Rocks, water and hot alkaline fluid rich in hydrogen gas spewing out of deep-sea vents: this recipe for life has been championed for years by a small group of scientists. Now two of them have fleshed out the detail on how the first cells might have evolved in these vents, and escaped their deep sea…
Scientists studying how songbirds stay on key have developed a statistical explanation for why some things are harder for the brain to learn than others. “We’ve built the first mathematical model that uses a bird’s previous sensorimotor experience to predict its ability to learn,” says Emory biologist Samuel Sober. “We hope it will help us…
For over a millennium the Chinese have used an herb known as Chang Shan to treat fevers associated with malaria. While its effectiveness in treating the disease has long been confirmed by modern medicine, its exact function has remained mystery. However, in a recent study, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) say they have…
One of the big environmental stories of 2012 was the record melting of sea ice in the Arctic, which reached its smallest extent this summer since satellite data began being kept in the late 1970s. But it’s not the Arctic alone that’s reacting to manmade climate change by transforming into a large puddle. On the…
Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified two molecules that play an important role in the survival and production of nerve cells in the brain, including nerve cells that produce dopamine. The discovery, which is published in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, may be significant in the long term for the treatment of several…
Is there a sense in which a gun, once put in hand, must be fired? If so, how deeply does this expectation, this foreshadowing of action, soak into its holder? How might the surrounding culture (hunting versus “tactical”) and type of gun shape these expectations? One holds a gun by its grip. Is there a…
Nearly every coral reef could be dying by 2100 if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, according to a new review of major climate models from around the world. The only way to maintain the current chemical environment in which reefs now live, the study suggests, would be to deeply cut emissions as soon as…
NASA’s long-lived Mars rover Opportunity that beat newcomer sister probe Curiosity to an area containing water-formed clay minerals, has found that the spot may be far richer than scientists first realized. A new study looks at chemicals spotted by a Mars-orbiting spacecraft to conclude that Endeavour Crater, which Opportunity reached in August 2011 after a…
Anthea Butler and others have quite appropriately drawn attention to and criticized conservative Christians who blame the Newtown tragedy on God’s absence from our schools. The problem with this approach, however, is that those who make such statements fully expect that they will be criticized and take smug pride in it.
University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine researchers have uncovered a genetic basis for fundamental differences between humans and other vertebrates that could also help explain why humans are susceptible to diseases not found in other species. Scientists have wondered why vertebrate species, which look and behave very differently from one another, nevertheless share very similar…