An international team of researchers headed by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute has gained new insights into the carbon dioxide exchange between ocean and atmosphere, thus making a significant contribution to solving one of the great scientific mysteries of the ice ages. In the past 800,000 years of climate history, the transitions from interglacials and ice ages were always accompanied by a significant reduction in the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. It then fell from 280 to 180 ppm (parts per million). Where this large amount of carbon dioxide went to and the processes through which the greenhouse gas reached the atmosphere again has been controversial until now.

When tiny microbes jam up like fans exiting a baseball stadium, they can do some real damage.

University of California, Berkeley, physicists found this out the hard way when the baker's yeast cells (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) they were studying multiplied so prolifically that they burst the tiny chamber in which they were being raised.

When UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Morgan Delarue measured the force the growing mass of cells exerted as they pushed against one another, he calculated that it can be nearly five times higher than the pressure in a car tire -- about 150 psi, or 10 times atmospheric pressure.

Slama et al. (2016) recently published a paper on issues relevant to setting regulations for endocrine disrupting substances in the European Union.¹   The authors discuss options associated with these issues, briefly described as use of interim criteria, or use of the World Health Organization definition of endocrine disruption by itself or with additional categories of strength of evidence or chemical potency.

Recently, scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) discovered a new learning rule for a specific type of excitatory synaptic connection in the hippocampus. Their study was now published in the renowned journal Nature Communications on May 13. These synapses are located in the so-called CA3 region of the hippocampus, which plays a critical role for storage and recall of spatial information in the brain. One of its hallmark properties is that memory recall can even be triggered by incomplete cues. This enables the network to complete neuronal activity patterns, a phenomenon termed pattern completion.

A study of the ancient and modern DNA of the single humped camel or dromedary has shed new light on how its use by human societies has shaped its genetic diversity.

Long-distance and back-and-forth movements in ancient camel caravan routes were important in shaping the species' genetic diversity, finds the paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This makes sense. Over time the animals would have been engineered by merchants using artificial selection to make sure the best for making the trek were breeding.

Scientists have calculated that the present day ice sheets keep vast amounts of climate gas methane in check. Ice sheets are heavy and cold, providing pressure and temperatures that contain methane in form of ice-like substance called gas hydrate. If the ice sheets retreat the weight of the ice will be lifted from the ocean floor, the gas hydrates will be destabilised and the methane will be released.

Studies conducted at CAGE have previously shown that ice sheets and methane hydrates are closely connected, and that release of methane from the seafloor has followed the retreat of the Barents Sea ice sheet some 20 000 years ago. But is all such release of the potent climate gas bound to be catastrophic?

The 'maths gender gap' was eliminated in the United States during the Bush administration under the No Child Left Behind program, and it has closed substantially in European countries and parts of Asia as well. Where do young women still lag in math? In societies with poor rates of gender equality, according to the American Economic Review.

A new atudy finds that an online computerized cognitive behavioral therapy (CCBT) program both alone and in combination with Internet Support Groups (ISG) is more effective than doctors for anxiety and depression.

A new study in mice provides direct causal evidence that rapid eye movement or REM sleep helps to consolidate memory in the brain. The link between REM sleep and memory has been long been considered by scientists, but the transient nature of REM sleep, along with the ethical concerns of experimentally depriving humans of REM sleep, make it difficult to study. To get a closer look at what happens in the brain during REM sleep, Richard Boyce and colleagues used an optogenetics technique that allowed them to use light to selectively silence neurons in the mouse hippocampus during REM sleep, inhibiting the signaling patterns called theta oscillations that are thought to be involved in learning and memory.

The frequent occurrence of same-sex behaviors in beetles of one sex could be explained by genes that are favored by natural selection when expressed in the opposite sex, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

The study by researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden sheds new light on same-sex sexual behavior in the animal kingdom through examination of the seed beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, a common beetle found in bean stores across the world.