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.
Music is an art, but it is also a science involving vibrating reeds and strings, sound waves and resonances. The study of acoustics can help scientists produce beautiful music even with musical instruments fashioned with high-tech methods, such as 3D printing. Xiaoyu Niu, from the University of Chinese Academy Sciences, and other researchers studied the … Read more
Pioneering experiments using heated field plots to test the responses of crops to temperature have revealed an unexpected plus side of climate change for farmers. The field trial experiment – the first of its kind – was set up to investigate the link between warmer Octobers in the United Kingdom and higher yields of oilseed … Read more
More than 100 years ago, a zoologist by the name of Herbert Spencer Jennings described surprisingly complex and varied avoidance behaviors in a single-celled freshwater protist known as Stentor roeseli. When later experiments in a related organism failed to reproduce what he’d seen, his claims were discredited and pushed aside. But now, a report publishing in … Read more
Herbivorous dinosaurs evolved many times during the 180 million-year Mesozoic era, and while they didn’t all evolve to chew, swallow, and digest their food in the same way, a few specific strategies appeared time and time again. An investigation of the skulls of 160 non-avian dinosaurs revealed the evolution of common traits in the skulls … Read more
Wildfire is a natural process in the forests of the western US, and many species have evolved to tolerate, if not benefit from it. But wildfire is changing. Research in the journal Biological Conservation, published by Elsevier, suggests fire, as it becomes more frequent and severe, poses a substantial risk to goshawks in the Sierra Nevada region. How … Read more
The World Congress of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (WOCMAP 2019) which took place in Cyprus from November 12th to 17th 2019 was not just an occasion for scientists from 23 countries to meet and discuss a wide range of research topics on essential oils and medicinal plants but also the backdrop to the formation of … Read more
We explain human behavior in terms of unseen entities such as motivation, curiosity, anxiety, and confidence. What has been unclear, until now, is whether these mental entities are coded by specific neurons in specific areas of the brain. Professor Adam Kepecs at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory answers some of these questions in new research published … Read more
Imagine being inside Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Collaborative Research Augmented Immersive Virtual Environment Laboratory (CRAIVE Lab), which features a front-projection 360-degree panoramic display to immerse you visually, while 134 loudspeakers render a spatially superb sound. Combined with networks of sensors and controllers, CRAIVE Lab provides its users new modes of interactions between humans and virtual worlds, … Read more
Atmospheric rivers pose a $1 billion-a-year flood risk in the West, according to a study released today. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers analyzed the economic impact of the winter storms that deliver an increasingly large share of rain and snow … Read more
Sexually transmitted diseases are widespread among animals and humans. Humans, however, know a multitude of protective and hygienic measures to protect themselves from infection. An international research team led by scientists at the German Primate Center (DPZ) – Leibniz Institute for Primate Research has investigated whether our closest relatives, the primates, change their sexual behavior … Read more