Earth

Research by an Indiana University environmental scientist and colleagues at universities in Iowa and Washington finds that potentially harmful growth-promoting hormones used in beef production are expected to persist in the environment at higher concentrations and for longer durations than previously thought.

A new study from the University of Cambridge has identified one of the oldest fossil brains ever discovered - more than 500 million years old - and used it to help determine how heads first evolved in early animals. The results, published today (7 May) in the journal Current Biology, identify a key point in the evolutionary transition from soft to hard bodies in early ancestors of arthropods, the group that contains modern insects, crustaceans and spiders.

How did the first complex eukaryotic cells with their organelles develop from simple prokaryotes, i.e. bacteria or archaea? This is a highly debated topic in evolutionary research but the question remains largely unresolved. Genomic research has shown that the organelles delivering energy in eukaryotic cells stem from an early bacterial symbiont. Since Archaea have also played an important role in the evolution of eukaryotes, current models suggested, that a primordial Archaeon might have engulfed a bacterium and in this event transformed into a complex eukaryotic cell.

University of Oregon geologists have tapped water in surface rocks to show how magma forms deep underground and produces explosive volcanoes in the Cascade Range.

"Water is a key player," says Paul J. Wallace, a professor in the UO's Department of Geological Sciences and coauthor of a paper in the May issue of Nature Geoscience. "It's important not just for understanding how you make magma and volcanoes, but also because the big volcanoes that we have in the Cascades -- like Mount Lassen and Mount St. Helens -- tend to erupt explosively, in part because they have lots of water."

DNA is synonymous with life, but where did it originate? One way to answer this question is to try to recreate the conditions that formed DNA's molecular precursors. These precursors are carbon ring structures with embedded nitrogen atoms, key components of nucleobases, which themselves are building blocks of the double helix.

While consumer demand for edamame or vegetable soybean remains on the rise in the United States, it's not widely grown in this country. Nearly 85 million acres of grain-type soybean were grown in the U.S. in 2014, yet edamame imported from Asia appears to dominate what we eat in this country, said a University of Illinois crop scientist.

Boulder, Colo., USA - In a new paper published online by GSA Bulletin on 30 April, researchers Mark Richards and colleagues address the "uncomfortably close" occurrence of the Chicxulub impact in the Yucatán and the most voluminous phase of the Deccan Traps flood basalt eruptions in India. Specifically, the researchers argue that the impact likely triggered most of the immense eruptions of lava in India -- that indeed, this was not a coincidence, but a cause-and-effect relationship.