New research has demonstrated a clear fluctuation in the trade of wildmeat in and around the High Niger National Park in Guinea, West Africa. Conservationists found a significant increase in the trading of species that forage on crops including the green monkey (Chlorocebus sabaeus) and warthog (Phacochoerus africanus), in comparison with earlier data, in spite…

It took the climate 20,000 to 50,000 years to stabilize after the rise in global temperatures of five to eight degrees Celsius 56 million years ago. Climate change today is causing temperatures to rise and is also increasing the likelihood of storms, heavy rain, and flooding — the recent flood disaster in the Ahr valley…

Climate conditions play a significant role in the reproductive success of mature female Antarctic krill and are a factor in fluctuations of the population that occur every five to seven years. Environmental factors, including large-scale climate patterns that affect availability of food, influence the females’ overall health during the spawning season. While those climate patterns…

The Gulf of Mexico holds huge untapped offshore oil deposits that could help power the U.S. for decades. According to researchers, the basin’s vast oil and gas reserves are the result of a remarkable geologic past. Only a fraction of the oil has been extracted and much remains buried beneath ancient salt layers, just recently…

A new class of protein material that interacts with living cells without being absorbed by them can influence cell signaling, a new study shows. The material does this by binding and sequestering cell surface receptors. The discovery could have far-reaching implications for stem cell research and enable the development of new materials designed to modulate…

Earthquakes typically last only a few seconds, although sometimes the shifts in the subsurface occur in slow motion. Understanding these ‘slow quakes’, known as ‘slow slip events’, and their interplay with the short — sometimes violent — tremors is critically important to define the seismic hazard and subsequent risk. A suspicious calm in the ‘seismic…

Three years of ‘health check-ups’ on Oregon’s summer resident gray whales shows a compelling relationship between whales’ overall body condition and changing ocean conditions that likely limited availability of prey for the mammals. Researchers from the Geospatial Ecology of Marine Megafauna Laboratory at OSU’s Marine Mammal Institute used drones to monitor 171 whales off the…

Researchers have genetically modified malaria carrying mosquitoes in order to demonstrate the role of particular genes in conferring insecticide resistance. For the first time the team characterised three genes (Cyp6m2, Cyp6p3 and Gste2) most often associated with insecticide resistance directly by their overproduction in genetically modified Anopheles gambiae. LSTM’s Dr Gareth Lycett is senior author…

In what they believe is the first study of its kind, researchers report that shifts in the diversity of soil microbial communities can change the soil’s ability to sequester carbon, where it usually helps to regulate climate. They also found that the positive effect of diversity on carbon use efficiency — which plays a central…

Scientists are searching for new technologies that could help the world reach carbon neutrality. One potential solution is to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions in the form of hydrates under ocean floor sediments, kept in place by the natural pressure created by the weight of the seawater above. Now researchers have demonstrated experimental evidence…