February 19

• Mutant champions save imperiled species from almost-certain extinction: Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. Populations of disease-causing bacteria evolve, for example, as doctors flood their “environment,” the human body, with antibiotics. Insects, animals and plants can make evolutionary adaptations in response to pesticides, heavy metals and overfishing. (U. Washington)

January 9

• Hawaiian Islands are dissolving: Someday, Oahu’s Koolau and Waianae mountains will be reduced to nothing more than a flat, low-lying island like Midway. But erosion isn’t the biggest culprit. Instead, scientists say, the mountains of Oahu are actually dissolving from within. (Brigham Young U.)

December 5

• Wide Binary Stars: Long-Distance Stellar Relationships: Using computer simulations, scientists from Hawaii and Finland have figured out how wide binary stars—two stars that orbit each other at a distance up to a light-year—form. (Y. Hawaii)

Novembrer 13

• Increasing Efficiency of Wireless Networks: Two professors at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have developed a new method that doubles the efficiency of wireless networks and could have a large impact on the mobile Internet and wireless industriess. (UC Riverside)

October 28

• Mechanism found for destruction of key allergy-inducing complexes: Researchers have learned how a man-made molecule destroys complexes that induce allergic responses — a discovery that could lead to the development of highly potent, rapidly acting interventions for a host of acute allergic reactions. (Stanford U.)

October 22

• Changes in Sleep Architecture Increase Hunger, Eating: A new study shows that both length of time and percentage of overall sleep spent in different sleep stages are associated with decreased metabolic rate, increased hunger, and increased intake of calories (specifically from fat and carbohydrates). The findings suggest an explanation for the association between sleep problems and obesity. (APS)

October 15

• New Mechanism For Antibiotic Tolerance Found: Many antibiotics can lose their ability to kill bacteria – Duke University bioengineers believe they can explain one of the reasons why. (Duke U.)

October 4

• Weather-Making High-Pressure Systems Predicted to Intensify : High-pressure systems over oceans, which largely determine the tracks of tropical cyclones and hydrological extremes in much of the northern hemisphere, are likely to intensify this century. (Duke U.)

September 25

• Easy Guider: Intuitive Visual Control Provides Faster Remote Operation of Robots: Using a novel method of integrating video technology and familiar control devices, a research team from Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is developing a technique to simplify remote control of robotic devices. (GIT)

September 19

• Unusual Cavefish Navigate in Darkness by the Teeth on Their Skin: In a single cave in Ecuador, a species of cavefish has evolved to do something perhaps unique to them, navigate with their teeth. (U. Maryland)

September 10

• Salt Seeds Clouds in the Amazon Rainforest: It’s morning, deep in the Amazon jungle. In the still air innumerable leaves glisten with moisture, and fog drifts through the trees. As the sun rises, clouds appear and float across the forest canopy … but where do they come from? Water vapor needs soluble particles to condense on. Airborne particles are the seeds of liquid droplets in fog, mist, and clouds. (LBNL)

September 6

• Deep-Sea Crabs Grab Grub Using UV Vision: Crabs living half-a-mile down in the ocean, beyond the reach of sunlight, have a sort of color vision combining sensitivity to blue and ultraviolet light. Their detection of shorter wavelengths may give the crabs a way to ensure they grab healthy grub, not poison. (Duke U.)

September 2

• Electronics Play By a New Set of Rules at the Molecular Scale: In a paper published in Nature Nanontechnology on September 2, 2012, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Columbia University’s departments of Chemistry and of Applied Physics explore the laws that govern electronic conductance in molecular scale circuits. (BNL)

August 28

• NYU-Poly Researchers Set Record for Detecting Smallest Virus, Opening New Possibilities for Early Disease Detection: Researchers at Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) have created an ultra-sensitive biosensor capable of identifying the smallest single virus particles in solution, an advance that may revolutionize early disease detection in a point-of-care setting and shrink test result wait times from weeks to minutes. (NYU-Poly)

August 6

• Scientists Define New Limits of Microbial Life in Undersea Volcanoes: By some estimates, a third of Earth's organisms live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives are almost a complete mystery. (NSF)

July 23

• Sequencing technology helps reveal what plant genomes really encode: Scientists from the James Hutton Institute and the University of Dundee have teamed up with researchers in the USA to use a new technique to sequence the genes of the plant Arabidopsis. This approach, which allows researchers to see exactly where a plant's genes end, could be applied to crops in the hope of boosting efforts to breed new varieties. (BBSRC)

July 19

• Researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism: In a breakthrough effort for computational biology, the world's first complete computer model of an organism has been completed, Stanford University researchers report. (Stanford U.)

July 17

• Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of Link between Immune Irregularities and Autism: Studies of postmortem brains and of individuals with autism, as well as epidemiological studies, have supported the correlation between alterations in the immune system and autism spectrum disorder. (Caltech)

July 16

• Thieving Rodents: Did They Save Tropical Trees?: Big seeds produced by tropical trees such as black palms were probably once ingested and then left whole by huge mammals called gomphotheres. (NSF)

July 10

• Metamolecules That Switch Handedness at Light-Speed: A multi-institutional team of researchers that included scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has created the first artificial molecules whose chirality can be rapidly switched from a right-handed to a left-handed orientation with a beam of light. (LBNL)

July 6

• Skulls shed new light on the evolution of the cat: Modern cats diverged in skull shape from their sabre-toothed ancestors early in their evolutionary history and then followed separate evolutionary trajectories. (Bristol U.)

July 2

• DNA Sequenced for Parrots' Ability to Parrot: Scientists say they have assembled more completely the string of genetic letters that could control how well parrots learn to imitate their owners and other sounds. (Duke U.)

June 28

• Programmable DNA Scissors Found for Bacterial Immune System: Genetic engineers and genomics researchers should welcome the news from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) where an international team of scientists has discovered a new and possibly more effective means of editing genomes. (LBNL)

June 25

• Unraveling the mysteries of exotic superconductors: In traditional electrical lines, a significant amount of energy is lost while the energy travels from its source to homes and businesses due to resistance. Superconductors, materials that when cooled have zero electric resistance, have the promise of someday increasing the efficiency of power distribution, but more must still be learned about superconductors before they can be widely used for that purpose. (Ames L.)

June 21

• Planetrise: Alien World Looms Large in its Neighbor's Sky: Few nighttime sights offer more drama than the full Moon rising over the horizon. Now imagine that instead of the Moon, a gas giant planet spanning three times more sky loomed over the molten landscape of a lava world. This alien vista exists in the newly discovered two-planet system of Kepler-36. (CfA)

June 18

• Carbon is Key for Getting Algae to Pump Out More Oil: Overturning two long-held misconceptions about oil production in algae, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory show that ramping up the microbes’ overall metabolism by feeding them more carbon increases oil production as the organisms continue to grow. (BNL)

June 13

• Bacterium Signals Plant to Open Up and Let Friends In: Researchers have identified the set of tools an infectious microbe uses to persuade a plant to open the windows and let the bug and all of its friends inside. (Duke U.)

June 12

• Babraham-US collaboration reveals how injured nerves initiate self-destruction: Scientists at the Babraham Institute, together with collaborators in the USA, have made a breakthrough in understanding how axons self-destruct in injury, ageing and disease. (BBSRC)

June 8

• Armored Caterpillar Could Inspire New Body Armor: Military body armor and vehicle and aircraft frames could be transformed by incorporating the unique structure of the club-like arm of a crustacean that looks like an armored caterpillar, according to findings by a team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering and elsewhere published online today (June 8) in the journal Science. (BNL)

May 29

• Copper-Nickel Nanowires Could Be Perfect Fit For Printable Electronics: While the Statue of Liberty and old pennies may continue to turn green, printed electronics and media screens made of copper nanowires will always keep their original color. (Duke U.)

May 24

• Researchers Demonstrate Possible Primitive Mechanism of Chemical Info Self-Replication: When scientists think about the replication of information in chemistry, they usually have in mind something akin to what happens in living organisms when DNA gets copied: a double-stranded molecule that contains sequence information makes two new copies of the molecule. But researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now shown that a different mechanism can also be used to copy sequence information. (Caltech)

May 24

• Nanoparticles Seen as Artificial Atoms: In the growth of crystals, do nanoparticles act as “artificial atoms” forming molecular-type building blocks that can assemble into complex structures? This is the contention of a major but controversial theory to explain nanocrystal growth. (Duke U.)

May 21

• Totally RAD: Bioengineers create rewritable digital data storage in DNA: Jerome Bonnet, a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, worked with graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn and assistant professor Drew Endy, PhD, to reapply natural enzymes adapted from bacteria to flip specific sequences of DNA back and forth at will. (Stanford U.)

May 18

• Novel Casting Process Could Transform How Complex Metal Parts Are Made: A Georgia Tech research team has developed a novel technology that could change how industry designs and casts complex, costly metal parts. This new casting method makes possible faster prototype development times, as well as more efficient and cost-effective manufacturing procedures after a part moves to mass production. (GIT)

May 14

• Questions About Incredible Sea Turtle Migration Answered by Scientists: Immediately after emerging from their underground nests on the lush beaches of eastern Florida, loggerhead sea turtles scramble into the sea and embark alone on a migration that takes them around the entire North Atlantic basin. Survivors of this epic migration eventually return to North America's coastal waters. (NSF)

May 10

• Unseen planet revealed by its gravity: More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. In a paper published today in the journal Science online, a group of researchers led by Dr. David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute has inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system. (SwRI)

May 5

• Caltech Researchers Use Stalagmites to Study Past Climate Change: There is an old trick for remembering the difference between stalactites and stalagmites in a cave: Stalactites hold tight to the ceiling while stalagmites might one day grow to reach the ceiling. Now, it seems, stalagmites might also fill a hole in our understanding of Earth's climate system and how that system is likely to respond to the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since preindustrial times. (Caltech)

May 1

• Study Is First to Show Transgenerational Effect of Antibiotics: In a paper published in Nature's open access journal Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, report that male pseudoscorpions treated with the antibiotic tetracycline suffer significantly reduced sperm viability and pass this toxic effect on to their untreated sons. They suggest a similar effect could occur in humans and other species. (NSF)

April 25

• Using a Foreign Language Helps Decision-Making: If you think that decisions are based only on the evidence presented, think again. In fact, think about the question in a different language, assessing the risks inherent in making decisions. Your reactions may be surprising. (APS)

April 24

• Mental Stress May Be Harder on Women’s Hearts: Coronary artery disease continues to be a major cause of death in the U.S., killing hundreds of thousands of people per year. However, this disease burden isn’t evenly divided between the sexes; significantly more men than women are diagnosed with coronary artery disease each year. The reasons behind this difference aren’t well defined. (APS)

April 20

• Self-assembling highly conductive plastic nanofibers: Researchers from CNRS and the Université de Strasbourg, headed by Nicolas Giuseppone and Bernard Doudin, have succeeded in making highly conductive plastic fibers that are only several nanometers thick.. (CNRS)

April 17

• Can social media detect the changes in public mood?: New research has analysed the mood of Twitter users in the UK and detected various changes in the mood of the public. (NSF)

April 13

• Scientists Determined First-ever Census for Emperor Penguins: A new study using satellite mapping technology reveals there are twice as many emperor penguins in Antarctica than previously thought. (NSF)

April 10

• Climate Change Boosts Then Quickly Stunts Plants, Decade-long Study Shows: Global warming may initially make the grass greener, but not for long, according to new research results. (NSF)

April 9

• Opening the gate to robust quantum computing: Scientists have overcome a major hurdle facing quantum computing: how to protect quantum information from degradation by the environment while simultaneously performing computation in a solid-state quantum system. (Ames L.)

April 2

• New isotope measurement could alter history of early solar system: The early days of our solar system might look quite different than previously thought, according to research at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory published in Science. The study used more sensitive instruments to find a different half-life for samarium, one of the isotopes used to chart the evolution of the solar system. (ANL)

March 29

• Supercomputing the Difference between Matter and Antimatter: An international collaboration of scientists has reported a landmark calculation of the decay process of a kaon into two pions, using breakthrough techniques on some of the world’s fastest supercomputers. (BNL)

March 26

• Huge Hamsters and Pint-Sized Porcupines: From miniature elephants to monster mice, and even Hobbit-sized humans, size changes in island animals are well-known to science. Biologists have long believed that large animals evolving on islands tend to get smaller, while small animals tend to get bigger, a generalization they call "the island rule." (Duke U.)

March 23

• New theory on gas-guzzling black holes: Astronomers from the UK and Australia have put forward a new theory about why black holes become so hugely massive – claiming some of them have no ‘table manners’, and tip their ‘food’ directly into their mouths, eating more than one course simultaneously. (STFC)

March 22

• Exercise Has Benefits, Even When It’s Done in Space: Astronauts living on the International Space Station show small effect on cardiovascular health when accompanied by an Exercise regimen. (APS)

March 20

• Why can’t you sprint a marathon: Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have discovered a new memory mechanism within the nervous system that helps to avoid exhaustion. (BBSRC)

March 18

• A Surprising New Kind of Proton Transfer: Berkeley Lab scientists and their colleagues have discovered an unsuspected way that protons can move among molecules – revealing new opportunities for research in biology, environmental science, and green chemistry. (LBNL)

March 13

• Latest data confirms high failure rates for metal-on-metal hip replacements: Ten days after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced that patients who have received stemmed metal-on-metal (MOM) hip replacements will need annual check-ups, The Lancet publishes "unequivocal evidence" from the largest database on hip replacements in the world. The new study by the University of Bristol confirms that stemmed MOM implants are failing at much higher rates than other types, particularly those with larger head sizes and those implanted in women, in whom failure rates are up to four-times higher. (Bristol U.)

March 12

• Genetic analysis of ancient ‘Iceman’ mummy traces ancestry from Alps to Mediterranean isle: The Iceman mummy, also known as Otzi, is about 5,300 years old. Scientists studying his body since his discovery in the Italian Alps in 1991 have learned many things, including the cause of his death (an arrow to the back) and his last meal (ibex meat). An analysis of the corpse’s chemical composition suggested that he was born and lived his entire life in the Tyrol area where his body was found. Now they’re delving deeper to unearth more clues in the mummy’s DNA. (Stanford U.)

March 7

• Oxygen-Deprived Baby Rats Fare Worse If Kept Warm: Premature infants’ immature lungs and frequent dips in blood pressure make them especially vulnerable to a condition called hypoxia in which their tissues don’t receive enough oxygen, sometimes leading to permanent brain damage. (APS)

March 5

• Berkeley Lab Quantifies Effect of Soot on Snow and Ice, Supporting Previous Climate Findings: A new study from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), published in Nature Climate Change, has quantitatively demonstrated that black carbon—also known as soot, a pollutant emitted from power plants, diesel engines and residential cooking and heating, as well as forest fires—reduces the reflectance of snow and ice, an effect that increases the rate of global climate change. (LBNL)

February 27

• New Studies Determine Which Social Class More Likely to Behave Unethically: A series of studies conducted by psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Toronto in Canada reveal something the well off may not want to hear. Individuals who are relatively high in social class are more likely to engage in a variety of unethical behaviors. (NSF)

February 24

• Micronutrients prior to pregnancy affect offspring: Scientists find that micronutrients affect methylation, which has been associated with changes in the immune system. (BBSRC)

February 23

• Higgs Boson Gets New Mass Limit: New, more precise measurements of a particle called the W boson are again suggesting that physicists' prized Higgs boson is lighter than previously predicted. (Duke U.)

February 21

• High-definition polarization vision discovered in cuttlefish: Cuttlefish have the most acute polarization vision yet found in any animal, researchers at the University of Bristol have discovered by showing them movies on a modified LCD computer screen to test their eyesight. (BBSRC)

February 20

• Big, bad bacterium is an "iron pirate": Life inside the human body sometimes looks like life on the high seas in the 1600s, when pirates hijacked foreign vessels in search of precious metals. (ANL)

February 16

• Researchers Find Strange New Nano-region Can Form in Quasicrystals: A team of international researchers has discovered a new type of structural anomaly, or defect, that can appear in quasicrystals, a unique material with some crystal-like properties but a more complex structure. (Ames Lab.)

February 14

• Liquid batteries for utilities could make renewables competitive: IT team makes progress toward goal of inexpensive grid-scale batteries that could help make intermittent renewable energy sources viable. (MIT)

February 13

• Explosive Evolutionary Innovation May Not Always Follow Mass Extinctions, Study of Ancient Zooplankton Finds: Fossil record of graptoloids challenges the theory that immediately after a mass extinction, surviving species develop new physical traits at a rapid pace. (U. Buffalo)

February 9

• Hydrogen from Acidic Water: A technique for creating a new molecule that structurally and chemically replicates the active part of the widely used industrial catalyst molybdenite has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). (LBNL)

February 6

• Copper + Love Chemical = Big Sulfur Stink. When Hiroaki Matsunami, PhD, associate professor at Duke University, set out to study a chemical in male mouse urine called MTMT that attracts female mice, he didn't think he would stumble into a new field of study. (DUMC)

February 3

• Right Hand or Left. When you see a picture of a hand, how do you know whether it’s a right or left hand? This “hand laterality” problem may seem obscure, but it reveals a lot about how the brain sorts out confusing perceptions. (APS)

February 2

• A battle of the vampires, 20 million years ago. They are tiny, ugly, disease-carrying little blood-suckers that most people have never seen or heard of, but a new discovery in a one-of-a-kind fossil shows that “bat flies” have been doing their noxious business with bats for at least 20 million years. (OSU)

February 1

• Why the brain is more reluctant to function as we age. New findings, led by neuroscientists at the University of Bristol and published this week in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, reveal a novel mechanism through which the brain may become more reluctant to function as we grow older. (Bristol U.)

January 27

• Disappearing gold a boon for nanolattices. When gold vanishes from a very important location, it usually means trouble. At the nanoscale, however, it could provide more knowledge about certain types of material. (ANL.)

January 26

• Researchers Show How New Viruses Evolve, and in Some Cases, Become Deadly. Researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) have demonstrated how a new virus evolves, shedding light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations. The findings appear in the current issue of the journal Science. (NSF)

January 23

• Women report feeling pain more intensely than men, says study of electronic records. Women report more-intense pain than men in virtually every disease category, according to Stanford University School of Medicine investigators who mined a huge collection of electronic medical records to establish the broad gender difference to a high level of statistical significance. (Stanford U.)

January 20

• Health benefits of exercise may depend on cellular degradation, researchers report. The health benefits of exercise on blood sugar metabolism may come from the body’s ability to devour itself, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report in the journal Nature. (UTSMC)
• Why bats, rats and cats store different amounts of fat. Why different animals carry different amounts of fat depends on how they have solved the problem of avoiding both starving to death and being killed by predators, new research from the University of Bristol suggests. (Bristol U.)

January 17

• Breeding better grasses for food and fuel. Researchers from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Sustainable Bioenergy Centre (BSBEC) have discovered a family of genes that could help us breed grasses with improved properties for diet and bioenergy. (BBSRC)

January 16

• Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step in Life on Earth. More than 500 million years ago, single-celled organisms on Earth's surface began forming multi-cellular clusters that ultimately became plants and animals. (NSF)

January 13

• Study Offers Insight into Delicate Biochemical Balance Required for Plant Growth. In an ongoing effort to understand how modifying plant cell walls might affect the production of biomass and its breakdown for use in biofuels, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have uncovered a delicate biochemical balance essential for sustainable plant growth and reproduction. (BNL)

January 12

• Clearest Picture Yet of Dark Matter Points the Way to Better Understanding of Dark Energy. Two teams of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, building maps of dark matter using new methods that, in turn, will remove key hurdles for understanding dark energy with ground-based telescopes. (LBNL)

January 10

• Disruption of biological clocks causes neurodegeneration, early death . New research at Oregon State University provides evidence for the first time that disruption of circadian rhythms – the biological “clocks” found in many animals – can clearly cause accelerated neurodegeneration, loss of motor function and premature death. (OSU)

January 6

• How poor maternal diet can increase risk of diabetes – new mechanism discovered. Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have shown one way in which poor nutrition in the womb can put a person at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes and other age-related diseases in later life. (BBSRC)

January 4

• Cold waters give up their hottest secret. A seven-armed sea-star and a new species of yeti crab have been found living on previously undiscovered hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the Southern Ocean. (Newcastle U.)

January 3

• Nap-deprived tots may be missing out on more than sleep. A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder could be a wake-up call for parents of toddlers: Daytime naps for your kids may be more important than you think. (UCB)
• Researchers discover a compound that controls Listeria. In a year when cantaloupe tainted with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes killed 30 people, the discovery of a compound that controls this deadly bacteria -- and possibly others -- is great news. (Cornell U.)

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