New research from North Carolina State University finds that major volcanic activity on the planet Mercury most likely ended about 3.5 billion years ago. These findings add insight into the geological evolution of Mercury in particular, and what happens when rocky planets cool and contract in general.

There are two types of volcanic activity: effusive and explosive. Explosive volcanism is often a violent event that results in large ash and debris eruptions, such as the Mount Saint Helens eruption in 1980. Effusive volcanism refers to widespread lava flows that slowly pour out over the landscape -- believed to be a key process by which planets form their crusts.

Results provide evidence for long and varied history of water in Mars Gale Crater

Sulphur and iron rich groundwater in Gale Crater was habitable by Earth standards

New research published online in The FASEB Journal, describes a protein created by the body's "biological clock" that actively represses inflammatory pathways within the affected limbs during the night. This protein, called CRYPTOCHROME, has proven anti-inflammatory effects in cultured cells and presents new opportunities for the development of drugs that may be used to treat inflammatory diseases and conditions, such as arthritis.

First study to show ovarian environment changes with age and likely hurts quality of eggs
Older ovaries are scarred and inflamed
Findings could result in treatments to preserve fertility by delaying ovarian aging

CHICAGO --- Women's decreased ability to produce healthy eggs as they become older may be due to excessive scarring and inflammation in their ovaries, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study in mice.

This is the first study to show the ovarian environment ages and that aging affects the quality of eggs it produces. These findings could result in new treatments that preserve fertility by delaying ovarian aging.

The sudden emergence of the Zika virus epidemic in Latin America in 2015-16 has caught the scientific world unawares. A little known disease that was first diagnosed in the Zika forest environment of Uganda in 1947, the disease largely affected populations in Africa until its emergence in French Polynesia a few years ago and then in Brazil and South America last year. The Zika virus is spread mainly by the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and, like the dengue virus, belongs to the flaviviridae family along with Japanese encephalitis and West Nile virus.

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Fire tornados, or 'fire whirls,' pose a powerful and essentially uncontrollable threat to life, property, and the surrounding environment in large urban and wildland fires. But now, a team of researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering say their discovery of a type of fire tornado they call a 'blue whirl' could lead to beneficial new approaches for reducing carbon emissions and improving oil spill cleanup.

A new paper published online August 4, 2016, in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) describes this previously unobserved flame phenomenon, which burns nearly soot-free.

I've been writing "doomsday debunking" articles here for a while now, and was surprised to find that some people are terrified by these stories, occasionally suicidal, with hundreds of comments by scared people on my posts here. To help raise awareness of this issue, I've made a petition:  "To: Journalists and lawmakers: Let's End Dramatized Reporting of "Doomsday" Stories - The Vulnerable Get Suicidal".

If you're the type of person who lets closet clutter creep into their lives, a connected wardrobe may be for you. It reminds you to wear unworn clothes or to give them away to charity.

Like most things that invoke terms like "ethical" and "consumption", it involves guilt, and a not-so-subtle threat. If you don't wear them, the garments will automatically get in touch with a charity and ask to be recycled, with the Goodwill or whatever automatically sending out a mailing envelope for return. It uses washable radio-frequency identification (RFID) contactless technology which will tweet and message users asking to be worn depending on the weather and frequency of wear. 

In these austere and difficult times, it must be my duty, I think, to alert my fellow citizens to a possible source of additional income which almost anyone can plug into: become a charlatan, and chances are that your economic hardship is a memory from the past. To achieve this aim, I [with my tongue firmly lodged in my cheek] suggest a fairly straight forward step by step approach.

1. Find an attractive therapy and give it a fantastic name

A lot of environmental fundraising and lobbying has involved bees. There was talk of a neonicotinoid pesticide-induced die-off, until it was determined that pesticides weren't the problem, varroa mites, and the fad of amateur beekeepers who didn't know what they were doing were the big problems. Traffic accidents killed more bees than chemicals. 

When that failed, activists turned to claims about wild bees. This would seem to have easier success, since wild bees can't really be tabulated. There are over 25,000 species of wild bees worldwide, and only a few have hives to count.