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.
The noise and presence of boats can harm humpback whales’ ability to communicate and socialise, in some cases reducing their communication range by a factor of four. The discovery was made by Dr Rebecca Dunlop from The University of Queensland’s Cetacean Ecology and Acoustics Laboratory, who monitored the acoustics and social behaviour of humpback whales … Read more
In Pavlovian conditioning, people form associations between a neutral stimulus (e.g. a bell) and an upcoming unconditioned stimulus (e.g. food). The neutral stimulus later becomes the conditioned stimulus because it elicits the same response as the unconditioned stimulus. People can learn these associations using a value-based or an uncertainty-based strategy. In value-based learning, learning occurs … Read more
More than half of the tipping points that could push the planet towards a Hothouse Earth and threaten human civilisation are now “active”, a group of leading scientists have warned. The scientists, including Emeritus Professor Will Steffen from The Australian National University (ANU), argue in a commentary in Nature that these nine active tipping points … Read more
Researchers at The University of Tokyo introduced a new physical model that predicts the dynamics of glassy materials based solely on their local degree of atomic structural order. Using computer simulations, they showed how this theory greatly improves our understanding of how glassy liquids become more viscous on cooling. This work has many potential applications … Read more
Workplaces are full of sound, most of which is not helpful to workers trying to do their jobs. Scientists are using physics to understand how conversation, music and other ambient noise is experienced by individuals in a variety of work situations. Takeshi Akita, of Tokyo Denki University, will present a talk on “Effects of sound … Read more
Every night, under the cover of darkness, countless small sea creatures – from squid to krill – swim from the ocean depths to near the surface to feed. This vast animal migration – the largest on the planet and a critical part of Earth’s climate system – has been observed globally for the first time … Read more
Bright light at night interrupts the body’s normal day-night cycles, called circadian rhythms, and can trigger insomnia. In fact, circadian rhythms play a major role in health. Disrupted day-night cycles have even been linked to increased incidence of diseases like cancer, heart disease, obesity, depressive disorders and type 2 diabetes in people who work night … Read more
A fundamental change in our understanding of the childhood kidney cancer Wilms’ tumour is on the horizon, after the discovery of its earliest genetic root by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and their collaborators. By comparing genome sequences from normal kidney tissue and tumours, the team identified patches of normal-looking kidney tissue that in … Read more
Animals that evolved in environments subject to large-scale habitat-altering events like fires and storms are better equipped to handle forest fragmentation caused by human development than species in low-disturbance environments, new research shows. Oregon State University scientists led an international collaboration whose work provides an important road map as conservation managers consider the effects of … Read more
Fossils of a previously unknown species of Early Cretaceous mammal have caught in the act the final steps by which mammals’ multi-boned middle ears evolved, according to a new study. The new species the study unearths – based on fossil specimens collected in China’s Yixian Formation – provides a reference in the evolutionary tree of … Read more