Not even underground ecosystems are safe from human pollution. New research published in PLoS ONE May 6 examined how water runoff from the surface impacted the communities of microbes in the Monte Conca cave system in Sicily. The answer? Quite a lot. Potentially human-introduced bacteria made up less than 4 percent of the microbial community […]
The population of a marine parasite that sometimes worms its way into sushi has increased by 283 times in the last nearly 40 years, a University of Washington (UW)-led study has found. The study, published in Global Change Biology Thursday, reviewed the literature and found a significant rise in the abundance of the parasite Anisakis, […]
By Jeff Turrentine Back in 2017, a few weeks before Donald Trump became the most powerful individual in the world, a New Yorker cartoon by Will McPhail did what the best New Yorker cartoons do: It made you laugh, and then — once you stopped laughing — it made you think. Trump had just won […]
In a move that undercut and possibly delayed the U.S. response to the new coronavirus, the White House designated crucial meetings about the outbreak as classified, four Trump administration officials told Reuters Wednesday. The classified nature of the meetings meant that some government experts could not attend. “We had some very critical people who did […]
What is the probability that Polly will get a cracker? According to a new study, that is a determination that at least one type of parrot is actually able to make. Research published in Nature Communications Tuesday shows that kea (Nestor notabilis) parrots, an endangered species from New Zealand, can use probabilities to make judgments, […]
Imagine painting your home with a special paint that also powers your lights using renewable energy drawn from the air. That might sound too good to be true, but researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst think it could be one of many future uses for a new technology they have developed — a device […]
By Elliott Negin An essential component of the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back regulations that it considers “burdensome” is getting rid of experts whose inconvenient truth-telling refutes the rationale for its pro-industry agenda. During its first two years in office, the administration pushed more than 1,600 federal scientists out the door, most notably “social […]
The Carolina parakeet, the only parrot species native to the U.S., went extinct in 1918 when the last bird died at the Cincinnati Zoo. Now, a little more than 100 years later, researchers have determined that humans were entirely to blame. How? Researchers sequenced the bird’s genome and found none of the signs of inbreeding […]
Scientists have developed an innovative way to protect endangered rhinos from poaching: flood the market for rhino horn with a cheap, fake alternative. The team from the University of Oxford and Fudan University in China found a way to make a fake rhino horn cheaply from horse hair, BBC News reported. “It appears from our […]
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