A Virgin Birth - parthenogenesis - may be a big deal in human culture but among wild sawfish in Florida it is apparently downright common. A new study finds that around 3 percent of the sawfish living in a Florida estuary are apparently the products of this type of reproduction, the first evidence of this in the wild for any vertebrate animal. 

Researchers have observed a sudden increase of ice loss in a previously stable region of Antarctica. Using measurements of the elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet made by a suite of satellites, the researchers found that the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed no signs of change up to 2009. Around 2009, multiple glaciers along a vast coastal expanse, measuring some 750 kilometers in length, suddenly started to shed ice into the ocean at a nearly constant rate of 60 cubic kilometers, or about 55 trillion liters of water, each year.

The room is loud with chatter. Glasses clink. Soft music, perhaps light jazz or strings, fills the air. Amidst all of these background sounds, it can be difficult to understand what an adjacent person is saying. A depressed individual, brought to this cocktail party by a well-meaning friend, can slide further into himself, his inability to hear and communicate compounding his sense of isolation.

"A lot of research has suggested that these people with elevated depression symptoms have a bias towards negative perception of information in this kind of environment," said Zilong Xie, a graduate student in the SoundBrain Lab in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at the University of Texas at Austin.

Tropical rainforests have long been considered the Earth's lungs, sequestering large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thereby slowing down the increasing greenhouse effect and associated human-made climate change. Scientists in a global research project now show that the vast extensions of semi-arid landscapes occupying the transition zone between rainforest and desert dominate the ongoing increase in carbon sequestration by ecosystems globally, as well as large fluctuations between wet and dry years. This is a major rearrangement of planetary functions.

A new study shows that semi-arid ecosystems, savannahs and shrublands, play an extremely important role in controlling carbon sinks and the climate-mitigating ecosystem service they represent.

When Curiosity's successor and the ExoMars rover land on Mars around 2021, we will see two different approaches to the search for life on the planet side by side. NASA's mission is the first stage of a sample return program. The ESAs ExoMars rover (in partnership with Russia) will explore Mars in situ for biosignatures as well as drill two meters below the surface. Which is the best approach? 

A sample return would be great for geology. But would it help with the search for life on Mars? Or is it more of a technology demo for this?

A new study found that esophageal cancer patients treated with proton therapy experienced significantly less toxic side effects than patients treated with older radiation therapies. 

The researchers looked at nearly 600 patients and compared two kinds of X-ray radiation with proton therapy, which targets tumors while minimizing harm to surrounding tissues.  found that proton therapy resulted in a significantly lower number of side effects, including nausea, blood abnormalities and loss of appetite. 

Earlier this month, LinkedIn announced an update to its users’ already-teeming profile view. The social network now lets you track and chart who’s viewed your posts, complete with a “performance summary” and a colorful demographic breakdown.

Hallucinations and delusions in the general population are more common than previously thought, according to a study which found that hearing voices and seeing things others cannot impacts about five percent of the general population at some point in their lives.

Queensland Brain Institute researcher Professor John McGrath said the study, involving more than 31,000 people from 19 countries, was the most comprehensive ever completed.

Several genes have been lost from the Y chromosome in humans and other mammals but essential Y genes are rescued by relocating to other chromosomes, according to a new study.

The Y chromosome is dramatically smaller than the X chromosome and has already lost nearly all of the 640 genes it once shared with the X chromosome.

I have a wife, three children, three dogs, seven cats. I’m not a Franz Kafka, sitting alone and suffering.

So wrote Stanley Kubrick in 1972. And indeed, Kafka and Kubrick may not seem to have a whole lot in common. Kafka is Czech, Kubrick American.