EARTH.COM - Moss seems to get by on almost nothing. It colonizes bare rock, survives near-total desiccation, and springs back minutes after rain. The vast majority of land plants form underground partnerships with fungi, trading sugars for nutrients they can’t reach alone. Mosses had always been treated as the exception. New research from California’s desert...
SCITECHDAILY - In some of the driest places on Earth, the ground itself can be alive. What looks like a thin, dark crust on desert soil may actually be a miniature ecosystem, packed with mosses, fungi, bacteria, algae, and tiny animals. These biological soil crusts help hold fragile landscapes together, trapping dust, storing nutrients, and...
NEWSWEEK - A new study is raising questions about one of the most widely held ideas in Alzheimer’s research—suggesting the disease may not start with plaques in the brain after all. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) say the earliest changes could instead happen inside nerve cells, where two key proteins appear to...
THE SACRAMENTO BEE - Every colony of bees is overseen by a queen who produces all the colony's eggs, but what makes a queen bee a queen? For decades, biologists believed that queen bee development was a result of the consumpion of royal jelly, but a new study published on June 3 in Nature scientific...
USA TODAY - Scientists have linked an unusual "cold blob" in the North Atlantic — one eerily similar to the one featured in the film "The Day After Tomorrow," that has a major impact on global weather. While the findings weren't that extreme, a recent study showed the area has cooled by up to 1...
LAIST.COM - An estimated 1.3 million Joshua trees burned as the 2020 Dome Fire swept through 43,000 acres of the Cima Dome in the Mojave Desert. Scientists feared the damage extended far beyond the trees, reaching into the underground networks of fungi that help sustain desert ecosystems. Instead, fungi are thriving underground. That finding —...
REUTERS - Honeybee queens come from the same ordinary fertilized female eggs as worker bees. So how does one bee become a queen - with the responsibility of serving as the colony's only baby maker - rather than just another worker? Until now, scientists believed it was solely because the chosen bee was served a...
LADBIBLE - Scientists are concerned about a patch of unusually cold water in the North Atlantic Ocean, referred to as the 'cold blob' or 'warming hole'. While a particularly powerful El Niño is on the horizon, this patch of ocean near Greenland has cooled by about 1°C over the past few decades. A new study...
EARTH.COM - For years, one idea dominated the story of how a honeybee queen is made. Give an ordinary larva enough royal jelly, and it becomes royalty. It seemed straightforward – a special diet created a special bee. New research now shows that the process is far more complex. A future queen does not grow...
METRO UK - The science of climate change is complex, but the overall effect is pretty simple – the planet is getting warmer. Except, however, for a cool ‘blob’ just southeast of Greenland that no one has ever been able to properly explain. The blob, also called the ‘warming hole’, is a large patch of...
SCIENCE NEWS - A queen bee may be shaped by more than its famous royal diet. The wax of the peanut-shaped chamber where the queen develops has distinct physical and chemical properties that help steer its development, researchers report June 3 in Nature. By analyzing the chamber’s composition and the larvae it harbors, the team...
GIZMODO - Early this year, researchers confirmed why one part of Antarctica bleeds red. In similar yet arguably more concerning news about Earth’s poles, Arctic rivers are turning orange—and scientists now know the real reason behind this shift. In a study published last year, the same team initially documented the orange slush—toxic iron particles fatal...
LIVE SCIENCE - Google wants to release 64 million bacteria-riddled mosquitoes in California and Florida — but scientists aren't concerned. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reviewing an application made by the tech giant for an experimental mosquito release permit, which, counterintuitively, could reduce mosquito populations that carry diseases. The release is part of Google's...
POPULAR SCIENCE - Alaska’s Arctic rivers have a big, orange problem. Previously clear rivers are turning a cloudy orange color due to iron particles, and it’s more than unsightly. The particles can suffocate fish and choke insects, threatening the food web and ecosystem as a whole. Scientists have long pointed to previously frozen soil beginning...
UNIVERSE TODAY - Mars holds a special place in the Solar System. It represents marginal habitability. This means it transitioned from warm and wet and potentially hospitable, to cold and dry and inhospitable. What can its transition tell us about exoplanet habitability? New research to be published in the Planetary Science Journal examines the question...
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN - Today a stretch of Canada’s remote Northwest Territories is covered in snow-covered peaks. But more than half a billion years ago this wilderness was an ancient seafloor home to the wrinkled pancakes, fleshy fronds and spiral-shaped critters that were among Earth’s earliest complex life-forms. Researchers recently unearthed a trove of fossils that...
LIVE SCIENCE - Astronomers have reconstructed the "skeleton" of the cosmos in unprecedented detail, thanks to the largest-ever survey conducted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The resulting map reveals how galaxies have evolved since the universe's infancy around 13 billion years ago and how they fall together in a vast structure called the...
EARTH.COM - The majority of California’s water comes from the Pacific Ocean. Atmospheric rivers build over the sea, ride the jet stream east, and slam into the Sierra. When forecasters track wet winters, they watch ocean temperatures off the coast to predict weather conditions. However, they may need to look beyond what is proximate. A...
THE DEBRIEF - New data collected by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is helping researchers map the cosmic web in the greatest detail ever achieved, providing new insights into the network of galaxies as improved resolution reveals hidden features. An international team of researchers led by the University of California, Riverside, revealed their newest...
EARTH.COM - For years, maps of how matter is arranged across the universe came with a built-in compromise. Individual galaxies showed up fine. The filaments and clusters they formed – the bigger architecture – remained smeared at the edges. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is changing that. Its largest survey has produced the most...