A new tree frog species, Dendropsophus bromeliaceus, spends its tadpole stage in pooled water that collects in bromeliad plants in the Brazilian Atlantic forest, according to a study published December 9, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Rodrigo Ferreira from the Utah State University and Universidade Vila Velha and colleagues.

Scientists compared the tree frog molecular data with closely related frogs and found it is a new species in the Dendropsophus genus. They named the species Dendropsophus bromeliaceus and gave it the common name Teresensis' bromeliad treefrog, which refers to the people born in the municipality of Santa Teresa, Brazil where it was found.

Scientists describe a new, ~160 million year-old ceratopsian dinosaur with "ornamental" texture on the skull from the Late Jurassic period in China, according to a study published December 9, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Fenglu Han from the China University of Geosciences and colleagues.

The key to helping animals evolve quickly in response to climate change could actually be their predators, according to a new study which says that species interactions, meaning the way species interact with each other in an ecosystem, like in a predator-prey relationship, is important to understanding how animals will respond to climate change.  

"Not only can predators keep prey populations in check but in some cases they can help speed up the evolutionary response to climate change," said Michelle Tseng, a research associate in UBC's Department of Zoology and lead author of the study. "We now understand that species interactions and evolution can play a significant role in preventing animals from going extinct in a rapidly changing climate."

Smoking are linked to infertility problems and a hastening of the natural menopause before the age of 50, finds a large study in Tobacco Control.  The clinical significance of earlier menopause is unknown and it was an observational study so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. 

(Boston)--For the first time, CTE has been confirmed as a unique disease that can be definitively diagnosed by neuropathological examination of brain tissue. A consensus panel of expert neuropathologists concluded that CTE has a pathognomonic signature in the brain, an advance that represents a milestone for CTE research and lays the foundation for future studies defining the clinical symptoms, genetic risk factors and therapeutic strategies for CTE.

The neuropathological criteria defining CTE, or the NINDS CTE criteria, which appear in the journal Acta Neuropathologica, had been announced earlier this year at the Foundation of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) board meeting.

A survey of 10 hot, Jupiter-sized exoplanets conducted with NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes has led a team to solve a long-standing mystery -- why some of these worlds seem to have less water than expected. The findings offer new insights into the wide range of planetary atmospheres in our galaxy and how planets are assembled.

Of the nearly 2,000 planets confirmed to be orbiting other stars, a subset are gaseous planets with characteristics similar to those of Jupiter but orbit very close to their stars, making them blistering hot.