Toxic splash: Russian rocket stages dropped in Arctic waters raise health, environmental and legal concerns
Looking skyward at midday on 16 February 2016, a US serviceman at Thule Airbase in northwest Greenland shot a brief amateur video.…
Looking skyward at midday on 16 February 2016, a US serviceman at Thule Airbase in northwest Greenland shot a brief amateur video.…
The latest Paper of the Month in Parasitology is The role of rare innate immune cells in Type 2 immune activation against parasitic helminths by Dr.…
Understanding the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets are among the most fundamental objectives of Astronomy. Although a suite of space and ground-based telescopes have allowed impressive advances in recent years, our knowledge is still far from complete. In a suite of whitepapers for PASA we explore some of the key scientific breakthroughs that could be made with the Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA).
From the 20th – 23rd August, Stockholm became the capital of Global Sustainability as it hosted more than 1000 experts from around the world at Resilience 2017, an international science conference on Resilience Frontiers for Global Sustainability.…
Nano-materials are seen as the future in fields as diverse as medicine, technology and chemistry, but the methods used to create them are not yet fully understood.…
In this post, Anne Peters gives us an overview of the Symposium on Global Animal Law: Animals Matter in International Law and International Law Matters for Animals that is now published open access by AJIL Unbound.…
Himalayan wolves form an evolutionary distinct wolf unique to the high altitude ecosystems of the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. These wolves face many threats from illegal poaching due to depredation and traditional uses of body parts to habitat encroachment by livestock and associated decreasing wild prey populations.…
Now that the new academic year has arrived, many Ph.D. students will be going on the job market for the first time.…
Maintaining water quality is a global concern and, with the onset of climate change and the increased expansion of the human population, it is likely only to become even more important in the future.…
The latest issue of the journal Weed Science contains an article with intriguing new insights about the control of herbicide-resistant kochia, a weed that competes with both dryland and irrigated crops across the Great Plains states.…
The August issue of MRS Bulletin features papers on 3D bioprinting of organs.
Fall-planted cover crops are frequently a component of integrated weed control programs in herbicide-resistant soybeans. But does it matter which cover crop is used?…
In a paper published Aug. 3 in the International Journal of Astrobiology, Daniel Whitmire applying a statistical concept called the principle of mediocrity and argues that if we are typical, it follows that species such as ours go extinct soon after attaining technological knowledge.
The above figure shows that literature is growing faster than the value of money. While the value of $1.00 in 1990 was worth between $1.67 and $2.50 in 2010, ACL and PUBMED are growing at a rate of three to six times per decade.…
The animal article of the month for September is ‘Review: Divergent selection for residual feed intake in the growing pig‘. Improving feed use in livestock remains a challenge in most animal species.…
In celebration of JFM Editorial Board member Detlef Lohse recently being awarded the APS 2017 Fluid Dynamics Prize, I present a special blog entry on his work.…
A new study published in MRS Energy & Sustainability investigates why so many of these American battery materials startups are failing under the current venture capital funding model.
About 10,000 years ago, in the last moments of the Pleistocene epoch, an extinction of large mammals, or megafauna, occurred. These included the woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-tooth tigers, giant ground sloths, and enormous woolly bears, all North American inhabitants of the last major ice age.…
The following is a summary of the introductory Editorial from the August Journal of Materials Research Focus issue on Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials for Biosensors.
A new special issue from the Journal of Paleontology, brings together a collection of 17 papers focused on different aspects of echinoderm paleobiology. Author David F. Wright discusses his article 'Bayesian estimation of fossil phylogenies and the evolution of early to middle Paleozoic crinoids (Echinodermata)'.
Beliefs in magical creatures can impact the protection of biodiversity and the field of conservation needs to consider them seriously, researchers have warned. According to a new study, by the University of Leeds and Cardiff University, the conservation of threatened species has much to gain from acknowledging people’s spiritual, magical and cultural beliefs.
Species distribution models are a method used by conservationists to make inferences from limited data sets, in a format that can facilitate conservation management across landscapes. They are particularly suitable for filling gaps in knowledge of scarce populations and those inhabiting inaccessible terrain. The Arabian tahr is one such species. Inhabiting the precipitous cliffs of north eastern Arabia, the species is rarely seen and poorly known.
Researchers at the University of York working on a 700-year old abandoned agricultural site in Tanzania have shown that soil erosion benefitted farming practices for some 500 years. The study, published in Quaternary Research, shows that historical practices of capturing soils that were eroded from the hillside could be valuable to modern day farming techniques.
This weekend Jordan Spieth will attempt to become the youngest golfer to win the career Grand Slam when he tees off at the US PGA Championship.…
The animal article of the month for August is “Factors of importance when selecting sows as embryo donors”. An adequate selection of embryo donors is a key point of and efficient embryo transfer (ET) program.…
A recent study featured in the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management suggests it’s time to rethink control of Russian knapweed, an invasive plant classified as a “noxious weed” in 18 U.S.…
With the recent introduction of soybean and cotton traits resistant to synthetic auxin herbicides, farmers have new, much needed options for managing glyphosate-resistant broadleaf weeds. Researchers writing in the journal Weed Technology say use of the auxins isn’t without risk.
The latest Parasitology Paper of the Month is “Amblyomma birmitum a new species of hard tick in Burmese amber” by Lidia Chitimia-Dobler, Bruno Cancian de Araujo, Bernhard Ruthensteiner, Timo Pfeffer, Jason A.…
In a recent study published in Bird Conservation International, authors from Perth Edith Cowan University have carried out research in Papua New Guinea to understand how logging and palm oil plantations is affecting rare bird numbers.…
Or: How to start a fire Fuel inside an engine is subjected to high temperatures and pressures causing it to ignite and burn, but what exactly is the process by which this occurs?…
In a study featured in the most recent edition of Weed Science, a team of researchers tilled four fields every two weeks during the growing season.
On the cover of HPL: ‘Review on high repetition rate and mass-production of the cryogenic targets for laser IFE’, by I.V.…
Avalanches and mudslides are a common occurrence in mountainous regions across the world and they can often cause severe loss of property and life.…
In the coming decades, the world population is expected to increase. This increase will result in a growing demand for food products, especially for animal protein.
Researchers have published a new study in the journal Oryx that employed camera traps to investigate crop use by African elephants along the boundary of Udzungwa Mountains National Park in south-central Tanzania.
Extracts from a recent Editorial by MRS Bulletin Editor-in-Chief Gopal R. Rao on the launch of the MRS Bulletin Postdoctoral Publication Prize
A study recently published in the international conservation journal Oryx shows that this charming group of amphibious mammals have undergone a dramatic countrywide decline in China, and are extirpated over much of their former ranges.
A new paper published recently in Journal of Fluid Mechanics (JFM) looked at numerical simulations of a blade slicing through a vortex and understanding how this action affects the flow field could lead to the design of safer helicopters.
Logging roads makes valuable Musk Deer more accessible to poachers, who hunt for the musk gland found in males, a substance that, gram from gram, is more valuable than gold. Find out more from the latest study by Oryx.
A new special issue of the Journal of Paleontology, published on 12th June 2017, brings together a collection of 17 papers focused on different aspects of echinoderm paleobiology.
Sharon C. Glotzer, from the University of Michigan, has been awarded the 2017 MRS Communications Lecture Award.
University of Florida researchers are taking down the Plexiglas walls between museum collections and K-12 classrooms with an educational program that uses 3-D printed fossils and hands-on lessons to spark young learners’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math. The researchers published an assessment of their pilot lesson plan in “Paleontological Society Special Publications” The study '3-D Fossils for K-12 Education: A Case Example Using the Giant Extinct Sharkcarcharocles Megalodon'
New research featured in the journal Weed Science, shows “life history” traits may be contributing to crop losses by making Palmer amaranth more aggressive and difficult to control.
New research published recently in JFM, will help to direct future research on the deployment of sensory arrays that could be used to guide underwater autonomous vehicles.
In 1998, Thomas Hales and Samuel Ferguson announced a proof of the Kepler conjecture – a famous problem in discrete geometry that had remained unsolved for over 300 years.…
The Aeronautical Journal February 2017 Vol 121 No 1236 The paper, ‘21st century civil aviation: Is it on course, or is it over confident and complacent?…
The animal article of the month for June is ‘Invited review: Nutrient sensing receptors for free fatty acids and hydroxycarboxylic acids in farm animals‘. …
Extracts from a recent Editorial by MRS Bulletin Editor-in-Chief Gopal Rao which talked about the recent launch of the newly designed site.
Commercial dry-season rice cultivation in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap floodplain increasingly threatens the Critically Endangered Bengal florican, a new study published in Oryx says. This and other threats puts the species at high risk of extinction in the near future, unless it is managed appropriately.
When a bird flaps its wings it generates thrust force which keeps it airborne, but how does this actually work? And how hard and how fast should they flap?
Geological Magazine is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Peter Clift as the new Editor-in-Chief. Find out more about Peter and his plans for the journal in this introductory interview.
A new study featured in the journal Invasive Plant Science and Management shows the impact of weedy invaders can linger for years.
Gayle and Cook have won the 2016 JMR Paper of the Year, for the development and modeling of an indentation method for mapping the time-dependent viscoelastic and time-independent plastic properties of polymeric-based materials.
The latest Parasitology Paper of the Month is “Galectins expressed differently in genetically susceptible C57BL/6 and resistant BALB/c mice during acute ocular Toxoplasma gondii infection” by S.-J.…
Jacky Baltes, guest Editor for Knowledge Engineering Review, introduces the special issue on Humanoid Multi-Event Robot Athletes The FIRA HuroCup competition was started in 2002 to provide a challenging and state of the art benchmark problem for humanoid robots.…
The animal article of the month for May is entitled “Non-invasive individual methane measurement in dairy cows“. Authors: E. Negussie, J.…
On the cover of HPL: ‘Proton probing of laser-driven EM pulses travelling in helical coils‘, by H. Ahmed, S. Kar, A.L.…
The paper, ‘Numerical investigation of the fatal 1985 Manchester Airport B737 fire’ published in the Aeronautical Journal, Vol 121, Number 1237, pp 287-319, 2017 by Edwin R Galea, Zhaozhi Wang, and Fuchen Jia, provides an explanation for why 55 people lost their lives in the B737 fire at Manchester airport in 1985.…
A study published in the Journal of Glaciology has solved a 100 year-old mystery involving a waterfall in Antarctica known as Blood Falls. New evidence links Blood Falls, a red waterfall in Antarctica, to a large source of salty water that may have been trapped underneath Taylor Glacier for more than a million years.
The Materials Research Society (MRS) and Cambridge University Press are pleased to announce the appointment of Rigoberto C. Advincula, as Editor-in-Chief of MRS Communications.
For centuries, scholars, judges and lawyers speculated about the error rate in the criminal justice system, many of them searching for absolute proof of the innocent person wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. …
Two seminal articles by energy experts in the latest issue of MRS Energy and Sustainability (MRS E&S) examine the climate-related risks facing the fossil fuel industry and conclude that the sustainability train has already well and truly left the station – and is not coming back.
Scanning electron microscopic image of two spray hoses showing wear and possible adsorption sites for auxinic herbicides. See article by Cundiff et al.…
The latest Parasitology Paper of the Month is “Detecting hybridization in African schistosome species: does egg morphology complement molecular species identification?”…
The latest EC Perspectives paper from Environmental Conservation is entitled ‘Rapid conservation assessment for endangered species using habitat connectivity models‘ by Danica Schaffer-Smith, Jennifer J.…
Journal of Materials Research is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Susmita Bose as Associate Editor for Biomaterials.
A paleontologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature is countering decades of studies that assert that some dinosaurs can be identified as male or female based on the shapes and sizes of their bones.
Growing up on an island or mainland location can shape the way children think about wildlife, including which species they prefer, according to North Carolina State University research, published in Environmental Conservation. Comparison surveys of children living in the Bahamas and in North Carolina reveal significant differences and potential challenges for wildlife-conservation efforts on islands.
Cover crops are attracting widespread attention for the benefits they provide in crop rotations, especially for soil health. However, many growers of corn and soybean crops know it can be challenging to establish fall-seeded cover crops.
Quaternary Research has a nearly 50-year, distinguished history of publishing articles of interdisciplinary interest on the evidence for Quaternary climatic and environmental change, as well as its effects on landscapes, ecosystems, and human populations, and many significant articles have been published in the journal over the years.
The animal article of the month for March is entitled “Upgrading plant amino acids through cattle to improve the nutritional value for humans – effects of different production systems“.…
Pi Day is celebrated around the world on the 14th day of the 3rd month. The date representation of 3.14 is the most basic ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, but it also has this going for it: Which, of course, means that mathematicians everywhere love their pi.…
The latest EC Perspectives paper from Environmental Conservation is entitled 'Understanding the demand for REDD+ credits' by Timothy Laing, Luca Taschini and Charles Palmer. In this blog Timothy Laing discusses the research.
Laith A. Jawad, one of the authors of ‘Morphology study of the otoliths of the parrotfish, Chlorurus sordidus (Forsskål, 1775) and Hipposcarus harid (Forsskål, 1775) from the Red Sea coast of Egypt (Family: Scaridae)’ recently published in JMBI provides us further insight into this research.…
Photo credit: Karen Wildlife Conservation Initiative (KWCI). Yangon, Myanmar (3 March) – The Karen Wildlife Conservation Initiative (KWCI), with financial support from WWF and other partners, have conducted six camera traps surveys in the hill forests of Northern Karen State, Myanmar, previously inaccessible to biologists and conservationists for security and political reasons. …
The latest Parasitology Paper of the Month is “Understanding transmissibility patterns of Chagas disease through complex vector–host networks” by Laura Rengifo-Correa, Christopher R.…
A new ground-breaking assessment published today in the journal Bird Conservation International has revealed that loss of habitat could lead to the extinction of a number of species of curlew and godwit, some of which are found in the UK.
The Journal of Natural Language Engineering (JNLE) is a true success story. Indeed, the journal has gone from strength to strength in recent years.…
In a recent study published in Bird Conservation International, authors from The Australian National University and Nature Society (Singapore) found that wild populations of the Straw-headed Bulbul in Singapore have steadily risen over the last 15 years, and may now be the largest in its entire distribution.
With sustainable solutions in mind, a new study published by eminent physicist Jo Hermans in MRS Energy and Sustainability—A Review Journal (MRS E&S) looks at the energy efficiency of current modes of transportion.
The animal article of the month for February is ‘Short communication: natural interomone 1 2-methyl-2-butenal stimulates feed intake and weight gain in weaned pigs‘. …
A new study published in Oryx shows that the jaguar is in much greater danger of extinction than previously thought.
A new study in Paleobiology has compared the diet of a variety of Australian megafaunal herbivores from the period when they were widespread (350,000 to 570,000 years ago) to a period when they were in decline (30,000 to 40,000 years ago) by studying their fossil teeth. The analysis suggests that climate change had a significant impact on their diets and may well have been a primary factor in their extinction.
Is my country sustainable? Many citizens may be asking themselves this question as the work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals continues in 2017.…
Development of Resistance to antimicrobials is developing faster than ever before due to decades of abusing these important drugs. A ‘post-antibiotic’ world looms as a result, the consequences of which would be many people and farm animals sickening and dying of what, until now, have been preventable or treatable infections.
Researchers writing in the latest issue of the journal Weed Science provide important insights on the control of herbicide-resistant giant ragweed
The latest Thematic Issue 'Trypetheliaceae' from The Lichenologist is now available online and unlocks the secrets to more than 400 species of tropical lichens.
A collection of the most read posts published in 2016
The Institute for Historical Research recently selected ten of the “most interesting articles and books” of 2016 and I was delighted to find my BJHS paper Deceived by Orchids: Sex, Science, Fiction and Darwin among them.…
The animal article of the month for January is ‘Outdoor stocking density in free-range laying hens: radio-frequency identification of impacts on range use‘. …
A study published in the journal Oryx finds off-the-shelf drones can be used to guard crops and keep elephants safe along the borders of Tanzanian parks.
Photo credit: Antonella Dalle Zotte The animal article of the month for December is ‘Black soldier fly as dietary protein source for broiler quails: apparent digestibility, excreta microbial load, feed choice, performance, carcass and meat traits‘.…
A proposed power transmission line at the edge of the Tonle Sap Floodplain Protected Landscape (TSFPL), which might be constructed as early as next year, would pose a new threat to the Critically Endangered Bengal Florican.
A glacier near Lake Aru in western Tibet collapsed on 17 July 2016. Now the Journal of Glaciology publishes the first scientific account of this cryospheric disaster in which nine local yak herders were killed. Eyewitnesses reported that the episode lasted only four to five minutes. More than 70 million cubic metres of ice tumbled down a mountain valley, spreading over a distance of 6 kilometres onto the lowland below.
The latest Parasitology Paper of the Month is “Origin of a major infectious disease in vertebrates: The timing of Cryptosporidium evolution and its hosts” by Juan C.…
Because of its high strength and favorable dielectric properties, tantalum has become an invaluable material to the microelectronics industry. That value, unfortunately, has not been lost on rebel militias in the heart of Africa, where the extraction of the lustrous metal has become a deadly means for financing civil war.
The animal article of the month for November is ‘An approach to including protein quality when assessing the net contribution of livestock to human food supply‘ Worldwide, livestock provide more than a quarter of the protein in human diets.…
A wildlife corridor facilitates tiger movement without the locals suffering, a new study published in Oryx shows.
A study by scientists at Aberystwyth University’s IBERS working with Wales YFC reveals that rumen fluke (Calicophoron daubneyi) is now prevalent on Welsh farms.…
More than a third (36%) of teenagers whose mothers suffered from postnatal depression experienced sleep problems at the age of 18, compared to only one in five (22%) teenagers whose mothers didn’t suffer from postnatal depression.…