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| December 17, 2013 |
 Good news for Arctic, as sea ice volume up by half Paris (AFP) Dec 16, 2013 - Arctic sea ice last month was around 50 percent higher in volume compared with a year earlier, following a recovery in area this summer, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Monday. This is some good news for the Arctic, but does not reverse a longer trend of decline, it said. Data from ESA's high-tech ice-monitoring satellite CryoSat found that in October this year, there was about 9,00 ... more |  |
 Runaway process drives intermediate-depth earthquakes Stanford CA (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - Stanford scientists may have solved the mystery of what drives a type of earthquake that occurs deep within the Earth and accounts for one in four quakes worldwide. Known as intermediate-depth earthquakes, these temblors originate farther down inside the Earth than shallow earthquakes, which take place in the uppermost layer of the Earth's surface, called the crust. The kinds of quakes tha ... more |  |
 Chimpanzees are rational, not conformists Nijmegen, Netherlands (SPX) Dec 17, 2013 - Chimpanzees are sensitive to social influences but they maintain their own strategy to solve a problem rather than conform to what the majority of group members are doing. However, chimpanzees do change their strategy when they can obtain greater rewards, MPI researchers found. The study was published in PLOS ONE on November 28, 2013. Chimpanzees are known for their curious nature. They sh ... more |  |
 Scientists help adapt Brazil farming to climate change Brasïlia (AFP) Dec 16, 2013 - Hundreds of scientists are helping Brazil's giant agricultural sector prepare for the effects of climate change and anticipate pests that hit neighboring countries. Spearheading the effort is the Brazilian Agriculture Research Corporation (Embrapa), a state agency tasked with developing and extending technology to support sustainable farming. "We have 400 investigators currently focusing ... more |  |
Neanderthals buried their dead New York NY (SPX) Dec 17, 2013 - Neanderthals, forerunners to modern humans, buried their dead, an international team of archaeologists has concluded after a 13-year study of remains discovered in southwestern France. Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirm that burials took place in western Europe prior to the arrival of modern humans. "This discovery not ... more |  |
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 Environment drives genetics in 'Evolution Canyon'; discovery sheds light on climate change Blacksburg VA (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - Interplay between genes and the environment has been pondered at least since the phrase "nature versus nurture" was coined in the mid-1800s. But until the arrival of modern genomic sequencing tools, it was hard to measure the extent that the environment had on a species' genetic makeup. Now, researchers with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech studying fruit flies ... more |  |
Post-Sandy, Long Island barrier systems appear surprisingly sound Austin TX (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - As coastal communities continue to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, scientists at this week's annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union offer some encouraging news: the storm did not seriously damage the offshore barrier system that controls erosion on Long Island. Long-term concerns remain about the effects on the region of sea-level rise, pollutants churned up by the storm ... more |  |
A new species of horse, over 4 million years old Cleveland OH (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - Two teams of researchers, including a scientist from Case Western Reserve University, have announced the discovery of a new species of fossil horse from 4.4 million-year-old fossil-rich deposits in Ethiopia. About the size of a small zebra, Eurygnathohippus woldegabrieli-named for geologist Giday WoldeGabriel, who earned his PhD at Case Western Reserve in 1987-had three-toed hooves and gra ... more |  |
 Blind cavefish offer evidence for alternative mechanism of evolutionary change Woods Hole MA (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - In a blind fish that dwells in deep, dark Mexican caves, scientists have found evidence for a long-debated mechanism of evolutionary change that is distinct from natural selection of spontaneously arising mutations, as reported this week in the journal Science. The eyeless cavefish Astyanas mexicanus is "a special system in which we can look at evolution in action," says article co-author ... more |  |
Evolution of 'third party punishment' College Park MD (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - You're shopping for holiday gifts when you spot someone pocketing a nice pair of leather gloves. What do you do? A new study by University of Maryland researchers appearing this week in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B predicts that whether you alert a manager to the theft or decide to do nothing may depend on whether you're shopping in a local store where you know the owners or in a city ... more |  |
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Duck-billed dinosaurs had fleshy 'cocks comb' London, UK (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - A rare, mummified specimen of the duck-billed dinosaur Edmontosauraus regalis described in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 12 shows for the first time that those dinosaurs' heads were adorned with a fleshy comb, most similar to the roosters' red crest. The most common dinosaurs in North America between 75 and 65 million years ago, duck-billed dinosaurs were gentle giants ... more |  |
 Harvard study shows sprawl threatens water quality, climate protection, and land conservation gains Boston MA (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - A groundbreaking study by Harvard University's Harvard Forest and the Smithsonian Institution reveals that, if left unchecked, recent trends in the loss of forests to development will undermine significant land conservation gains in Massachusetts, jeopardize water quality, and limit the natural landscape's ability to protect against climate change. The scientists researched and analyzed fo ... more |  |
ASU researchers discover chameleons use colorful language to communicate Tempe AZ (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - To protect themselves, some animals rapidly change color when their environments change, but chameleons change colors in unusual ways when they interact with other chameleons. Arizona State University researchers have discovered that these color changes don't happen "out-of-the-blue" - instead, they convey different types of information during important social interactions. For example, wh ... more |  |
Alpine glacier, unchanged for thousands of years, now melting San Francisco CA (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - Less than 20 miles from the site where melting ice exposed the 5,000-year-old body of Otzi the Iceman, scientists have discovered new and compelling evidence that the Italian Alps are warming at an unprecedented rate. Part of that evidence comes in the form of a single dried-out leaf from a larch tree that grew thousands of years ago. A six-nation team of glaciologists led by The Ohi ... more |  |
Discovery of 1.4 million-year-old fossil human hand bone closes human evolution gap Columbia MO (SPX) Dec 17, 2013 - Humans have a distinctive hand anatomy that allows them to make and use tools. Apes and other nonhuman primates do not have these distinctive anatomical features in their hands, and the point in time at which these features first appeared in human evolution is unknown. Now, a University of Missouri researcher and her international team of colleagues have found a new hand bone from a human ... more |  |
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Sicily airport stays shut due to volcano eruption Rome (AFP) Dec 16, 2013 - Catania airport in Sicily stayed shut on Monday due to an ongoing eruption of nearby Mount Etna, the highest active volcano in Europe, airport officials said. Catania, along with the smaller airport of Comiso, was closed on Sunday due to the clouds of ash in the sky. The company that manages Catania, Sec, said the "direction and intensity of the wind" meant that ash from the eruption was ... more |  |
Study: Young people in Canada prefer urban cores to suburban living Waterloo, Ontario (UPI) Dec 16, 2013 - In choosing where to live, young people in Canada are trending toward transit-rich urban cores over the suburbs, a study indicates. Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario say young adults want to live close to transit, high-density housing and urban amenities. In a study that focused primarily on young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 in Montreal and Vancouver, ... more |  |
French customs announce major ivory haul Poitiers, France (AFP) Dec 16, 2013 - French customs said Monday they found 82 kilogrammes (180 pounds) of elephant tusks in the boot of a car as part of a routine inspection, one of the biggest ivory seizures in a decade. Customs officials discovered two whole elephant tusks and several chunks of tusks worth around 80,000 euros ($110,000) in the car near the western city of Poitiers on December 10, they said in a statement. ... more |  |
 Deloitte aids international humanitarian organizations New York (UPI) Dec 16, 2013 - Two international humanitarian organizations are to be helped in communications and coordination of aid by Deloitte under its Humanitarian Innovation Program. Details of the project with AtrocityWatch and the International Organization for Migration were made public by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "Deloitte believes that when the private ... more |  |
Simple mathematical formula describes human struggles Miami FL (SPX) Dec 16, 2013 - Would you believe that a broad range of human struggles can be understood by using a mathematical formula? From child-parent struggles to cyber-attacks and civil unrest, they can all be explained with a simple mathematical expression called a "power-law." In a sort of unified theory of human conflict, scientists have found a way to mathematically describe the severity and timing of human c ... more |  |
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