The Qinling-Dabie orogenic complex, part of a large east-west mountain range in the heart of China, plays a key role in helping scientists understand the formation and breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia, according to a new paper. 

A recent increase in polar mesospheric clouds - diffuse collections of water ice crystals in the mesosphere near the poles at altitudes of about 50 miles - could be due to a recent increase in space traffic, a new paper in Geophysical Research Letterssuggests. 

The number and brightness of polar mesospheric ice clouds is expected to decrease when the incoming flux of solar ultraviolet radiation increases. Increases in solar radiation both heat and dry out the atmosphere slightly, leading to a decrease in ice cloud formation. 

Tropical Storm Sandy had the good fortune to hit New York City and the home of American media publishing during a presidential election. It thus became a Super Storm and a political rallying cry.

From 1975 on, the global surface ocean had shown a pronounced, though wavering, warming trend. Starting in 2004, however, that warming seemed to stall. Researchers measuring the Earth's total energy budget - the balance of sunlight streaming in compared to the amount of light and heat leaving from the top of the atmosphere - saw that the planet was still holding on to more heat than it was letting out. 

But with that energy not going into warming the surface ocean, a traditionally important energy sink, scientists weren't sure where it went. It became known as a case of "missing heat." 

A new paper says that exposure to a banned neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee. The paper was written to support the recent decision taken by the European Commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths.

Honeybees pollinate one-third of the food that we eat and the experiment looked at changes in the activity of honeybee genes linked to one of the recently banned neonicotinoids, imidacloprid.

‘Jumping genes’ found in most living organisms don’t ultimately kill off their hosts, which is a long-standing scientific mystery. 

A new paper reveals how the movement and duplication of transposons is regulated, which prevents a genomic meltdown and instead enables transposons to live in harmony with their hosts - including humans. 

If you apply for a job and the company is interested, they will look at your social media presence to find risky behavior that they're not allowed to come right out and ask about.

A new paper, by people who are not actually in the business of hiring anyone, finds that companies may have a fundamental misunderstanding of online behavior and, as a result, may be eliminating desirable job candidates.

A growing population and greater wealth will mean more demand for meat in developing nations. That brings concern about air quality related to food production.

Some emissions are direct, such as methane from ruminants, while others are secondary, such as growing food to feed animals. 

Two proteins involved in oral taste detection, TAS1R3 and GNAT3, also play a crucial role in sperm development, according to a new paper.

While breeding mice for taste-related studies, the researchers discovered that they were unable to produce offspring that were simultaneously missing two taste-signaling proteins: TAS1R3, a component of both the sweet and umami (amino acid) taste receptors; and GNAT3, a molecule needed to convert the oral taste receptor signal into a nerve cell response. 

Like HAL 9000 in the wonderful movie "2001 -  the space odyssey", the CDF detector is being disassembled piece by piece, losing its functionality bit by bit, and turning from one of the most complex electronics systems ever built into a pile of junk in the course of a long, slow process. The central part of the detector has been transported out of the collision hall on rails, into the assembly hall, which is now serving the opposite purpose. If you ever visited Fermilab, the assembly hall is inside the big orange building you drove by as you got to the Wilson Hall from the east entrance.