In California, there are runaway wildfires because no one is allowed to take a machine into the woods and clear dead trees. Other countries have the opposite problem; a shortage of dead wood in forests results because fallen branches and trees are cleared away too often. 

Our one-size-fits-all federal management policy often hurts the environment under the guise of trying to help. Biologists working in Navarre note that dead wood ought to be decomposing, as it is the habitat of many living beings like lignicolous fungi. These fungi are capable of decomposing dead wood and turning it into organic and inorganic matter. Clearing away the dead wood from the forests is ecologically harmful for the fungi.

There aren't many areas where men and women benefit equally but coffee has always been about bringing people together. Do you think Newton would have done his great work without coffee? No, he would have starved long before Principia. The man ate every meal in a coffee house.

A new review in The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry will get heads nodding among coffee acolytes for finding that drinking lots of coffee daily reduces the risk of suicide in men and women by about 50%. The authors reviewed data from three U.S. studies and found that the risk of suicide for adults who drank two to four cups of caffeinated coffee per day was about half that of those who drank decaffeinated coffee or very little or no coffee.

Much like a superconductor loses no energy to resistance, a superfluid moves like a completely frictionless liquid, able to propel itself without any hindrance from gravity or surface tension.

The physics underlying these materials, which appear to defy the common sense precepts of conventional physics, has been a source of fascination for decades. 

Liquid helium is an example. When cooled to extremely low temperatures, helium exhibits behavior that is otherwise impossible in ordinary fluid - the superfluid can squeeze through pores as small as a molecule, and climb up and over the walls of a glass. It can even remain in motion years after a centrifuge containing it has stopped spinning. 

A lingering space mystery has been how electrons within Earth's radiation belt can suddenly become energetic enough to kill orbiting satellites. Thanks to data gathered from a pair of NASA probes roaming the harsh environment of near-Earth space, scientists have found an answer: an internal electron accelerator operating within the Van Allen radiation belts.

Scientists knew that something in space accelerated particles in the radiation belts to more than 99 percent the speed of light but they didn't know what that something was. New results from NASA's Van Allen Probes now show that the acceleration energy comes from within the belts themselves.

As the world population grows, one terrific science and technology solution to expensive and environmentally damaging fertilizers would be enabling all of the world's crops to take nitrogen from the air.

Nitrate pollution is a major problem as is the pollution of the atmosphere by ammonia and oxides of nitrogen. In addition, nitrate pollution is a health hazard and also causes oxygen-depleted 'dead zones' in our waterways and oceans. A recent study estimates that that the annual cost of damage caused by nitrogen pollution across Europe is between £60 billion and £280 billion per year. 

Homing pigeons fly off from an unknown place in unfamiliar territory and still manage to find their way home.

This ability has always been fascinating to humans and nothing would ever happen in "Game of Thrones" if birds couldn't deliver messages. Yet despite intensive research, it is not yet definitively clear where this unusual gift comes from. All we seem to know is that homing pigeons and migratory birds determine their flight direction with the help of the Earth's magnetic field, the stars and the position of the sun. 

In the aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was initially driven into shutdown by the magnitude 9.0 quake; its emergency generators then failed because they were inundated by the tsunami.

If you don't sleep well during a full moon, it is not because you have epigenetically become a werewolf after watching "Twilight" too many times, lunar cycles and human sleep behavior are connected, according to results of a study on endogenous rhythms of circalunar periodicity.

Prof. Christian Cajochen of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel and colleagues analyzed the sleep of over 30 volunteers in two age groups in the lab. While they were sleeping, the scientists monitored their brain patterns, eye movements and measured their hormone secretions.

Astronomers have long assumed a kind of cosmic equilibrium: when a galaxy produces too many stars too quickly, it greatly reduces its capacity for producing stars in the future.

A group of astronomers were able to obtain the first detailed images of this type of self-limiting galactic behavior: an outflow of molecular gas, the raw material needed for star formation that is coming from star-forming regions in the Sculptor Galaxy, NGC 253. The observations were made with the newly commissioned telescope array ALMA in Chile.

Removing ovaries during hysterectomies protects against future risk of ovarian cancer but the ovaries and the hormones they produce may have advantages for preventing heart disease, hip fracture, sexual dysfunction, and cognitive decline. Outside cancer risk, the most important factor that should determine ovarian conservation vs. removal is her age- whether she is older or younger than 50 - according to a review article published in Journal of Women's Health.