In a night sky filled with hungry bats, good-tasting moths increase their chances of survival by mimicking the sounds of their bad-tasting cousins, according to a new Wake Forest University study.

The study is the first to definitively show how an animal species uses acoustic mimicry as a defensive strategy. The research was conducted by Jesse Barber, a doctoral student in biology at Wake Forest. William E. Conner, professor of biology at Wake Forest, co-authored the study.

Matthew Tyska, Ph.D., recalls being intrigued, from the first day of his postdoctoral fellowship in 1999, with a nearly 30-year-old photograph. It was an electron micrograph that showed the internal structures of an intestinal cell microvillus, a finger-like protrusion on the cell surface. Microvilli are common features on the epithelial cells that line the body’s cavities.

Evidence for an awesome upheaval in a massive galaxy cluster was discovered in an image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The origin of a bright arc of ferociously hot gas extending over two million light years requires one of the most energetic events ever detected.

The cluster of galaxies is filled with tenuous gas at 170 million degree Celsius that is bound by the mass equivalent of a quadrillion, or 1,000 trillion, suns. The temperature and mass make this cluster a giant among giants.

Young, single women in urban China are aware of contraceptive methods but some may be too shy to ask for them, research published in the online open access journal BMC Health Services Research reveals. Young women want more information, but need private and anonymous family planning because of judgemental attitudes surrounding premarital sex and particularly premarital pregnancy.

In 2006, Greenland experienced more days of melting snow and at higher altitudes than average over the past 18 years, according to a new NASA-funded project using satellite observations.

Daily satellite observations have shown snow melting on Greenland’s ice sheet over an increased number of days. The resulting data help scientists understand better the speed of glacier flow, how much water will pour from the ice sheet into the surrounding ocean and how much of the sun’s radiation will reflect back into the atmosphere.

Two merging black holes can generate gravitational waves so powerful that the merged hole shoots out of its host galaxy at a speed of up to 2,500 miles per second, according to a new simulation.

This research, led by Manuela Campanelli at the Rochester Institute of Technology, demonstrates for the first time that the violent recoil that follows a merger is capable of ejecting the supermassive black holes known to lie at the heart of most light-emitting galaxies. These black holes may be cruising through the universe, virtually undetectable unless they should crash into something and gain matter.