The Fleckvieh is a breed of cattle that originated in the Alpine region and is now found on every continent, with an estimated worldwide population of around 40 million.

America is back at mid-1990s levels of carbon dioxide emissions. Some of that is due to the ongoing recession, of course, but a large chunk is due to the switch from the dirty coal plants that ballooned after America stopped producing emissions-free nuclear energy to natural gas.

While energy overall is back at early 1990s levels of emissions, coal specifically is back at early 1980s levels of emissions.

And it's all been done without mitigation, rationing or increased cost, even during a political climate of hostility against traditional energy. It isn't just CO2; "combined cycle" natural gas power plants also release significantly less nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide, finds a study
in Earth's Future. 

A new study may have a solution for both acid mine drainage and natural radioactivity in hydraulic fracturing – fracking –   wastewater that can be found in 'flowback fluid.' In hydraulic fracturing, water is injected at high pressure down wells to crack open shale deposits buried deep underground and extract the natural gas trapped within the rock. Some of the water can flow back up through the well, along with natural brines and the natural gas.  

If you donate money to Greenpeace and get a tax deduction, is your act less moral?

Indeed it is, at least in the perception of other people, according to a new psychology paper on the "tainted-altruism effect", which suggests that charity in conjunction with self-interested behavior is viewed less favorably because we tend to think that the person could have given everything to charity without taking a cut for themselves. 

Of course, plenty of people give to charity or commit charitable acts without thought of any benefit. Perception about altruism is in the eye of the beholder. And Greenpeace is just an example, you could think about churches or, in the case of one experiment below, a man who volunteers in order to impress a girl.

Messier 83, the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, is one of the largest and closest barred spiral galaxies to us.  At 15 million light-years away, it is one of the most conspicuous galaxies of its type in our skies.  It's in the constellation of Hydra (The Sea Serpent) and is a prominent member of a group of galaxies known as the Centaurus A/M83 Group, which also counts dusty Centaurus A  and irregular NGC 5253 as members. 

Spiral galaxies come in a range of types depending on their appearance and structure -- for example, how tightly wound their arms are, and the characteristics of the central bulge. Messier 83 has a "bar" of stars slicing through its center, leading to its classification as a barred spiral. The Milky Way also belongs to this category.

Children believe the world is far more segregated by gender than it actually is, according to a psychology paper which analyzed classroom friendships in five U.S. elementary schools.  

While the boys and girls had no problems being friends together, they had a perception that only boys played with boys and girls played with girls. The biological differences were a clear differentiating point. If so, does that mean the cause is evolutionary psychology, social psychology or sociology?

Jennifer Watling Neal and colleagues examined classroom friendships in five U.S. elementary schools. They found boys and girls had no problems being friends but had a perception that only boys played with boys and girls played with girls.

Today the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Collaboration announced that they have measured the scale of the universe to an accuracy of one percent.   

The clymene dolphin is a small and sleek marine mammal living in the Atlantic Ocean. A new study has found this dolphin is a rarity in mammals - a genetic hybrid that is closely related to spinner and striped dolphins.

The classification of the clymene dolphin has been a longstanding challenge to taxonomists, who initially considered it to be a subspecies of the spinner dolphin. Then in 1981, thorough morphological analyses established it as a recognized distinct species.

Hubble's Frontier Fields observing program is using the magnifying power of enormous galaxy clusters to peer deep into the distant Universe and Abell 2744, nicknamed Pandora's Cluster,  is  the first image.

Astronomers previously observed Abell 2744 with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope back in 2011 and determined it had a very violent history, having formed from a cosmic pile-up of multiple galaxy clusters. They found that at least four galaxy clusters had crashed into one another to form Abell 2744, causing some weird and wonderful effects. 

Fish that glow and various other creatures that are given that ability due to genetic modifications often make the news for shock value.  Huffington Post got an opportunity to 'shock' and 'amaze' its audience with a story about piglets that glow in the dark thanks to some jellyfish DNA. 

But it's rather common in nature, it turns out. A team of researchers has released the first report of widespread biofluorescence - a phenomenon by which organisms absorb light, transform it, and eject it as a different color - in the tree of life of fishes, identifying more than 180 species that glow in a wide range of colors and patterns.