How geology and climate shape biodiversity

Tropical rainforests are the most biodiverse habitats on Earth. They are home to a huge number of different plants, animals, fungi and other organisms. These forests are primarily spread over three continents, concentrated in the Amazon Basin in South America, the Congo Basin in Central Africa, and the vast archipelago of Southeast Asia.

Quantifying change on barrier islands highlights the value of storms

Researchers have developed a methodology for quantifying landscape changes on barrier islands and, in doing so, have found the storms that can devastate human infrastructure also create opportunities for coastal wildlife to thrive.

New warm mini-Neptune exoplanet detected by TESS

Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an international team of astronomers has detected a new warm mini-Neptune alien world transiting a bright M-dwarf star. The newly found exoplanet, designated TOI-1201b, is estimated to be about six times more massive than the Earth. The finding is detailed in a paper published September 20 on arXiv.org.

How team dynamics shape success for children with autism in public schools

Because of financial barriers for clinical interventions, intensive educational interventions in school settings often are the primary resource for children with autism from lower-income families. Continuity of care in school settings can require coordination, referred to as social capital, between the "team-around-the-child" (TAC) – the parents, school staff and community providers. However, inequality in access to social capital could adversely impact the ability of the TAC to provide continuity of care for children with autism from lower-resource families during disruptive schooling transitions.

Simple steps improve digital learning

"One thing that can get lost in digital teaching is the process of building social relationships. This network building normally takes place during coffee breaks, shared lunch and in the queue at the toilet or coffee machine," says Gunhild Marie Roald, an associate professor in NTNU's Department of Education and Lifelong Learning.

Microscopic metavehicles powered by nothing but light

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in creating tiny vehicles powered by nothing but light. By layering an optical metasurface onto a microscopic particle, and then using a light source to control it, they succeeded in moving the tiny vehicles in a variety of complex and precise ways—and even using them to transport other objects.

Researchers explore what drives animal infanticide

At the end of the 1970s, infanticide became a flashpoint in animal behavioral science. Sociobiologist Sarah Hrdy, then a Harvard Ph.D. student, shared her observation in her published thesis that whenever a new langur male entered an established colony, infants would either begin to disappear or show evidence of wounds. Hrdy concluded this was done to eliminate the progeny of rivals and free up now infant-less females for mating. The work provoked an uproar.

Grain size discovery boosts sorghum potential

Researchers at The University of Queensland are optimistic that the value and versatility of one of the world's top crops will be improved following the discovery of genes which could increase the grain size of sorghum.

Climate explained: What is an ice age and how often do they happen?

What is an ice age? Do they have to last a certain amount of time to count, how did they vary and how many ice ages has the Earth experienced? As with many definitions of natural phenomena, a precise definition of an ice age isn't straightforward.

Big fires demand a big response: Lessons from the 1910 'Big Burn'

Over two days in the summer of 1910, wildfires roared across the bone-dry forests of the inland Northwestern U.S., the Rockies, and parts of British Columbia. Whole towns burned. The blazes scorched 3 million acres of forest, an area the size of Connecticut, and left behind a legacy that profoundly changed how the U.S. managed wildfires—and ultimately how fires behave today.

The indigenous population of ancient Sicily were active traders

How should we relate to the traditional historiography on ancient Sicily? The prevailing view has been that the indigenous population had neither territory, power nor economic resources. But with the aid of interdisciplinary methods, a new thesis shows that trade was a big part of the economy for the inhabitants of the settlement of Monte Polizzo.

The real causes of 'missing white woman syndrome'

Reporters looking for insight and research around the phenomena of "missing white woman syndrome," please see comments from Syracuse University professor of communications Carol Liebler of the Newhouse School.

Novel design may boost efficiency of on-chip frequency combs

On the cover of the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon, a prism splits a ray of light into all the colors of the rainbow. This multicolored medley, which owes its emergence to the fact that light travels as a wave, is almost always hiding in plain sight; a prism simply reveals that it was there. For instance, sunlight is a mixture of many different colors of light, each bobbing up and down with their own characteristic frequency. But taken together the colors merge into a uniform yellowish glow.

In Guatemala, archaeologists uncover hidden neighborhood in ancient Maya city

Scientists have been excavating the ruins of Tikal, an ancient Maya city in modern-day Guatemala, since the 1950s—and thanks to those many decades spent documenting details of every structure and cataloguing each excavated item, Tikal has become one of the best understood and most thoroughly studied archaeological sites in the world.

Dynamic twists and loops can enable DNA to modulate its function

When people think of DNA, they visualize a string-like double helix structure. In reality, the DNA double helix in cells is supercoiled and constrained into loops. This supercoiling and looping are known to influence every aspect of DNA activity, but how this happens has not been clear.

Bird poop reveals that when birds migrate, their gut bacteria change

The trillions of bacteria living in our guts play a crucial role in our ability to digest food and fight off disease. All other animals also have communities of bacteria living inside them, that scientists call microbiomes, and learning about them can help scientists put together a more complete picture of how those animals interact with the world. In a new study in the journal Molecular Ecology, researchers used tiny radio trackers to follow the movements of birds that migrated between The Bahamas and Michigan, and they found that the same individual birds' gut bacteria were different in the two locations. And to figure that out, the scientists had to get up close and personal with a lot of bird poop.

Drugs in river at UK's Glastonbury music festival harming fish: scientists

High levels of illegal drugs have been found in a river running through Britain's Glastonbury music festival site, endangering a rare species of fish and other wildlife, scientists said on Tuesday.

Aftershocks rattle quake-hit Crete as Greek PM to visit

Aftershocks rattled Greece's largest island Crete on Tuesday, a day after a strong earthquake that killed one person, damaged hundreds of buildings and left many homeless.

NYC to hire forecaster, beef up warnings after Ida flooding

New York City is planning to hire a private weather forecaster, install more drainage features and issue earlier and more aggressive warnings to residents under a new plan to respond to heavy rainfall like the deadly deluge Hurricane Ida dropped on the city earlier this month.

How SNPs can be used to detect disease pathways

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a new computational tool that can identify pathways related to diseases, including breast and prostate cancer, using single-nucleotide polymorphisms. SNPs, which refer to mutations in a person's DNA, are the most common type of genetic variation among people. The researchers hope that the tool can help them discover new pathways that have been previously overlooked.

Deep dive into global Twitter posts reveals possible drop in negativity towards COVID-19 pandemic

The devastation and distress brought by the COVID-19 pandemic to millions of lives goes without question, but trying to gauge an entire planet's changing perception of the disease over time can seem an almost impossible task.