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.
A prevailing theory in neuroscience holds that people make decisions based on integrated global calculations that occur within the frontal cortex of the brain. However, Yale researchers have found that three distinct circuits connecting to different brain regions are involved in making good decisions, bad ones and determining which of those past choices to store … Read more
The largest block of tropical forest in the planet may be severely threatened. One of ten species of tree in the world grows in Amazonia, and half of them could be threatened by the middle of the century. This is one of the findings of a recent study published in Nature Climate Change, where four … Read more
Nature, said Ralph Waldo Emerson, is no spendthrift. Unfortunately, he was wrong. New research led by University of Utah biologists William Anderegg, Anna Trugman and David Bowling find that some plants and trees are prolific spendthrifts in drought conditions – “spending” precious soil water to cool themselves and, in the process, making droughts more intense. … Read more
Using sophisticated computer simulations and observations, a team led by researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology has shown how the so-called trans-Neptunian Objects (or TNOs) may have formed. TNOs, which include the dwarf planet Pluto, are a group of icy and rocky small bodies—smaller than planets but larger than … Read more
The future behaviour of terrestrial vegetation under a warmer climate and a CO2 enriched atmosphere is one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate science. Till present the experimental analysis of plants under future environmental conditions has been restricted to very expensive manipulation experiments (e.g. FACE) with very limited spatial extent, plant age, species … Read more
Researchers in Korea reported in 2019 June 24th issue of Nature Astronomy that a giant smash of two clusters of galaxies can form bar structure, an important structure inside many spiral galaxies. It has been known that galaxies, systems made of hundreds of billions of stars, can take many different shapes. The reason why galaxies … Read more
For the first time, astronomers have found two giant clusters of galaxies that are just about to collide. This observation can be seen as a missing ‘piece of the puzzle’ in our understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe, since large-scale structures—such as galaxies and clusters of galaxies—are thought to grow by collisions … Read more
Dying stars that cast off their outer envelopes to form the beautiful yet enigmatic “planetary nebulae” (PNe) have a new heavy-weight champion, the innocuously named PNe “BMP1613-5406”. Massive stars live fast and die young, exploding as powerful supernovae after only a few million years. However, the vast majority of stars, including our own Sun, have … Read more
Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy – NMR spectroscopy for short – is one of the most important methods of physicochemical analysis. It can be used to precisely determine molecular structures and dynamics. The importance of this method is also evidenced by the recognition of ETH Zurich’s two latest Nobel laureates, Richard Ernst and Kurt Wüthrich, for … Read more
Nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Andes mountains, Peru’s coastal region relies on surface water from the Andes for drinking water, industry, and animal and crop farming. The region, which includes Peru’s capital city Lima, is often overwhelmed with rain in the wet season – but by the time the dry season comes, water … Read more