes together, trapping dust, storing nutrients, and...
NEWSWEEK - A new study is raising questions about one of the most widely held ideas in Alzheimer’s research—suggesting the disease may not start with plaques in the brain after all. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) say the earliest changes could instead happen inside nerve cells, where two key proteins appear to...
THE SACRAMENTO BEE - Every colony of bees is overseen by a queen who produces all the colony's eggs, but what makes a queen bee a queen? For decades, biologists believed that queen bee development was a result of the consumpion of royal jelly, but a new study published on June 3 in Nature scientific...
USA TODAY - Scientists have linked an unusual "cold blob" in the North Atlantic — one eerily similar to the one featured in the film "The Day After Tomorrow," that has a major impact on global weather. While the findings weren't that extreme, a recent study showed the area has cooled by up to 1...
LAIST.COM - An estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees burned as the 2020 Dome Fire swept through 43,000 acres of the Cima Dome in the Mojave Desert. Scientists feared the damage extended far beyond the trees, reaching into the underground networks of fungi that help sustain desert ecosystems. Instead, fungi are thriving underground. That finding —...
REUTERS - Honeybee queens come from the same ordinary fertilized female eggs as worker bees. So how does one bee become a queen - with the responsibility of serving as the colony's only baby maker - rather than just another worker? Until now, scientists believed it was solely because the chosen bee was served a...
LADBIBLE - Scientists are concerned about a patch of unusually cold water in the North Atlantic Ocean, referred to as the 'cold blob' or 'warming hole'. While a particularly powerful El Niño is on the horizon, this patch of ocean near Greenland has cooled by about 1°C over the past few decades. A new study...
EARTH.COM - For years, one idea dominated the story of how a honeybee queen is made. Give an ordinary larva enough royal jelly, and it becomes royalty. It seemed straightforward – a special diet created a special bee. New research now shows that the process is far more complex. A future queen does not grow...
METRO UK - The science of climate change is complex, but the overall effect is pretty simple – the planet is getting warmer. Except, however, for a cool ‘blob’ just southeast of Greenland that no one has ever been able to properly explain. The blob, also called the ‘warming hole’, is a large patch of...
SCIENCE NEWS - A queen bee may be shaped by more than its famous royal diet. The wax of the peanut-shaped chamber where the queen develops has distinct physical and chemical properties that help steer its development, researchers report June 3 in Nature. By analyzing the chamber’s composition and the larvae it harbors, the team...
GIZMODO - Early this year, researchers confirmed why one part of Antarctica bleeds red. In similar yet arguably more concerning news about Earth’s poles, Arctic rivers are turning orange—and scientists now know the real reason behind this shift. In a study published last year, the same team initially documented the orange slush—toxic iron particles fatal...
LIVE SCIENCE - Google wants to release 64 million bacteria-riddled mosquitoes in California and Florida — but scientists aren't concerned. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing an application made by the tech giant for an experimental mosquito release permit, which, counterintuitively, could reduce mosquito populations that carry diseases. The release is part of Google's...
POPULAR SCIENCE - Alaska’s Arctic rivers have a big, orange problem. Previously clear rivers are turning a cloudy orange color due to iron particles, and it’s more than unsightly. The particles can suffocate fish and choke insects, threatening the food web and ecosystem as a whole. Scientists have long pointed to previously frozen soil beginning...
UNIVERSE TODAY - Mars holds a special place in the Solar System. It represents marginal habitability. This means it transitioned from warm and wet and potentially hospitable, to cold and dry and inhospitable. What can its transition tell us about exoplanet habitability? New research to be published in the Planetary Science Journal examines the question...