If you have ever been scuba diving and seen pulsating coral, you may have wondered why such a simple specimen would engage in such an intense activity. Marine biologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have now begun to discover the biological processes that make the pulsating…

The Hot Pink slugs that emerge after rainy nights have become a conservation symbol for alpine forests on Australia’s Mount Kaputar, reports The Sydney Morning Herald. The slugs, which measure up to 20 centimeters (8 inches), are only found on Mount Kaputar, a volcano that last erupted 17 million years ago. They spend most of…

It’s every scientist’s dream to travel to a remote, unexplored place looking for as many new and interesting species as they can find. This was a dream come true for the 15 Mozambican and international scientists, led by Piotr Naskrecki, who spent 3 weeks in the Cheringoma Plateau of Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. There…

Many animals migrate in an effort to find food, a more hospitable climate, and most importantly, a place to breed. However, a herd of elk known as the Clarks Fork herd, made up of nearly 4,000 elk, are coming back from their Yellowstone National Park migration with fewer calves compared to those elks that do…

A new set of long-term climate records based on cave stalagmites collected from tropical Borneo shows that the western tropical Pacific responded very differently than other regions of the globe to abrupt climate change events. The 100,000-year climate record adds to data on past climate events, and may help scientists assess models designed to predict…

Denmark’s tax on nitrogen oxide emissions, which was raised during the financial crisis, could be scrapped if it’s proven to have a negative impact on jobs and competitiveness. The centre-left Danish government, which was formed in October 2011, decided at the end of that year to raise the tax from 5 to 25 Danish crowns…

Sturgeon like fishes appeared in the fossil record approximately 200 million years ago, around the very end of the Triassic, making them among the most ancient of actinopterygian fishes. True sturgeons appear in the fossil record during the Upper Cretaceous. In that time, sturgeons have undergone remarkably little change, indicating their evolution has been exceptionally…

Most of us turn to the weather channel, or the app on our phones to find out the forecast for the week, but where do these predictions stem from? Many of these forecasts are made possible by the analyses of decades of past climate data. From temperatures, to the amount of rainfall, to wind patterns,…

Nowadays Earth is perfectly lovely but once it was a barren rock. So how did life arise on such an unpromising property? In fact, new research shows that life on Earth may have come from out of this world. Lawrence Livermore scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn (a…

With rising concern about ocean degradation and the sustainable use of ocean resources, small island states must build scientific expertise that goes beyond their national needs and that benefits the oceans generally, a meeting of UN scientific experts has heard. Small island developing states (SIDS) are the “custodians” of vast ocean spaces that are important…