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In recent years, however, researchers from the Danish Center for Hadal Research (HADAL) at University of Southern Denmark have carried out a number of expeditions to deep-sea trenches. They have developed and applied sophisticated underwater robots, and they have demonstrated in several published studies that the steep deep-sea trenches accumulate various material including organic carbon …

Carbon, soot and particles from combustion end up in deep-sea trenches Read More »

For half a century botanists have known that the command center of a plant cell, the nucleus, sends instructions to other parts of the cell, compelling them to move forward with photosynthesis. These instructions come in the form of proteins, and without them, plants won’t turn green or grow. “Our challenge was that the nucleus …

Decoding the secret language of photosynthesis Read More »

It’s actually the tedious immobility of plants that these two researchers find most fascinating. Adler, a plant ecologist in S. J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources and Stemkovski, a Ph.D. student from the Department of Biology, investigate how a changing climate is transforming vegetation across landscapes in the West. They have a …

Catching up to climate change by tracking big-picture patterns Read More »

These preliminary results will be presented at the British Ecological Society’s annual meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday 20th December by Dr Kevin Healy at the University of Galway. The study, which is the largest of its kind to date, analysed the rate at which over 100 animals perceive changes in the world — known as …

Which animals perceive time the fastest? Read More »

The first followed a northern route out of what is today the Philippines and the second followed a southern route from Taiwan and New Guinea. People arrived on the islands between these routes — now making up the Federated States of Micronesia — about 1,000 years later. But a new finding by a Tufts sea-level …

New theory on timing for human settlement of some parts of tropical Pacific Read More »

Why polar bears? The project team included Ali Dhinojwala, the H.A. Morton Professor of Polymer Science in the School of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering, Nathaniel Orndorf, a 2022 Ph.D. graduate who is now employed as a senior material scientist at Bridgestone Americas, and Austin Garner, a 2021 Ph.D. graduate who is now an assistant …

Do polar bear paws hold the secret to better tire traction? Read More »

“We have a pretty clear picture of how some of these factors individually can affect parts of an ecosystem, such as a plant community. In fact, their individual impacts on a community can be quite different and even opposite,” explains Benedikt Speißer, first author of the recent study and doctoral student in the laboratory of …

Ecology: More than the sum of its parts Read More »

The findings, published today in the journal Current Biology, examine a rich fossil bed in the renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park (BISP) in Nevada’s Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many 50-foot-long ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis)lay petrified in stone. Led by Neil Kelley, Vanderbilt University scientist and former Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History Peter Buck postdoctoral fellow, and …

Fossil CSI: Giant extinct marine reptile graveyard was likely ancient birthing grounds Read More »

The ability to dive is quite rare in birds, with less than a third of the 727 species of water bird using this way of hunting for food. Evolutionary scientists Joshua Tyler and Dr Jane Younger studied of the evolution of diving in modern waterbirds to investigate how diving impacted: the physical characteristics of the …

Diving birds are more prone to extinction, says new study Read More »

“There are two challenges every sea creature has to face: getting pure water in, so you can get oxygen to your gills, and getting rid of your waste. Because nobody wants to live in their poop. But here are these clams living with theirs, and actually thriving,” says Janet Voight, Associate Curator of invertebrate zoology …

Wood-eating clams use their feces to dominate their habitat Read More »