Dione is the 15th largest moon in the Solar System, and is more massive than all known moons smaller than itself combined. It is composed primarily of water ice, but as the third densest of Saturn’s moons (after Enceladus and Titan, whose density is increased by gravitational compression) it must have a considerable fraction (~…

Aurornis is an extinct genus of avialan theropod dinosaurs and, perhaps, one of the very first. It contains a single species, Aurornis xui, described based on a fossil found in the Tiaojishan Formation of Liaoning, China, in rocks dated to the late Jurassic period (Oxfordian stage), about 160 million years ago. Scientists in magazine, say…

Long before nations fought over oil, they fought over water and food. A conference in Bonn Germany of 500 leading water scientists from around the world today issued a stark warning that, without major reforms, “in the short span of one or two generations, the majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will be…

To walk on two or four limbs, that is the question… Jeremy M. DeSilva an anthropologist at Worcester University in Massachusetts has published Functional Morphology of the Ankle and the Likelihood of Climbing in Early Hominins, in the peer-reviewed journal, Proceeding of the National Academies of Sciences of the USA current issue. The study includes…

Bugs and infections are growing ever stronger and more resistant to the antibiotics and the like. A team of Wisconsin scientists has synthesized a potent new class of compounds capable of curbing the bacteria that cause staph infections. They describe these new agents as effectively interfering with the quorum sensing behavior of Staphylococcus aureus, a…

It seems that there is always another opinion on how the climate is or will be changing. A new study led by Oxford University concludes that the latest observations of the climate system’s response to rising greenhouse gas levels are consistent with conventional estimates of the long-term climate sensitivity, despite a warming pause over the…

Vitamin C or L-ascorbic acid, or simply ascorbate (the anion of ascorbic acid), is an essential nutrient for humans and certain other animal species. Vitamin C has been advocated for many other therapeutic uses. Vitamin C functions as an antioxidant and is necessary for the treatment and prevention of scurvy, though in nearly all cases…

Methane is created naturally near the Earth’s surface, primarily by microorganisms by the process of methanogenesis. It is carried into the stratosphere by rising air in the tropics. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, stronger than carbon dioxide on a 20-year timescale, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, though on a century timescale,…

There is a concern with the carbon stored in the form of frozen partially decomposed vegetation in the vast tundra of the north. When the permafrost melts, it may releases carbon in the form of carbon dioxide and methane, both of which are greenhouse gases. The amount of greenhouse gases which will be released from…

The world is a big place with a lot of cavities and hidden places. Scientists have now discovered water that has been trapped in rock for more than a billion years. The water might contain microbes that evolved independently from the surface world, and it’s a finding that gives new hope to the search for…