Earth

DURHAM, N.C. -- Climate change could speed the natural regrowth of forests on undeveloped or abandoned land in the eastern U.S., according to a new study.

If left to nature's own devices, a field of weeds and grasses over time will be replaced by saplings, young trees and eventually mature forest. Earlier research has shown that this succession from field to forest can happen decades sooner in the southeastern U.S. than in the Northeast. But it wasn't obvious why, especially since northern and southern fields are first colonized by many of the same tree species.

Trade and social networking helped our Homo sapiens ancestors survive a climate-changing volcanic eruption 40,000 years ago, giving hope that we will be able to ride out global warming by staying interconnected, a new study suggests.

Analyzing ancient tools, ornaments and human remains from a prehistoric rock shelter called Riparo Bombrini, in Liguria on the Italian Riviera, archeologists at Université de Montréal and the University of Genoa conclude that the key to survival is cooperation.

CHAPEL HILL -- To get the extra energy they need to fuel their uncontrolled growth, cancer cells break down some of their own parts for fuel - a process known as autophagy, or "self-eating." Researchers from the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center found a possible therapeutic strategy to block self-eating in one of the deadliest cancers, as well as to cut off the tumor's other energy sources.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - New research shows that extreme climate variability over the last century in western North America may be destabilizing both marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

Climate is increasingly controlling synchronous ecosystem behavior in which species populations rise and fall together, according to the National Science Foundation-funded study published in the journal Global Change Biology.

MISSOULA - A University of Montana researcher and her collaborators have published a new study that reveals increased risks for Alzheimer's and suicide among children and young adults living in polluted megacities.

A recent study by the University of Seville Personal and Community Network Laboratory (Laboratorio de Redes Personales y Comunidades) has shown that family support networks have value in preventing child labour. A survey carried out among parents in high-risk contexts shows that schools in barrios on the outskirts of Lima are a central part of life of the community, as they allow families from the district to start and develop relationships with each other; and they serve as points of access for valuable resources from outside the barrio.

ILC 2018: Ongoing Phase 2 studies of tropifexor and seladelpar report promising preliminary efficacy, safety and tolerability results, paving the way for longer-term studies in patients with primary biliary cholangitis

ITHACA, N.Y. - Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that is diagnosed in the U.S. more than 70,000 times annually, arises from overly proliferating immune cells within the body's lymph nodes, which are connected to a network of lymph vessels through which lymphatic fluid flows.

PHILADELPHIA - (April 12, 2018) - Wistar researchers have found that soluble antibodies promote tumor progression by inducing accumulation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) in pre-clinical cancer models. Results were published online in Cancer Immunology Research.

Discovered accidentally over a century ago, the phenomenon of superconductivity continues to inspire a technological revolution. In 1911, while studying the behavior of solid mercury supercooled to 4 K (-269 °C), Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) observed for the first time that certain materials conducted electricity with neither resistance nor losses at temperatures in the vicinity of absolute zero.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have affected one of the global ocean's major circulation systems, slowing the redistribution of heat in the North Atlantic Ocean. The resulting changes have been felt along the Northeast U.S. Shelf and in the Gulf of Maine, which has warmed 99 percent faster than the global ocean over the past ten years, impacting distributions of fish and other species and their prey.

Scientists at the University of Wyoming have found that mice engineered to have Huntington's disease (HD) have an over-accumulation of iron in their mitochondria.

The research identifying a pathway for the neurodegenerative disease also has relevance to understanding related disorders such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease, says Jonathan Fox, a professor in UW's Department of Veterinary Sciences.

Baby fish will find it harder to reach secure shelters in future acidified oceans -- putting fish populations at risk, new research from the University of Adelaide has concluded.

In an article published April 10th in the journal Cell Reports, researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) describe a biomarker panel that could tell physicians which patients diagnosed with glioma, a type of brain cancer, will tend to progress to a more aggressive form of the disease in the event of relapse.

A well-known experiment with young people bouncing a ball showed that when an observer focuses on counting the passes, he does not detect if someone crosses the stage disguised as a gorilla. According to researchers at the University of Cádiz (Spain), something similar could be happening to us when we try to discover intelligent non-earthly signals, which perhaps manifest themselves in dimensions that escape our perception, such as the unknown dark matter and energy.