SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
When Kīlauea Volcano erupted in 2018, it injected millions of cubic feet of molten lava into the nutrient-poor waters off the Big Island of Hawai’i. The lava-impacted seawater contained high concentrations of nutrients that stimulated phytoplankton growth, resulting in an extensive plume of microbes that was detectable by satellite. A study led by researchers at … Read more
Scientists have designed an ultra-miniaturised device that could directly image single cells without the need for a microscope or make chemical fingerprint analysis possible from a smartphone. The device, made from a single nanowire 1000 times thinner than a human hair, is the smallest spectrometer ever designed. It could be used in potential applications such … Read more
In power electronics, semiconductors are based on the element silicon – but the energy efficiency of silicon carbide would be much higher. Physicists of the University of Basel, the Paul Scherrer Institute and ABB explain what exactly is preventing the use of this combination of silicon and carbon in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters. Energy … Read more
The discovery of a previously unknown species of hadrosaur dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period is reported in Scientific Reports this week. The fossil, found in Japan, furthers our understanding of hadrosaur diversity in the Far East and hadrosaurid evolution during the Late Cretaceous Period (100.5-66 million years ago). Hadrosaurs are among the most successful group of … Read more
The scent of a lemon could help people feel better about their body image, new findings from University of Sussex research has revealed. In a new study from the university’s Sussex Computer-Human Interaction (SCHI) Lab, people feel thinner and lighter when they experienced the scent of a lemon. The research, carried out in collaboration with … Read more
Hearing casual chatter of birds after predator call reassures squirrels to come off high alert when they feel safe to communicate the absence of danger or share their location. To test this hypothesis, the researchers observed the behavior of 54 wild Eastern gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) in public parks and residential areas in Ohio in … Read more
The death march of a segmented bilaterian animal unearthed from ~550-million-year-old rocks in China shows that the oldest mobile and segmented animals evolved by the Ediacaran Period (635-539 million years ago). The research was published in Natureon Sept. 4 by an international research team from China and the U.S. The origin of bilaterally symmetric animals (or … Read more
Quasars are the Universe’s brightest beacons; shining with magnitudes more luminosity than entire galaxies and the stars they contain. In the center of this light, at the heart of a quasar, researchers think, is an all-consuming black hole. Researchers, for the first time, have observed the accelerated rate at which eight quasars consume interstellar fuel … Read more
Electoral gerrymandering, in which political districts are drawn to favor one party, has attracted renewed attention of late. The centuries-old practice operates to bias the outcome of elections. Now researchers led by Penn biologist Joshua B. Plotkin and the University of Houston’s Alexander J. Stewart have identified another impediment to democratic decision making, one that … Read more
DNA is a long chemical sequence that carries genetic information. Inspired by this biological system, in recent years many research teams have been exploring how to store and then decode information within synthetic macromolecules, also called polymers*. In a leap forward in this field, researchers at the Institut Charles Sadron (CNRS) and the Institut de … Read more