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.
Most dog and cat owners are not aware of pet blood donation schemes and animal blood banks, finds a survey of pet owners published in Vet Record. However, the majority of owners in this study said they would be willing to allow their pets to donate blood, suggesting that just like human blood donation, raising awareness … Read more
The most extensive and systematic insect monitoring program ever undertaken in North America shows that butterfly abundance in Ohio declined yearly by 2%, resulting in an overall 33% drop for the 21 years of the program. Though the study was limited to one group of the insect class and one geographic area, the findings provide … Read more
How do plants and animals acquire their microbiota? Are hosts colonized by microbes from their surroundings or do parents transmit microbes to offspring? Understanding how animals acquire their microbiomes, especially microbial symbionts, is necessary to learn how environments shape host phenotypes via host-microbe interactions and whether hosts and their microbiomes represent an important unit of … Read more
New research from Northwestern University could upend the approach to sales forecasting for industries from cell phones to cars. Data analysis published today, July 8, in Nature Human Behavior shows that products that are considered to be substitutive in nature have a very different growth trajectory from predictions by traditional models, where product growth is … Read more
Enzymes are biocatalysts that are crucial for the degradation of seaweed biomass in oceans. For the first time, an international team of 19 scientists recently decoded the complete degradation pathway of the algal polysaccharide Ulvan by biocatalysts from a marine bacterium. The results of their study are presented in Nature Chemical Biology. The study was … Read more
A kaleidoscope is a symbol of the diversity of human knowledge that exists on Earth about our ecosystems and their plant services. Indigenous societies occupy one quarter of terrestrial lands and over 7,097 indigenous languages are spoken on Earth. Just as different indigenous groups inhabit different ecosystems, so it follows that each may have accumulated … Read more
Scientists have pinpointed the “pace” and “shape” of life as the two key elements in animal life cycles that affect how different species get by in the world. Their findings, which come from a detailed assessment of 121 species ranging from humans to sponges, may have important implications for conservation strategies and for predicting which … Read more
In a paper released today in Science Advances, UNSW researchers describe the first observation of a native ferroelectric metal. The study represents the first example of a native metal with bistable and electrically switchable spontaneous polarization states – the hallmark of ferroelectricity. “We found coexistence of native metallicity and ferroelectricity in bulk crystalline tungsten ditelluride (WTe2) at … Read more
Frankincense is being traded for a few thousand years already and cherished by hundreds of millions worldwide. But its production is expected to half within 2 decades. This is the worrisome conclusion of a study by a group of Ethiopian and Dutch scientists that was published in Nature Sustainability today. The researchers reached these conclusions … Read more
An article published today in the Open Access journal GigaScience might make you squirm if you plan to hit the beach this summer. The article presents the draft genomes of three different jellyfish species. The international group of researchers, lead by Joseph Ryan, chose to examine jellyfish that present a range of physical traits and level of … Read more