The law of the landscape for glaciers
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
Fast glaciers are much more effective at gouging landscapes than slow-moving ones, a new study finds. The results may explain a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists - why long-term erosion rates from glaciers are so much lower in Polar Regions, where glaciers move more slowly.
The world over, glaciers erode the land at variable rates, with some of the most rapid glacial erosion happ ...
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Simulating path of 'magma mush' inside an active volcano
Seattle WA (SPX) Oct 08, 2015 -
Months of warning signs from Mauna Loa, on Hawaii's Big Island, prompted the U.S. Geological Society to recently start releasing weekly updates on activity at the world's largest active volcano.
For now, such warning signs can only rely on external clues, like earthquakes and venting gases. But a University of Washington simulation has managed to demonstrate what's happening deep inside th ...
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Wild plants call to carnivores to get rid of pests - could crops do the same
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 08, 2015 -
Rose gardeners have a lot to say about aphids. Some may advise insecticides as a way to manage an infestation, but others will swear by live ladybugs (natural predators of aphids). The latter is more environmental friendly, and once the ladybugs run out of food to eat, they move on.
While this strategy may work in someone's backyard, it's not an option on a large farm. In an October 4 Tren ...
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New DYI experiment shows students the physics of climate change
Brisbane, Australia (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
MacGyver this! New DYI experiment shows students the physics of climate change Fishing line, paper clips, glass marble, glue - no, not the makings of a MacGyver episode but a new experiment that lets students precisely measure the effects of global warming on oceans. Developed by QUT physicists Dr Stephen Hughes and Darren Pearce and published recently in the European Journal of Physics, the exp ...
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To make ocean conservation work we should keep the noise down
Amsterdam, Netherlands (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
Quiet areas should be sectioned off in the oceans to give us a better picture of the impact human generated noise is having on marine animals, according to a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin. By assigning zones through which ships cannot travel, researchers will be able to compare the behavior of animals in these quiet zones to those living in noisier areas, helping decide the be ...
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125-million-year-old wing sheds new light on the evolution of flight
Bristol, UK (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
Some of the most ancient birds were capable of performing aerodynamic feats in a manner similar to many living birds, according to a new study of the fossil wing of a primitive bird, led by a PhD student at the University of Bristol, UK.
Birds have an enormously long evolutionary history: the earliest of them, the famed Archaeopteryx, lived 150 million years ago in what is now southern Ger ...
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Evolution of kangaroo-like jerboas sheds light on limb development
San Diego CA (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
With their tiny forelimbs and long hindlimbs and feet, jerboas are oddly proportioned creatures that look something like a pint-size cross between a kangaroo and the common mouse.
How these 33 species of desert-dwelling rodents from Northern Africa and Asia evolved their remarkable limbs over the past 50 million years from a five-toed, quadrupedal ancestor shared with the modern mouse to t ...
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Short-lived, toothy mammal found in ancient North Pacific a mystery
Plano TX (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
The identification of a new species belonging to the marine mammal group Desmostylia has intensified the rare animal's brief mysterious journey through prehistoric time, finds a new study.
A big, hippo-sized animal with a long snout and tusks - the new species, 23 million years old, has a unique tooth and jaw structure that indicates it was not only a vegetarian, but literally sucked veget ...
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Researchers discover clues on how giraffe neck evolved
New York NY (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
Scientists have long theorized that the long neck of modern-day giraffes evolved to enable them to find more vegetation or to develop a specialized method of fighting. A new study of fossil cervical vertebrae reveals the evolution likely occurred in several stages as one of the animal's neck vertebrae stretched first toward the head and then toward the tail a few million years later.
The s ...
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48-million-year-old horse-like fetus discovered in Germany
London, UK (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
A 48 million year-old horse-like equoid fetus has been discovered at the Messel pit near Frankfurt, Germany according to a study published October 7, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jens Lorenz Franzen from Senckenberg Research Institute Frankfurt, Germany, and Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Switzerland, and colleagues.
The authors of this study completed their investigation o ...
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Evidence for functional redundancy in nature
Wageningen, Netherlands (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
One of biology's long-standing puzzles is how so many similar species can co-exist in nature. Do they really all fulfill a different role? Massive data on beetles now provide strong evidence for the idea that evolution can drive species into groups of look-a-likes that are functionally similar, according to a study by an international consortium of scientists led by Wageningen University, Nether ...
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Embrace the chaos: Predictable ecosystems may be more fragile
Madison WI (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
When it comes to using our natural resources, human beings want to know what we're going to get. We expect clean water every time we turn on the tap; beaches free of algae and bacteria; and robust harvests of crops, fish and fuel year after year. As a result, we try to manage the use of our resources in a way that minimizes their variability. We seek a predictable "status quo."
But a new s ...
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Characteristics of mammalian melanopsins for non-visual photoreception
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
Researchers at Institute for Molecular Sciences reported that a mammalian photoreceptive protein melanopsin spontaneously releases the chromophore retinal. The property would be important to regulate non-visual photoreception in mammals.
This work was carried out as a collaborative work of Drs. Hisao Tsukamoto and Yuji Furutani (Institute for Molecular Science) with Yoshihiro Kubo (Nationa ...
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Remote sensing used to map habitat of monkey with hominid-like behavior
Cardiff, UK (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
Biologists and psychologists are fascinated by the bearded capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus) of northeastern Brazil, which exhibit behavior that is extremely rare in the animal kingdom: they use stone tools to crack open the hard casings of palm nuts, to eat the meat inside.
Scientists eager to study this behavior - especially interesting because it resembles the stone tool use of ear ...
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How the brain's wiring leads to cognitive control
Philadelphia PA (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
How does the brain determine which direction to let its thoughts fly? Looking for the mechanisms behind cognitive control of thought, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, University of California and United States Army Research Laboratory have used brain scans to shed new light on this question.
By using structural imaging techniques to convert brain scans into "wiring diagrams" ...
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Foot fossils of human relative shows evolutionary 'messiness' of bipeds
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
A new study on Homo naledi, the extinct human relative whose remains were discovered in a South African cave and introduced to the world last month, suggests that although its feet were the most human-like part of its body, H. naledi didn't use them to walk in the same way we do.
Detailed analysis of 107 foot bones indicates that H. naledi was well adapted for standing and walking on two f ...
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Research reveals new clues about how humans become tool users
Athens GA (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
New research from the University of Georgia department of psychology gives researchers a unique glimpse at how humans develop an ability to use tools in childhood while nonhuman primates--such as capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees--remain only occasional tool users.
Dorothy Fragaszy, a psychology professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Primate Behavior Labo ...
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The hand and foot of Homo naledi
Johannesburg, South Africa (SPX) Oct 09, 2015 -
The second set of papers related to the remarkable discovery of Homo naledi, a new species of human relative, have been published in scientific journal, Nature Communications.
The two papers, titled: The foot of Homo naledi and The hand of Homo naledi, describe the structure and function of the H. naledi hand and foot. Taken together, the findings indicate H. naledi may have been uniquely ...
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Breakthrough for electrode implants in the brain
Lund, Sweden (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
For nearly nine years, researchers at Lund University have been working on developing implantable electrodes that can capture signals from single neurons in the brain over a long period of time - without causing brain tissue damage. They are now one big step closer to reaching this goal, and the results are published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
This technology woul ...
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Researchers build a digital piece of brain
Washington DC (SPX) Oct 12, 2015 -
If you want to learn how something works, one strategy is to take it apart and put it back together again. For 10 years, a global initiative called the Blue Brain Project--hosted at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)--has been attempting to do this digitally with a section of juvenile rat brain. The project presents a first draft of this reconstruction, which contains over 31,00 ...
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