Category Archives: News & Archives

Sea rise is outpacing Everglades restoration — but scientists say there’s a solution

For years, South Florida water managers struggling to reverse the damage done to the Everglades by decades of flood control have done their best to replicate nature, timing the flow of water into marshes with the state’s wet and dry seasons. But now researchers looking at 16 years worth of data say creeping sea rise…

Cancer ‘vaccine’ eliminates tumors in mice

Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study found.…

Astrophysicists discover planets in extragalactic galaxies using microlensing

A University of Oklahoma astrophysics team has discovered for the first time a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Using microlensing—an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method capable of discovering planets at truly great distances from the Earth among other detection techniques—OU researchers were able to detect objects in extragalactic galaxies that…

Large beetles are shrinking, thanks to climate change

If you’re afraid of giant insects, climate change has a silver lining for you. A new study shows that as temperatures have increased over the past century, the world’s biggest beetles may have been shrinking, some downsizing by as much as 20% in 45 years. This new work “is a powerful demonstration of how climate…

Orcas are first non-humans whose evolution is driven by culture

You could call it a culture shock. Many researchers accept that cultural experiences have helped shape human evolution – and evidence has now emerged that the same may be true of killer whales. Human genomes have evolved in response to our cultural behaviours: a classic example is the way that some human populations gained genes for…

Researchers Discover ‘Anxiety Cells’ In The Brain

Scientists have found specialized brain cells in mice that appear to control anxiety levels. The finding, reported Wednesday in the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to better treatments for anxiety disorders, which affect nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. "The therapies we have now have significant drawbacks," says Mazen Kheirbek, an assistant professor at the University…

This ancient jawbone suggests our species left Africa 40,000 years earlier than expected

In a collapsed cave on the western slope of Mount Carmel in Israel, researchers have found the jawbone of an ancient human who may have been one of the first modern members of our species to leave Africa. Here, in a huge cave by the Mediterranean Sea, ancient people roasted hare, turtle, and ostrich eggs…

These monkey twins are the first primate clones made by the method that developed Dolly

Chinese scientists have produced two genetically identical long-tailed macaques using the same technique that gave us Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal. The feat is a first for nonhuman primates, and despite limitations, it could lead to batches of genetically uniform monkeys for biomedical research. Previous attempts to clone monkeys through the Dolly…

Rare Florida sparrow could vanish this year and more birds could be at risk

The grasshopper sparrow, a tiny Florida prairie bird perched on the verge of extinction for the last decade, may have encountered a final, unconquerable foe: an invasive new disease quickly killing off its young. The disease has spread so rapidly that wildlife managers now fear another endangered sparrow, the Cape Sable seaside sparrow in the…

In ‘pond scum,’ scientists find answers to one evolution’s which-came-first cases

Visiting a colleague in Germany in 2012, Boston College Research Professor Paul K. Strother was examining soil samples for pollen, spores, pieces of plants and insect legs - organic debris that might otherwise have been considered "pond scum" when it was trapped in sediment during cataclysmic earth events 200 million years ago. The slides of…