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.
Scientists have discovered why climate change may be contributing to the decline of some British butterflies and moths, such as Silver-studded Blue and High Brown Fritillary butterflies. Many British butterflies and moths have been responding to warmer temperatures by emerging earlier in the year and for the first time scientists have identified why this is … Read more
There is increasing interest around the world in using timber as a lighter, more sustainable construction alternative to steel and concrete. While wood has been used in buildings for millennia, its mechanical properties have not, as yet, measured up to all modern building standards for major superstructures. This is due partly to a limited understanding … Read more
A new Swansea University study has revealed how common shore crabs can navigate their way around a complex maze and can even remember the route in order to find food. The team of scientists, led by marine biologist Dr Ed Pope and master’s student Ross Davies, wanted to see if common shore crabs could learn … Read more
Amazonia is home to the greatest number of species on earth, many now threatened, but a new study published October 22 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Jason Weir from the University of Toronto and Trevor Price from the University of Chicago hammers home Amazonia’s importance, showing that it is not only a place with many … Read more
Tadpoles of frogs that can typically regrow amputated tails or limbs lost their ability to regenerate after researchers blocked the expression of a newly identified gene that is one of the drivers for this regrowth. Furthermore, scientists hypothesize that the loss of appendage regeneration in warm-blooded animals might have been caused by the gain or … Read more
Fish may be more tolerant than previously thought to periods of low oxygen in the oceans, new research shows. The surprising discovery, from research by the University of Exeter and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), was made when investigating the importance of carbon dioxide (CO2) during “hypoxic” (low oxygen) events. The … Read more
A group of neurons called the corticobasal ganglia projecting neurons are important for vocal learning in young birds, but not in adult birds, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Birdsong, like human speech, is a series of precisely timed movements learned by copying the vocalizations of … Read more
People prefer songs with only a moderate amount of uncertainty and unpredictability, according to research recently published in JNeurosci. Scientists have long struggled to understand why activities of little apparent evolutionary value, like listening to music, bring so much pleasure. Previous studies have linked listening to and making predictions about music with activation in reward centers … Read more
The next time a river overflows its banks, don’t just blame the rain clouds. Earth system scientists from the University of California, Irvine have identified another culprit: leafy plants. In a study published today in Nature Climate Change, the UCI researchers describe the emerging role of ecophysiology in riparian flooding. As an adaptation to an … Read more
Researchers reporting in the journal Current Biology on October 21 have captured the loudest bird calls yet documented. The calls are the mating songs of male white bellbirds, which live atop mountains in the Amazon region of northern Brazil. The calls have a sound pressure about three times that of screaming pihas, now the second loudest bird … Read more