While America has dramatically dematerialized its environmental footprint in recent decades, producing far more food on far less land than 30 years ago, that's not true for the rest of the world. 

Heavy financial incentives in places like Europe - which accounts for 85% of the agricultural subsidies for the entire world - mean there is no reason to embrace modern science and technology. But a new paper notes that allowing land use to be determined purely by those agricultural constituencies results in considerable financial and environmental costs to the public. 

New evidence is helping to solve the mystery surrounding a collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet 23 million years ago.

The surface of the East Antarctic ice sheet is so cold that models can only simulate its collapse by applying a significant climatic warming. Yet numerous lines of evidence suggest that 23 million years ago the Antarctic ice sheet decayed in size as changes in Earth's orbit around the Sun drove more subtle changes in Earth's seasons.

Scientists from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences analyzed fossil "foraminifera". These microscopic animals live in the ocean - on death their shells collect on the seafloor making a geological record of the past.

If warming projections exceed estimates and rise by 1 degree Celsius, a new computer model finds that sea levels will rise about seven feet - over the next several thousand years.

But that would be duplicated for every degree of additional warmth as well.

The paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences combined analyses of four major contributors to potential sea level rise into a collective estimate, and compared it with evidence of past sea-level responses to global temperature changes.

Learned fear is a good thing. It keeps us from making risky, stupid decisions or falling over and over again into the same trap. 

New research found that a missing brain protein may be the culprit in cases of severe over-worry, where the fear perseveres even when there's nothing of which to be afraid. The researchers examined mice without the enzymes monoamine oxidase A and B (MAO A/B), which sit next to each other in our genetic code as well as on that of mice. Prior research has found an association between deficiencies of these enzymes in humans and developmental disabilities along the autism spectrum such as clinical perseverance – the inability to change or modulate actions along with social context.

With the rise of unions and salaried employees, piece work went out of fashion in American business.

Yet regulations and taxes and services have a cost, so more families than ever need to have both parents work time, which can lead to a 'time squeeze' when it comes to caring for children. A paper in the Journal of Marriage and Family examines if flexible working schemes help or add to this pressure.

University of California - Davis biochemists have shown for the first time that the ergodic theorem can be demonstrated by a collection of individual protein molecules; specifically, a protein that unwinds DNA.

Tick-borne illnesses are on the rise, or at least better reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lyme disease leads the pack, with some 35,000 cases reported annually but in the Northeast, the black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) also infect people with other maladies, among them anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and now Powassan encephalitis, according to a new paper in Parasites and Vectors.

Powassan encephalitis is caused by Powassan virus and its variant, deer tick virus. The virus is spread to people by infected ticks, and can cause central nervous system disruption, encephalitis, and meningitis. There is a 10-15% fatality rate in reported cases, with many survivors suffering long-term neurological damage.

A 'rather bizarre' result using a robotic frog and recorded mating call may provide insight into how complex traits evolve by hooking together much simpler traits.

Researchers have discovered that two wrong mating calls can make a right for female túngara frogs. It's not a defect in the frog brain, but an example of how well frogs have evolved to extract meaning from noise, much the way humans have. 

Certain sections of strike-slip faults, known as restraining bends, are sites of unusual tectonic activity because they undergo more contractional motion than surrounding areas.

These bends can be the site of major contraction-dominated earthquakes that are difficult to characterize using traditional means. Over millions of years, these earthquakes build substantial mountain ranges, such as the site of the present study, the Santa Cruz Mountains, California.