Greenland's glaciers are retreating quickly, and a new study shows in historical terms just how quickly: over the past century, at least twice as fast as any other time in the past 9,500 years. The study also provides new evidence for just how sensitive glaciers are to temperature, showing that they responded to past abrupt cooling and warming periods, some of which might have lasted only decades.

To track how glaciers grew and shrank over time, the scientists extracted sediment cores from a glacier-fed lake that provided the first continuous observation of glacier change in southeastern Greenland. They then compared the results to similar rare cores from Iceland and Canada's Baffin Island for a regional view.

The maple syrup that's tapped from the tree may not be as fresh as you think it is.

Sugar maple trees can store carbon from the atmosphere for several years in non-structural reserves as a buffer against disturbances such as droughts, hurricane damage, or attacks by insects. A new study shows that trees draw on this reserve when springtime sap begins to flow.

Thus, the sweet sap of maple trees integrates sugars produced during several growing seasons. The findings may provide new insights on how trees store and regulate the availability of nutrients.

Most men who receive penile prostheses are very satisfied with the implants, indicating that the intervention is a valid treatment for erectile dysfunction.

Ovarian cancer is a deadly disease, one that's hard to detect until it has progressed significantly. More than 75 percent of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer have metastasis at the time of diagnosis, resulting in a low five-year survival rate of less than 30 percent.

A large number of studies have shown that an increased body mass index (BMI) is associated with a greater risk for ovarian cancer with worse overall survival. More than 35 percent of women in the United States are obese, putting them at increased risk for the cancer.

My new book came out on Amazon yesterday, and as I breath a long sigh of relief, I'm reflecting on how I reached that milestone and how technology made it both easier and more difficult to achieve. If you are a writer looking to self-publish an eBook on science or any other complex subject, you might want to consider what I've learned over the last few months.

People often think hippos are herbivores with big smiling faces. Every now and then, reports of a hippo of hunting down prey, eating a carcass, or stealing prey from a crocodile are heard, but they're typically considered 'aberrant' or 'unusual' behavior. 

Some doctors may recommend that patients with the flu take acetaminophen, or paracetemol, to relieve their symptoms; however, a new randomized clinical trial found no benefits to the over-the-counter medication in terms of fighting the influenza virus or reducing patients' temperature or other symptoms.

The trial included adults between 18 and 65 years of age with confirmed influenza infections who were treated with the maximum recommended dose of paracetamol or placebo for five days. Participants were monitored for up to 14 days.

Carbon dioxide emissions have always been something of a guess because they rely on self-reported figures. The developed world has been transparent but it was only a few years ago that China admitted to under-counting its own emissions, telling a different tale than the pollution clouds that wafted into other countries did.

LAWRENCE -- As delegates from 195 nations meet in Paris to debate mankind's response to global climate change, scientists from the University of Kansas and Rothamsted Research in England today issue a study of a major crop pest that underlines how "climate is changing in more ways than just warming."

Their paper, appearing in Nature Climate Change, shows how large-scale climatic changes drive a coordinated rise and fall of numbers of aphids across Great Britain, even when individual aphid populations in that nation are separated by great distance.

HANOVER, N.H. - Two studies by Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues shed new light on mercury pollution in the waters of the northeastern United States.

The studies -- here and here -- appear in the journal Marine Chemistry. PDFs are available on request.