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.
Described in 1981, the genus Biswamoyopterus is regarded as the most mysterious and rarest amongst all flying squirrels. It comprises two large (1.4-1.8 kg) species endemic to southern Asia: the Namdapha flying squirrel (India) and the Laotian giant flying squirrel (Lao PDR). Each is only known from a single specimen discovered in 1981 and 2013, … Read more
The microscopic protists Rhodelphis limneticus and Rhodelphis marinus are genetically ‘sisters’ to red algae, but couldn’t be more different. Red algae are fleshy, large organisms with a simple genome that perform photosynthesis, just like plants. Rhodelphis are single-cell predators with a large, complex genome. The two protists have a chloroplast, though it is not photosynthetic anymore, pointing to their close ties … Read more
Research over the course of the past decade has shown that global warming is more or less proportional to the total amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. This makes it possible to estimate the total amount of CO2 we can still emit while having a chance to limit global warming to a certain level … Read more
A group of scientists led by 2018 Australian of the Year Professor Michelle Simmons have achieved the first two-qubit gate between atom qubits in silicon – a major milestone on the team’s quest to build an atom-scale quantum computer. The pivotal piece of research was published today in world-renowned journal Nature. A two-qubit gate is … Read more
Floating air particles following disasters and other largescale geological events can have a lasting impact on life on Earth. Volcanic ash can be projected up to the stratosphere and halt air traffic by lingering in the atmosphere for months. Particles from industrial accidents have the potential to travel full hemispheres before falling to the ground. … Read more
Perhaps more critically, the research team of geoscientists found that the percentage of high-magnitude earthquakes increases with depth, and may create – although fewer in number – greater magnitude earthquakes years after injection rates decline or stop altogether. The study, led by Ryan M. Pollyea in the Virginia Tech College of Science’s Department of Geosciences, … Read more
Proteins are sequences of amino acids. The amino-acid sequence determines how the protein will fold into a 3D structure. That structure then determines what the protein does. A protein’s amino-acid sequence completely determines its function. However, nobody has figured out how to determine structure or function given the amino-acid sequence. In other words, the mapping … Read more
Global recycling of oceanic crust from the surface of Earth down to the deep mantle and then back to the surface is one of the major features of the plate tectonic regime that makes our planet unique in the Solar system. Just when this process started during the 4.5 billion years of Earth history is … Read more
People have long dreamed of re-shaping the Martian climate to make it livable for humans. Carl Sagan was the first outside of the realm of science fiction to propose terraforming. In a 1971 paper, Sagan suggested that vaporizing the northern polar ice caps would “yield ~10 s g cm-2 of atmosphere over the planet, higher … Read more
A new study finds that climate change will put many conifer species native to small islands around the world on the road to extinction by 2070, even after allowing for some realistic wiggle room in the range of climate conditions those species might be able to withstand. The study, led by researchers from Brown University, … Read more