A U.S.-Brazilian study using time series satellite images from 2000 to 2021 reveals the vital role of Indigenous territories and protected areas for forest conservation in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as calls attention to the negative impacts of weakened governmental conservation policies in recent years.
Scientists get fungi to spill their secrets
Using multiplex base-editing, an approach that simultaneously modifies multiple sites in fungal genomes, chemical and biomolecular engineers coax fungi into revealing their best-kept secrets, ramping up the pace of new drug discovery.
Marine plankton tell the long story of ocean health, and maybe human too
Researchers suggest that rising levels of humanmade chemicals, accumulating in marine plankton, might be used to monitor the impact of human activity on ecosystem health and perhaps study links between ocean pollution and land-based rates of childhood and adult chronic illnesses.
Study details impact of prairie dog plague die-off on other species
This study, conducted from 2015-19 in the Thunder Basin National Grassland, may be the first to specifically examine the multispecies impacts of a wide-scale plague outbreak, which reduced the area covered by prairie dog colonies from nearly 25,000 acres to only about 125 acres in the study area. The 2017...
Invasive rats transform reef fish behavior
Scientists have discovered for the first time that invasive rats on tropical islands are affecting the territorial behavior of fish on surrounding coral reefs. The new study shows that the presence of invasive black rats on tropical islands is causing changes in the territorial behavior of the jewel damselfish --...
DNA from archaeological remains shows that immigration to Scandinavia was exceptional during the Viking period
A new study based on 297 ancient Scandinavian genomes analysed together with the genomic data of 16,638 present day Scandinavians resolve the complex relations between geography, ancestry, and gene flow in Scandinavia -- encompassing the Roman Age, the Viking Age and later periods. A surprising increase of variation during the...
Caribbean breadfruit traced back to Capt. Bligh’s 1791-93 journey
Exactly 230 years after Capt. William Bligh's voyage on the HMS Providence, a plant biology team has traced five major lineages of Caribbean breadfruit back to that single introduction from Bligh's voyage. Three generation of women solved the centuries-old mystery.
Effects of highly pathogenic avian influenza on canids investigated
Researchers have revealed the effects of high pathogenicity avian influenza virus infection on an Ezo red fox and a Japanese raccoon dog, linking their infection to a recorded die-off of crows.
Mayas utilized market-based economics
More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought. Overtime, the availability of obsidian resources and the prevalence of craftsmen to shape it resulted in a system that is in many...
Researchers detect fluoride in water with new simple color change test
Environmental contaminants like fluoride, lead and pesticides exist all around and even within us. While researchers have simple ways to measure concentrations of such contaminants inside lab environments, levels are much more difficult to test in the field. That's because they require costly specialized equipment.