Over a dozen people killed in Uganda landslides
Kampala (AFP) May 10, 2016 -
About 15 people were killed and dozens injured on Tuesday in landslides triggered by torrential downpours in hilly western Uganda, local authorities said.
Bridges were washed away and some 200 homes destroyed in heavy rains that have cut off access to some areas.
"It is a major landslide, which has killed about 15 people as from the reports so far received and 50 others are undergoing tr ...
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Massive tornadoes rip across Oklahoma, at least two killed
Washington (AFP) May 10, 2016 -
Several massive tornadoes churned above Oklahoma on Monday, killing at least two people, with hail as big as grapefruit hitting the US state, the authorities and US media said.
The storms began forming in southern parts of the state in the afternoon, local media reported, with the first confirmed twister hitting near Elmore City, in rural Garvin County.
"Strong winds and hail as large a ...
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Pond scum and the gene pool
Manhattan KS (SPX) May 11, 2016 -
Kansas State University biologists are skimming pond scum for clues of multicellular evolution and possible origin of cancer. Brad Olson, assistant professor in the Division of Biology; Erik Hanschen, doctoral student at the University of Arizona; Hisayoshi Nozaki, University of Tokyo; and an international team of researchers found a single gene is responsible for the evolution of multicellular ...
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Stickleback fish adapt their vision in the blink of an eye
Vancouver, Canada (SPX) May 11, 2016 -
Stickleback fish are able to adapt their vision to new environments in less than 10,000 years, a blink of the eye in evolutionary terms, according to new research by University of British Columbia biodiversity experts.
"This is a very short time scale for large changes in colour vision to evolve," says Diana Rennison, lead researcher on the study published in the Proceedings of the Royal S ...
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Floods and coastal erosion may expose contents of UK landfills, study finds
London, UK (SPX) May 11, 2016 -
The contents of historic coastal landfill sites could pose a significant environmental threat if they erode, according to a new study from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). There are 1264 historic coastal landfill sites in England and Wales, all of which are sealed and no longer receive waste, but fall wholly or partially within the Environment Agency's Tidal Flood Zone 3.
In the fir ...
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Ancient species form 'snapshot' of primates stressed by climate change
Lawrence KS (SPX) May 11, 2016 -
In a study to be published this week in the journal Science, researchers describe unearthing a "mother lode" of a half-dozen fossil primate species in southern China. These primates eked out an existence just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition, some 34 million years ago. It was a time when drastic cooling made much of Asia inhospitable to primates, slashing their populations and rendering dis ...
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New insights into light color sensing and transfer of genetic traits
Bloomington IN (SPX) May 11, 2016 -
An international team led by Indiana University researchers has uncovered the regulation of a system that allows a globally abundant bacterium to efficiently capture sunlight and perform photosynthesis.
The study - led by IU biologist David M. Kehoe and conducted by Joseph E. Sanfilippo, IU Ph.D. student, and Animesh Shukla, former IU Ph.D. student, in collaboration with researchers in the ...
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