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.
Ice shelves in the eastern Antarctic Peninsula may have been predisposed to collapse by hundreds years of thinning according to a study in Scientific Reports. To investigate past drivers of ice mass loss and its effect on the present, William Dickens and colleagues constructed a 6,250 year record of glacial meltwater discharge by analysing oxygen variants … Read more
The timing of spring migration is vital for birds. Returning too late comes at a cost. In 1981, German ornithologist Eberhard Gwinner demonstrated how an internal circannual clock is responsible for the correct timing of flycatchers’ migration. Replicating this experiment more than twenty years later, Barbara Helm, University of Groningen Associate Professor of Biological Rhythms … Read more
Deep Carbon Observatory highlights 10 top discoveries to celebrate a 10-year global investigation of Earth’s largest, least-known ecosystem; 1,200 scientists from 55 nations, 1,400 peer-reviewed papers. Thousands of diamonds, formed hundreds of kilometers deep inside the planet, paved the road to some of the 10-year Deep Carbon Observatory program’s most historic accomplishments and discoveries, being … Read more
A rare element discovered in Great Barrier Reef coral skeletons will help scientists understand the environmental history of nearby regions. Researchers at The University of Queensland’s Sustainable Minerals Institute (SMI) and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES) found concentrations of the element vanadium in coral is directly linked to forest burning and land clearing … Read more
Detailed three-dimensional images of an extensive landslide on Mars, which spans an area more than 55 kilometres wide, have been analysed to understand how the unusually large and long ridges and furrows formed about 400 million years ago. The findings, published today in Nature Communications, show for the first time that the unique structures on Martian … Read more
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
Fluctuations in atmospheric pressure can heavily influence how much natural gas leaks from wells below the ground surface at oil and gas sites, according to new University of British Columbia research. However, current monitoring strategies do not take this phenomenon into account, and therefore may be under- or over-estimating the true magnitude of gas emissions. … Read more
Microfluidic systems have the power to revolutionize medicine, energy, electronics and even space exploration. But the sheer size of the external equipment required for controlling these quarter-sized devices has limited their use in portable, wearable technologies. Now Northwestern University researchers are pushing microfluidics closer to reaching its true potential. In a recent study, the researchers … Read more
For the first time, a freshly made heavy element, strontium, has been detected in space, in the aftermath of a merger of two neutron stars. This finding was observed by ESO’s X-shooter spectrograph on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) and is published today in Nature. The detection confirms that the heavier elements in the Universe … Read more
Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Copenhagen have built a self-assembled nanocage with a very unusual nanospace: Its walls are made of antiaromatic molecules, which are generally considered too unstable to work with. By overturning assumptions about the limits of nano-chemical engineering, the study creates an entirely … Read more