Earth

Doctors' efforts to battle the dangerous atherosclerotic plaques that build up in our arteries and cause heart attacks and strokes are built on several false beliefs about the fundamental composition and formation of the plaques, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine shows. These new discoveries will force researchers to reassess their approaches to developing treatments and discard some of their basic assumptions about atherosclerosis, commonly known as hardening of the arteries.

An infestation of speck-sized Varroa destructor mites can wipe out an entire colony of honey bees in 2-3 years if left untreated. Pesticides help beekeepers rid their hives of these parasitic arthropods, which feed on the blood-like liquid inside of their hosts and lay their eggs on larvae, but mite populations become resistant to the chemicals over time.

Researchers at the University of Georgia have a message for Southern tree farmers worried about unexplainable pine tree deaths: Don't panic.

Doughnuts, electric current and quantum physics - this will sound like a weird list of words to most people, but for Sebastian Huber it is a job description. ETH-professor Huber is a theoretical physicist who, for several years now, has focused his attention on so-called topological insulators, i.e., materials whose ability to conduct electric current originates in their topology.

Why is the seahorse's tail square? An international team of researchers has found the answer and it could lead to building better robots and medical devices. In a nutshell, a tail made of square, overlapping segments makes for better armor than a cylindrical tail. It's also better at gripping and grasping. Researchers describe their findings in the July 3 issue of Science.

In a step that they say overturns traditional assumptions and practice, researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai and Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhi Nagar have fashioned bacteria to emit intense, hard x-ray radiation.

When one thinks of hard x-rays and bacteria it is usually that the bacteria are at the receiving end of the x-ray source - being imaged, irradiated for some modification or simply assessed for radiation damage. One hardly thinks of using bacteria as a source of x-rays, far from turning them into the brightest among such sources.

Climate change models predict that sea temperatures will rise significantly, including in the tropics. In these areas, rainfall is also predicted to increase, reducing the salt concentration of the surface layer of the sea. Together, these changes would dramatically affect the microscopic communities of bacteria and plankton that inhabit the oceans, impacting species higher up the food chain. Worryingly, future conditions may favour disease-causing bacteria and plankton species which produce toxins, such as the lethal PST (paralytic shellfish toxin).

Without carbon dioxide, life as we know it on earth would end in sudden, spectacular fashion - but too much of anything can be a bad thing, and that goes for vegan food or a key component in photosynthesis like CO2.

Lawyers at the Center for Biological Diversity and oceanographer Dr. Donn Viviani have petitioned the Obama administration to regulate carbon dioxide under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act.

Mice that are exposed to the powerful smell of cat urine early in life do not escape from cats later in life. Researchers at the A. N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russia, have discovered that mice that smell cat urine early in life, do not avoid the same odour, and therefore do not escape from their feline predators, later in life.

We've long known that beneath the scenic landscapes of Yellowstone National Park sleeps a supervolcano with a giant chamber of hot, partly molten rock below it.

Though it hasn't risen from slumber in nearly 70,000 years, many wonder when Yellowstone volcano will awaken and erupt again. According to new research at Arizona State University, there may be a way to predict when that happens.

Snake skin inspired surfaces smash records, providing an astonishing 40% friction reduction in tests of high performance materials.

Trees that can tolerate soil pollution are also better at defending themselves against pests and pathogens. "It looks like the very act of tolerating chemical pollution may give trees an advantage from biological invasion", says Dr Frederic E. Pitre of the University of Montreal and one of the researchers behind the discovery.

Unexpectedly, whilst studying the presence of genetic information (RNA) from fungi and bacteria in the trees, the researchers found evidence of a very large amount of RNA from a very common plant pest called the two-spotted spidermite.

Pink salmon that begin life in freshwater with high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which causes acidification, are smaller and may be less likely to survive, according to a new study.

The risks of ocean acidification on marine species have been studied extensively but the impact of freshwater acidification is not well understood. The study is one of the first to examine how rising carbon dioxide levels caused by climate change can impact freshwater fish.

Observations of Greenland's Helheim Glacier link the process through which chunks of ice at the edge of a glacier break away, which has been hard to study, to seismically detectable events known as glacial earthquakes, which have been increasing in number in recent years.

Because seismic signals from these events can be detected by instruments located all over the globe, it should be possible to use glacial earthquakes as proxies for the glacier edge breaking process, known as calving.

A technique to increase the flow of blood from the umbilical cord into the infant's circulatory system improves blood pressure and red blood cell levels in preterm infants delivered by Cesarean section, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health.