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 the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs slammed into the planet, the impact set wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it blocked the sun, which caused the global cooling that ultimately doomed the dinos. That’s the scenario scientists have hypothesized. Now, a new study led by The University … Read more
Researchers from the University of Rennes 1 / CNRS (France), the University of Washington (USA) and the Universities of Yangon and Shwebo (Myanmar) have obtained new paleomagnetic evidence that the Burma Microplate was located close to the equator between 95 and 40 million years ago. These results, published in Nature Geoscience, support a double collision … Read more
Scientists have observed how the human brain represents a familiar piece of music, according to research published in JNeurosci. Their results suggest that listening to and remembering music involve different cognitive processes. Previous research has pinpointed areas of the brain – primarily on the right side – that are activated by music. However, less is known … Read more
Imagine that you are watching a crowded hang-gliding competition, keeping track of a red and orange glider’s skillful movements. Our brain uses separate circuits to achieve such outstanding tracking ability, one specialized to process color information and the other specialized for processing directions of motion. This allows for optimal perceptual performance, but how do we … Read more
Species diversity is higher at the equator than at the poles. In biological terms, this is referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), in which the number of species increases from the poles to the Equator. This ranks among the broadest and most notable biodiversity patterns on Earth. The pattern of species-rich tropics (e.g. … Read more
Many people struggle to keep their weight in check as they get older. Now new research at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has uncovered why that is: Lipid turnover in the fat tissue decreases during ageing and makes it easier to gain weight, even if we don’t eat more or exercise less than before. The study … Read more
There are more different kinds of beetle than just about any other kind of animal – scientists have described about 5,800 different species of mammals, compared with nearly 400,000 species of beetles. Of those 400,000 kinds of beetles, more than 64,000 species are members of the rove beetle family, staphylinidae. These mostly small earwig-looking insects are … Read more
A new method for super-cooling human donor livers to subzero centigrade temperatures without freezing can triple the time that a donor organ stays safe and viable during transportation from the donor to the recipient. This development could greatly expand the availability of healthy livers for transplantation, improve organ utilization, and reduce some of the time … Read more
For more than 30 years scientists have been wondering why all the young star clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy have compact cores, while the old ones show cores with both small and large sizes. Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found the key to solve the puzzle: they demonstrated that the … Read more
A new material could aid in the development of extremely energy efficient IT applications. The material was discovered by an international research team in cooperation with Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The electrons at the oxide interface of the material possess special properties which drastically increase the conversion rate of spin current to charge current. … Read more