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.
Carleton University’s Roslyn Dakin, professor in the Department of Biology, has recently discovered that there is a trade-off between having too many friends and having long-lasting friendships. Her research focused on a charismatic bird species called the wire-tailed manakin, and was published in PNAS, the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences. [ad_336] The … Read more
Humans began transporting and growing banana in Vanuatu 3000 years ago, a University of Otago scientist has discovered. The discovery is the earliest evidence of humans taking and cultivating banana in to what was the last area of the planet to be colonised. In an article published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, Dr Monica … Read more
An international team led by Harvard Medical School scientists has produced the first genome-wide ancient human DNA sequences from west and central Africa. The data, recovered from four individuals buried at an iconic archaeological site in Cameroon between 3,000 and 8,000 years ago, enhance our understanding of the deep ancestral relationships among populations in sub-Saharan … Read more
In the Pacific Northwest, the range expansion of Barred Owls has contributed to a conservation crisis for Northern Spotted Owls, which are being displaced from their old-growth forest habitat. How will this interaction between species play out in the Sierra Nevada, where Barred Owls are just starting to move into the range of the California … Read more
A new study, published in Royal Society Open Science, sheds light on the origins and evolution of European sign languages. Using phylogenetic network methods to compare dozens of sign languages, the scholars identify five main European sign language lineages that dispersed to other parts of the world beginning in the late 18th century. Natural human languages … Read more
Since the discovery of quasars more than a half a century ago, measuring their distances has always been a fundamental problem for cosmology. Recently, a team led by Professor Jian-Min Wang from the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) developed a new geometric method and successfully measured the cosmological … Read more
A first of its kind, global study on the impacts of human land-use on different groups of animals has found that predators, especially small invertebrates like spiders and ladybirds, are the most likely to be lost when natural habitats are converted to agricultural land or towns and cities. The findings are published in the British … Read more
Deep within Earth, swirling liquid iron generates our planet’s protective magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is vital for life on Earth’s surface: it shields the planet from harmful solar wind and cosmic rays from the sun. Given the importance of the magnetic field, scientists have been trying to figure out how the … Read more
The ability to create new neurons may exist as built-in protection for sensitive brain areas, according to research in mice recently published in JNeurosci. For a quarter of a century, scientists have known that the brain creates new neurons even into adulthood – a process called adult neurogenesis. The question has been: why? Adult neurogenesis occurs … Read more
A new study in the journal Nature Sustainability overturns long-held interpretations of the role humans played in shaping the American landscape before European colonization. The findings give new insight into the rationale and approaches for managing some of the most biodiverse landscapes in the eastern U.S. The study, led by archaeologists, ecologists, and paleoclimatologists at Harvard, Emerson … Read more