The speed of environmental change is very challenging for wild organisms. When exposed to a new environment individual plants and animals can potentially adjust their biology to better cope with new pressures they are exposed to — this is known as phenotypic plasticity. New research shows that early plasticity can influence the ability to subsequently …
Ancestral variation guides future environmental adaptations Read More »
The vital role of oxytocin — the ‘love hormone’ — for social attachments is being called into question. More than forty years of pharmacological and behavioral research has pointed to oxytocin receptor signaling as an essential pathway for the development of social behaviors in prairie voles, humans, and other species, but a genetic study shows …
Prairie voles without oxytocin receptors can bond with mates and young Read More »
Scientists are working to understand the cause and how the events of the LPME unfolded by focusing on mercury from Siberian volcanoes that ended up in sediments in Australia and South Africa.
Perovskite semiconductors promise highly efficient and low-cost solar cells. However, the semi-organic material is very sensitive to temperature differences, which can quickly lead to fatigue damage in normal outdoor use. Adding a dipolar polymer compound to the precursor perovskite solution helps to counteract this. The solar cells produced in this way achieve efficiencies of well …
Stability of perovskite solar cells reaches next milestone Read More »
A ‘back-projection’ technique reveals new details of the volcanic eruption in Tonga that literally shook the world.
A new species of microalgae was found in water from a home aquarium. While analyzing DNA samples taken from the algae, researchers discovered Medakamo hakoo, whose DNA sequence didn’t match any on record. This new species is the smallest known freshwater green algae, with inherent qualities which enable it to be cultured stably at high …
Scientists develop a newer, more accurate method for calculating methane emissions from offshore oil and gas production that suggests the United Kingdom severely underestimates its greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers conclude that as much as five times more methane is being leaked from oil and gas production than reported.
A new study finds that microorganisms live in richly diverse and interdependent communities in high-temperature geothermal environments in the deep sea. By constructing genomes of 3,635 Bacteria and Archaea from 40 different rock communities, researchers discovered at least 500 new genera and have evidence for two new phyla. Samples from the deep-sea Brothers volcano were …
Immense diversity and interdependence in high temp deep-sea microorganism communities Read More »
Scientists carve a path to profit from carbon capture by creating a system that efficiently captures CO2 and converts it into one of the world’s most widely used chemicals: methanol.Scientists carve a path to profit from carbon capture by creating a system that efficiently captures CO2 and converts it into one of the world’s most …
Scientists unveil least costly carbon capture system to date Read More »
Scientists are drawing inspiration from plants to develop new techniques to separate and extract valuable minerals, metals and nutrients from resource-rich wastewater.Scientists are drawing inspiration from plants to develop new techniques to separate and extract valuable minerals, metals and nutrients from resource-rich wastewater.
