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.
Crude oil and gas naturally escape from the seabed in many places known as “seeps”. There, these hydrocarbons move up from source rocks through fractures and sediments towards the surface, where they leak out of the ground and sustain a diversity of densely populated habitats in the dark ocean. A large part of the hydrocarbons, … Read more
Cold water released from Lake Shasta into the Sacramento River to benefit endangered salmon can be detrimental to young green sturgeon, a threatened species adapted to warmer water. But scientists at UC Santa Cruz and the National Marine Fisheries Service have found a way to minimize this apparent conflict through a water management strategy that … Read more
Feeling unhappy and cranky? The treatment: take a walk under some trees in the park. That may not be the exact prescription of your doctor, but a first-of-its-kind study shows that visitors to urban parks use happier words and express less negativity on Twitter than they did before their visit – and that their elevated … Read more
Scientists have developed a large-scale economical method to extract hydrogen (H2) from oil sands (natural bitumen) and oil fields. This can be used to power hydrogen-powered vehicles, which are already marketed in some countries, as well as to generate electricity; hydrogen is regarded as an efficient transport fuel, similar to petrol and diesel, but with … Read more
Over the course of 40 years, biologist Sharon Long has become an expert in symbiotic bacteria that help alfalfa grow. She has published over 150 papers on this one topic but when she realized her lab’s decades of highly focused research could contribute to a solution for citrus greening – a disease that devastates citrus … Read more
Since the first Homo sapiens emerged in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, grasslands have sustained humanity and thousands of other species. But today, those grasslands are shifting beneath our feet. Global change – which includes climate change, pollution and other widespread environmental alterations – is transforming the plant species growing in them, and not always … Read more
The most engaging educational videos are correlated with similar brain activity across learners, according to research in young adults recently published in eNeuro. Yi Hu and colleagues at East China Normal University showed university students two-minute introduction clips for 15 online classes and monitored their brain activity via electroencephalogram. The students ranked the clips based on … Read more
The brain activity evoked from processing written or heard semantic information is almost identical, according to research in adults published in JNeurosci. These findings add to the understanding of how the brain processes written and oral language. Language is a complex process that involves many regions of the brain, and it was previously unclear if the … Read more
New research from the University of Warwick has pioneered an economic perspective on controlling livestock diseases. Focusing on Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), bovine TB (bTB) and bluetongue virus (BTV), the researchers draw striking conclusions about the role of movement bans in controlling an outbreak. In the 2001 outbreak of FMD, the movement of cattle, … Read more
Researchers at McMaster University who rush in after storms to study the behaviour of spiders have found that extreme weather events such as tropical cyclones may have an evolutionary impact on populations living in storm-prone regions, where aggressive spiders have the best odds of survival. Raging winds can demolish trees, defoliate entire canopies and scatter … Read more