The number of seagulls in the Strait of Georgia is down by 50 per cent from the 1980s and University of British Columbia researchers say the decline reflects changes in the availability of food.

Researchers collected 100 years of data on population numbers of Glaucous-winged Gulls, the most common seagull species found in the Lower Mainland, Victoria, Nanaimo and elsewhere in the region. They found that the population increased rapidly beginning in the early 1900s, but started to drop after the mid-1980s, with their work pointing to diet as one factor in the decline of the bird's health.

A new species of algae has been discovered in reef corals of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf where it helps corals to survive seawater temperatures of up to 36 degrees Celsius - temperatures that would kill corals elsewhere.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and the New York University Abu Dhabi identified the symbiotic algae in corals from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the world's warmest coral reef habitat.

New type symbiotic alga lends its brown color to a Porites coral from Abu Dhabi reefs. Credit: Wiedenmann, Burt

Extra virgin olive oil is believed to have heart health benefits but a new paper takes that one better and shows why it has been identified for its rapid destruction of cancer cells. 

While scientists have shown that the oleocanthal compound found in  extra virgin olive oil   causes cell death in cancer cells, they have been unable to provide an explanation for this phenomenon until now. 

Known for years as the “career woman’s disease” based on the idea that women without children develop disease in their reproductive organs, endometriosis is a painful condition thought to affect one in ten women worldwide.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is approaching its historic orbit insertion at Ceres, which will happen on Friday, March 6th.

Ceres is named for the Roman goddess of agriculture and harvests. Ceres is considered a 'dwarf planet', according to 237 astronomers who outvoted their opposition, as is Pluto now. It was first spotted by Sicilian astronomer Father Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801 and since then has been called a minor planet and an asteroid, before getting an upgrade in 2006, along with Eris. 

A partial human skull found in northern Israel  excited paleontologists because it seemed to hold clues about when and where humans and Neanderthals might have interbred.

The Manot Cave is a natural limestone formation that had been sealed for 15,000 years. It was discovered by a bulldozer clearing the land for development and the partial skull, sitting on a ledge, was found by spelunkers exploring the newly-opened cave. Five excavation seasons uncovered a rich deposit, with stone tools and stratified occupation levels covering a period of time from 55,000 to 27,000 years ago. 

A new paper believes that a record drought in Syria from 2006-2010 and the 2011 Syrian uprising is not a coincidence. The rebellion was stoked by ongoing man-made climate change, they write.

The drought, the worst in modern record-keeping, destroyed agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to cities, where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011. The conflict has since evolved into a complex multinational war that may have killed 200,000 people and displaced many more. 

Deep in the heart of synthetic biology are the proteins that make it tick and that is why protein engineering is crucial to the new discipline: Scientists grow, harvest, and reprogram proteins to become new drug therapeutics, environmentally friendly fuels, and vaccines.

But producing proteins quickly and in large quantities has been and remains a major challenge in the field, so Northwestern University synthetic biologist Michael Jewett and colleagues have pioneered a new protein production method that is faster and cheaper than ever before, making synthetic biology research more accessible for laboratories everywhere--even in high schools.

In America, teachers with tenure can't be fired and so it is more important than ever that the best people get the jobs in the first place. 

Accountability is not going away in the American educational system, and neither are education unions, so new mechanisms for selecting individuals into teacher preparation could boost the quality. A new Video Assessment of Interactions and Learning (VAIL)  tool can inform teacher selection and help stop the ongoing educational reform undertaken by each new administration.