Greenland climate during the last ice age was very unstable, the researchers say, characterized by a number of large, abrupt changes in mean annual temperature that each occurred within several decades. These so-called "Dansgaard-Oeschger events" took place every few thousand years during the last ice age. Temperature changes in Antarctica showed an opposite pattern, with Antarctica cooling when Greenland was warm, and vice versa.

A study has shown a new way that brown fat, a potential obesity-fighting target, is regulated in the body. 

In an upcoming Cell Metabolism article,  researchers examined long non-coding RNA (Ribonucleic acid) in adipose (fat) tissue in mice. Long non-coding RNAs have recently become appreciated as important control elements for different biological functions in the body.

The team created a catalog of 1,500 long non-coding RNA in mouse adipose tissues - which is the most comprehensive catalog ever created of its type. Using the catalog they were then able to identify a specific long non-coding RNA without which the brown fat cell cannot develop properly.

It's a First World Idyll that ancient indigenous people sustained themselves using nature's bounty, in harmony with the land.

Science knows otherwise. Instead, from Alaska to Washington, indigenous people created productive clam gardens to ensure abundant and sustainable clam harvests. There was nothing natural about it.

Genetic variation is important in a healthy population and recombination, or crossing-over, which occurs when sperm and egg cells are formed and segments of each chromosome pair are interchanged, is a vital part of maintaining genetic variation.

Honeybees take it to a whole other level and a new study finds that the extreme recombination rates found in this species - 20X higher than humans, higher than measured in any other animal  - seem to be crucial for their survival.

Economic sanctions and divestment campaigns are attractive but often flawed tactics for accomplishing international political goals.

The social stigma the campaigns create often fails to match the economic pain these campaigns inflict, making the costs of resisting them for governments like Russia, Syria and Iran tolerable in most cases.

Indeed, sanctions succeed less than a third of the time they are imposed, according to researchers at the nonpartisan Peterson Institute for International Economics, and divestment campaigns have an even less certain track record.

Self-driving cars are expected to revolutionize the automobile industry. Rapid advances have led to working prototypes faster than most people expected. The anticipated benefits of this emerging technology include safer, faster and more eco-friendly transportation.