Scientists have shed new light on the world's history of climate change. The Pacific Ocean has remained the largest of all oceans on the planet for many million years. Scientists have now recovered 6.3 kilometers of sediment cores from water depths between 4.3 and 5.1 km and drilled 6.3 km of sediment cores at eight locations. The cores offered an excellent archive of Earth's history and showed how global climate development during the past 55 million years is mirrored and influenced by geochemical processes deep within the ocean.
Despite recent evidence that populations of river herring are dangerously low, ecologists say removing dams and adding fishways can still revive alewife and blueback herring numbers in New England and help to restore a long-neglected natural link between marine and freshwater ecosystems.
A mutation in a single gene in horses that is critical for the ability to perform ambling gaits, for pacing and that has a major effect on performance in harness racing, new research shows. Experiments on this gene in mice have led to fundamental new knowledge about the neural circuits that control leg movements. The study is a breakthrough for our understanding of spinal cord neuronal circuitry and its control of locomotion in vertebrates.
Researchers have identified the genetic cause of a rare and fatal bone disease by studying frozen skin cells that were taken from a child with the condition almost fifty years ago. Their study details how the MT1-MMP gene leads to the disease known as Winchester syndrome.
Graphene-based materials kill bacteria through one of two possible mechanisms. Researchers have now compared the antibacterial activity of graphite, graphite oxide, graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide using the model bacterium Escherichia coli.
As the national waistline expands, so do pools of intra-cellular fat known as lipid droplets. Although most of us wish our lipid droplets would vanish, they represent a cellular paradox: on the one hand droplets play beneficial roles by corralling fat into non-toxic organelles. On the other, oversized lipid droplets are associated with obesity and its associated health hazards.
Significant declines were found in breeding chinstrap penguins in the vastly warming Antarctic Peninsula, where it's warming faster than, or as fast as, any other place on Earth.
An ant biologist and a computer scientist has revealed that the behavior of harvester ants as they forage for food mirrors the protocols that control traffic on the Internet.
A drug originally developed to stop cancerous tumors may hold the potential to prevent abnormal brain cell growth and learning disabilities in some children, if they can be diagnosed early enough, a new animal study suggests.
Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, more intense rainstorms and more frequent heat waves are among the planetary woes that may come to mind when climate change is mentioned. Now, researchers say an increased risk of avian influenza transmission in wild birds can be added to the list.
As an animal develops from an embryo, its cells take diverse paths, eventually forming different body parts -- muscles, bones, heart. In order for each cell to know what to do during development, it follows a genetic blueprint, which consists of complex webs of interacting genes called gene regulatory networks. Biologists have spent the last decade or so detailing how these gene networks control development in sea-urchin embryos. Now, for the first time, they have built a computational model of one of these networks.
(Phys.org)—When Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Frances Houle considers the national alarm that has sounded over the shortage of rare earth materials—critical ingredients in a wide range of clean-energy and medical technologies—she tends not to panic.
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