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New CU-Boulder-led study may answer questions about enigmatic Little Ice Age

University of Colorado Boulder Professor Gifford Miller is shown here collecting dead plant samples from beneath a Baffin Island ice cap. A new study led by Miller indicates the Little Ice Age began roughly A.D. 1275 and was triggered repeated, explosive volcanism that cooled the atmosphere.

Music training has biological impact on aging process

Age-related delays in neural timing are not inevitable and can be avoided or offset with musical training, according to a new study from Northwestern University. The study is the first...

Divorce hurts health more at earlier ages

Divorce at a younger age hurts people's health more than divorce later in life, according to a new study by a Michigan State University sociologist.

Research at Rice University leads to nanotube-based device for communication, security, sensing

Researchers at Rice University are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and...

Earth's energy budget remained out of balance despite unusually low solar activity

A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity -- not changes in solar activity -- are the primary force driving global warming.

Livestock, not Mongolian gazelles, drive foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks

Wildlife health experts from the Wildlife Conservation Society have published evidence which supports the conclusion that Mongolian gazelles -- one of the most populous large land mammals on the planet...

UCLA astronomers solve mystery of vanishing electrons

UCLA researchers have explained the puzzling disappearing act of energetic electrons in Earth's outer radiation belt, using data collected from a fleet of orbiting spacecraft.

Cutting off the oxygen supply to serious diseases

A new family of proteins which regulate the human body’s ‘hypoxic response’ to low levels of oxygen has been discovered by scientists at Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary, University...

Early intervention may curb dangerous college drinking

The first few weeks of college are a critical time in shaping students' drinking habits. Now Penn State researchers have a tailored approach that may help prevent students from becoming...

Rice professor's nanotube theory confirmed

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, has experimentally confirmed a theory by Rice University Professor Boris Yakobson that foretold a pair of interesting properties about nanotube growth: That...

Warming in the Tasman Sea a global warming hot spot

Oceanographers have identified a series of ocean hotspots around the world generated by strengthening wind systems that have driven oceanic currents, including the East Australian Current, polewards beyond their known...

Mouse to elephant? Just wait 24 million generations

Scientists have for the first time measured how fast large-scale evolution can occur in mammals, showing it takes 24 million generations for a mouse-sized animal to evolve to the size...

Mammals shrink at faster rates than they grow

Just how big can mammals get and how fast can they get there? These are questions examined by an international team of researchers exploring increases in mammal size after the...

What do killer whales eat in the Arctic?

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the top marine predator, wherever they are found, and seem to eat everything from schools of small fish to large baleen whales, over twice their...

Learning-based tourism an opportunity for industry expansion

New research suggests that major growth in the travel, leisure and tourism industry in the coming century may be possible as more people begin to define recreation as a learning...

New probiotic bacteria shows promise for use in shellfish aquaculture

The use of probiotic bacteria, isolated from naturally-occurring bacterial communities, is gaining in popularity in the aquaculture industry as the preferred, environmentally-friendly management alternative to the use of antibiotics and...

Bright lights of purity

To the lengthy list of serendipitous discoveries -- gravity, penicillin, the New World -- add this: Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)...

Ferroelectric switching discovered for first time in soft biological tissue

The heart's inner workings are mysterious, perhaps even more so with a new finding. Engineers at the University of Washington have discovered an electrical property in arteries not seen before...

Smart paint could revolutionize structural safety

An innovative low-cost smart paint that can detect microscopic faults in wind turbines, mines and bridges before structural damage occurs is being developed by researchers at the University of Strathclyde...

Alcohol and your heart: Friend or foe?

A meta-analysis done by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) into the relationship between alcohol consumption and heart disease provides new insight into the long-held belief that drinking...

UCSB researchers discover the processes leading to acute myeloid leukemia

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered a molecular pathway that may explain how a particularly deadly form of cancer develops. The discovery may lead to new cancer therapies that...

The good news about carbon storage in tropical vegetation

A study recently published in Nature Climate Change finds that tropical vegetation contains 21 percent more carbon than previous studies had suggested. Using a combination of remote sensing and field...