Researchers have identified a mutation in plants that allows them to break down TNT, an explosive that has become highly prevalent in soil in the last century, particularly at manufacturing waste sites, mines, and military conflict zones.

TNT, or 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, is a toxic and persistent environmental pollutant that accumulates in the roots of plants, inhibiting growth and development. The identification of a plant mechanism that not only evades the negative impacts of TNT, but breaks down this harmful substance could lead to improved revegetation and remediation of TNT-contaminated sites.

Green frogs in the suburbs are seeing a gender revolution.

A new Yale study shows that estrogen in suburban yards is changing the ratio of male and female green frogs at nearby ponds. Higher levels of estrogen in areas where there are shrubs, vegetable gardens, and manicured lawns are disrupting frogs' endocrine systems, according to the study. That, in turn, is driving up the number of female frogs and lowering the number of male frogs.

The research appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is based on tests conducted at 21 ponds in southwestern Connecticut in 2012.

A team of researchers that has spent years searching for the earliest objects in the universe now reports the detection of what may be the most distant galaxy ever found. Adi Zitrin, a NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Scholar in Astronomy, and Richard Ellis, a professor of astrophysics at University College, London, have described evidence for a galaxy called EGS8p7 that is more than 13.2 billion years old. 

The universe itself is about 13.8 billion years old.

A new study has revealed the presence of radioactive contaminants in coal ash from all three major U.S. coal-producing basins - levels of radioactivity in the ash were up to five times higher than in normal soil, and up to 10 times higher than in the parent coal itself because of the way combustion concentrates radioactivity.

The finding raises concerns about the environmental and human health risks posed by coal ash, which is currently unregulated and is stored in coal-fired power plants' holding ponds and landfills nationwide.

Many parents and caregivers believe that multi-sensory stimulation during infancy promotes developmental growth and learning, but researchers who conducted eye movement experiments on preverbal infants show that this is not always true.

The team discovered that 8 to 10 month old infants could learn basic abstract rules, such as sequences, but only when the audio and visual stimuli were “congruently” or “consistently” paired. If a smiling face was paired with a crying sound, the infants were confused, and they did not learn the rule.

The findings indicate that having both visual and audio inputs—or more than one sensory stimulation—does not guarantee successful learning. They have to match each others’ nature.

An international team of researchers has sequenced the first complete genome of an Iberian farmer, which is also the first ancient genome from the entire Mediterranean area. This new genome allows to know the distinctive genetic changes of Neolithic migration in Southern Europe which led to the abandonment of the hunter-gatherer way of life.

The study is led by the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, a joint center of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain), in collaboration with the Centre for GeoGenetics in Denmark. The results are published in the Molecular Biology and Evolution journal.

Green frogs in the suburbs are undergoing a gender switch - but it isn't pesticides doing it, according to a new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the same journal that set off the craze in thinking pesticides were causing frogs to change sex, by letting a member walk a study through peer review for a friend of his, by not mentioning that study had no data.

This morning I received a copy of the book "WHAT NEXT ? White Paper of CSN1", a publication of the Italian INFN (National Institute for Nuclear Physics) addressing the question of what awaits us after the Higgs discovery, and what projects should be supported in the long-term future of HEP.
The book is the result of one year of work by many colleagues who have actively participated in four working groups and one task force, producing some preliminary studies of the discovery potential of this or that machine, and of the most important questions that need to be answered -and the projects that appear more suited to answer them. Editors of the work are Franco Bedeschi, Roberto Tenchini, and John Walsh.

The working groups were thus titled:

It was inevitable.

The “Look at me! I can smoke pot legally!” generation has traded in the toast for the toke.

Instead of “tying the knot,” they are now “trying the pot.” Want the new couple to kiss? Forget about clinking your glass. Just inhale some gas. Tossing the bouquet? What a waste! If the bride is going to toss something that a bunch of single women will pounce on like a tiger on a baby antelope, it might as well be a brick of cheeba.