News Articles

Researchers say they have uncovered a clue that may help to explain why the earliest evidence of complex multicellular animal life appears around 550 million years ago, after atmospheric oxygen levels on Earth dramatically rose, from 3% to the modern day level of 21%.The group says humans share a method of sensing oxygen with the world's simplest known living animal, Trichoplax adhaerens, suggesting the method has been around since the first animals emerged around 550 million years ago and helps us understand how humans sense oxygen and how oxygen levels drove the very earliest stages of animal evolution.

If you're in one of the areas of the world blanketed by snow, it probably feels like winter is already here - the cold weather has NPR pundits in such a panic they are claiming the snow is worse than global warming because it means (to them) that the climate is already 'unstable'.But December 21st is officially winter and it is bringing with it a lunar eclipse.   Last time that happened?   1554 A.D., according to NASA.

A  parasitic, tropical mistletoe has been discovered near the summit of Mount Mabu in northern Mozambique and, just in time for Christmas, this new wild mistletoe has been named Helixanthera schizocalyx.It was spotted by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew East African butterfly specialist, Colin Congdon, while the team were trekking up the mountain, on a path that took them from the moist montane forest up to where the broad granite peaks break through the dense foliage. Congdon says he quickly realized this species was different from anything he had seen on the mountains in neighboring Malawi and Tanzania, and on closer inspection back at Kew it was confirmed as a new species.

In all of the excitement about 'renewable' energy that can replace fossil fuels, we look to the future - algae, seaweed, switchgrass, we have articles on practically every new idea - but forget to look to the past, like in wood.Unlike 50 years ago, we now know how to make wood truly renewable (the Christmas tree industry was a wonderfully efficient proof of concept) and, say researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT in Oberhausen, Germany, with modern techniques wood is comparable to natural gas in efficiency of heat supply.

A million years is a blink of an eye in evolution but that doesn't mean newer genes matter less in life itself.    

A geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field 1,800 miles underground - inside Earth's core.The magnetic field strength is 25 Gauss, they say, 50 times stronger than the magnetic field at the surface that makes compass needles align north-south, the middle range of what geophysicists predicted, but it puts constraints on the identity of the heat sources in the core that keep the internal dynamo running to maintain this magnetic field.

Metabolic engineering may rescue our energy future. A new strain of yeast that is more efficient at fermenting galactose might make red seaweed a viable future biofuel.Producers of biofuels made from terrestrial biomass crops have had difficulty breaking down recalcitrant fibers and extracting fermentable sugars. The harsh pretreatment processes used to release the sugars also resulted in toxic byproducts, inhibiting subsequent microbial fermentation.But perhaps marine biomass can be more easily degraded to fermentable sugars, leading to production rates and range of distribution higher than terrestrial biomass.

An asteroid the size of a Volvo exploded over Sudan's Nubian Desert in 2008 and initial research was focused on classifying the meteorite fragments soon after they were strewn across the desert and tracked by NASA's Near Earth Object astronomical network. Now in a series of 20 papers published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science and the diversity of these fragments introduces as many questions as it does answers.

Humans are essentially unsatisfied creatures - if you take a starving dog out of the rain and feed him, he will love you forever.   After a few weeks of nice treatment, many humans will decide they deserved to be taken out of the rain and maybe even that they are doing you a favor.So it goes with wealth.   Money does buy happiness, contrary to folk wisdom - it just doesn't last.  In the case of entire nations that get a better standard of living, after about a decade happiness is no longer rising with wealth.   Let's not kid ourselves, people in wealthier nations are happier, on average, than people in poor ones, but it does not rise forever.

SNR B0509-67.5 (or SNR 0509 for short) appears to float serenely in the depths of space, but this apparent calm hides an inner turmoil. The gaseous envelope formed as the expanding blast wave and ejected material from a supernova tore through the nearby interstellar medium.  SNR B0509-67.5 is the visible remnant of a powerful stellar explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small galaxy about 160 000 light-years from Earth.Ripples seen in the shell's surface may be caused either by subtle variations in the density of the ambient interstellar gas, or possibly be driven from the interior by fragments from the initial explosion. The bubble-shaped shroud of gas is 23 light-years across and is expanding at more than 18 million km/h.

In the 1990s, virtually everyone except those closest to environmental issues knew biofuels were a bad idea in their current incarnation.   But evangelists like Al Gore insisted they were the future and concerns about what it would do to the food supply for poor people went unheeded.Now we know - at least in ethanols based on that technology, biofuels are worse for the environment and made food more expensive and Mr. Gore has said he made a mistake endorsing them to garner support for his presidential race but once government policies - and therefore lobbyists - are in place, it is hard to turn back.

Depression in young people strongly predicts how aggressive and violent they may be or may become, but exposure to violence in video games or on television is not related to serious acts of youth aggression or violence, at least among Hispanics in the U.S. according to new research by Dr. Christopher Ferguson from Texas A&M International University. Violence in media and the potential negative effects on adolescent antisocial behavior, and youth violence in particular, is a highly debated issue, both in academic circles and among the general public and policy makers but the research is inconclusive largely due to methodological problems.