Every year, about 350 million hectares of land are devastated by fires worldwide, this corresponds to about the size of India. To estimate the resulting damage to human health and economy, precise prognosis of the future development of fires is of crucial importance. Previous studies often considered climate change to be the most important factor. Now, a group of scientists, including researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has found that population development has the same impact at least. The results are presented in the Nature Climate Change journal (dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2999).

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

(Boston)--With opioid addiction and prescription drug abuse considered one of the biggest public health threats of our time in the U.S., many are asking why so many Americans are struggling with addiction to illegal drugs and prescription medications. New research suggests that chronic pain may be part of the answer.

In a study that appears in the May issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center have found that the majority of patients misusing drugs and alcohol have chronic pain and many are using these substances to "self-medicate" their pain.

With the move from burning coal to natural gas and low-sulfur coal and an increase in the use of scrubbers, only about 25 percent as much atmospheric sulfur is available today, compared to 40 years ago.

Sulfur balances in agricultural fields are now negative, with more removed each year in crop harvests and leaching than is added from fertilizers and deposition.

Today’s emergence of nano-micro hybrid structures with almost biological complexity is of fundamental interest. Our ability to adapt intelligently to the challenges has ramifications all the way from fundamentally changing research itself, over applications critical to future survival, to posing small and medium as well as truly globally existential dangers.