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.
Knowing which direction to go in order to reach a food location or home is important for many animal species, including humans. For human foragers who travel long distances every day hunting and gathering, orientation skills are essential. Haneul Jang and her colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology set out to study … Read more
Diamonds aren’t just a girl’s best friend – they’re also crucial components for hard-wearing industrial components, such as the drill bits used to access oil and gas deposits underground. But a cost-efficient method to find other suitable materials to do the job is on the way. Diamond is one of the only materials hard and … Read more
Climate change can threaten species and extinctions can impact ecosystem health. It is therefore of vital importance to assess to which degree animals can respond to changing environmental conditions – for example by shifting the timing of breeding – and whether these shifts enable the persistence of populations in the long run. To answer these … Read more
A historic 120-year-old data set is allowing researchers to confirm what data modeling systems have been predicting about climate change: Climate change is increasing precipitation events like hurricanes, tropical storms and floods. Researchers analyzed a continuous record kept since 1898 of tropical cyclone landfalls and rainfall associated with Coastal North Carolina storms. They found that … Read more
A new study has found that an Inuit population in Canada’s Arctic are genetically distinct from any known group, and certain genetic variants are correlated with brain aneurysm. Geographically isolated populations often develop unique genetic traits that result from their successful adaptation to specific environments. Unfortunately, these adaptations sometimes predispose them to certain health issues … Read more
Meteoroids coming from outer space are randomly shaped, but many of these, which land on earth as meteorites, are found to be carved into cones. Scientists have now figured out how the physics of flight in the atmosphere leads to this transformation. The progression, discovered through a series of replication experiments in New York University’s … Read more
Showcasing precise control at the quantum level, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method for making an ion (electrically charged atom) display exact quantities of quantum-level motion–any specific amount up to 100 packets of energy or “quanta,” more than five times the previous record high of 17. Quantum … Read more
Tourists on safari can provide wildlife monitoring data comparable to traditional surveying methods, suggests research appearing July 22 in the journal Current Biology. The researchers analyzed 25,000 photographs from 26 tour groups to survey the population densities of five top predators (lions, leopards, cheetahs, spotted hyenas, and wild dogs) in northern Botswana, making it one of … Read more
A team of scientists from the University of Exeter and the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology in the UK has conducted pioneering new research into why both surges and slowdowns of warming take place. Using sophisticated climate models the team, led by PhD student Femke Nijsse, discovered if the climate was more sensitive to CO2 … Read more
Researchers from the University of Cambridge used volcanic minerals known as ‘crystal clocks’ to calculate how long magma can be stored in the deepest parts of volcanic systems. This is the first estimate of magma storage times near the boundary of the Earth’s crust and the mantle, called the Moho. The results are reported in … Read more