A study of more than 2,000 streams around North America found that those altered by human activity are at greater risk of flooding. The study from the University of Waterloo analyzed the seasonal flow patterns of 2,272 streams in Canada and the U.S. and found that human-managed streams — those impacted by developments like dams,…

The microbiome is home to an estimated 100 trillion bacteria, existing as a dense colony of many different strains and species. Similar to all organisms, bacteria must also compete with one another for space and resources, engaging in «warfare» by releasing toxins to kill competitors. One of the many weapons bacteria use in this inevitable…

Ebel looked for the California faults that had magnitude 4 or larger earthquakes occurring at a rate higher than 0.5 earthquakes per year from 1997 to 2016. If the pattern holds, the next magnitude 6.7 earthquakes in California are most likely to occur along these faults. The findings prompted Ebel in 2017 to suggest a…

Sea ice cover in the Southern Hemisphere is extremely variable, from summer to winter and from millennium to millennium, according to a new study. Overall, sea ice has been on the rise for about 10,000 years, but with some exceptions to this trend. Researchers uncovered these findings by examining the chemistry of a 54,000-year-old South…

Researchers have extensively studied several neighboring groups of western chimpanzees and their findings reveal that females and even the entire group may play a more important role in between-group competition than previously thought. They found that even though adult males seem important in territory increase, territory maintenance and competitive advantage over neighbors act through the…

Scientists have discovered that the bacterium which causes bovine TB can survive and grow in small, single-celled organisms found in soil and dung. It is believed that originally the bacterium evolved to survive in these single-celled organisms known as amoebae and in time progressed to infect and cause TB in larger animals such as cattle.…

A study of camera-trap data from Serengeti National Park in Tanzania found that leopard population densities in the 3.7-million-acre park are similar to those in other protected areas but vary between wet and dry seasons. The fluctuations appear to be driven by the abundance of prey and how this affects interactions with other large carnivores…

Compared to the first peopling of Polynesia, the settlement of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, which happened around 3,500 years ago, has received little attention. Researchers have now obtained answers to long debated questions regarding the origin of the first colonizers of the Marianas and their relationship to the people who initially settled…

As the Arctic Ocean warms and sea ice shrinks, will the newly exposed sea surface see a plankton population boom and a burgeoning ecosystem in the open Arctic Ocean? Not likely, say a team of scientists who have examined the history and supply rate of nitrogen, a key nutrient. Stratification of the open Arctic waters,…

New research revealing a major migration to the island of Great Britain offers fresh insights into the languages spoken at the time, the ancestry of present-day England and Wales, and even ancient habits of dairy consumption. The findings are described in Nature by a team of more than 200 international researchers led by Harvard geneticists…