SAR11 are the most abundant plankton in the world's oceans. They are also a massive source of two sulfur gases that play important roles in the Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists at the University of East Anglia have discovered how a tiny yet abundant ocean organism helps regulate the Earth's climate.

Research published today in Nature Microbiology reveals how a bacterial group called 'Pelagibacterales' plays an important function in keeping the Earth's atmosphere stable.

The project was led by Prof Steve Giovannoni and Dr Jing Sun at Oregon State University, in collaboration with researchers from UEA among others.

They showed that these tiny, hugely abundant bacteria could make the environmentally important gas, dimethyl sulfide. Researchers at UEA identified and characterised the gene that is responsible for this property.

Physicists are putting themselves out of a job, using artificial intelligence to run a complex experiment.

The experiment, developed by physicists from The Australian National University (ANU) and UNSW ADFA, created an extremely cold gas trapped in a laser beam, known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, replicating the experiment that won the 2001 Nobel Prize.

The experiment, featuring the small red glow of a BEC trapped in infrared laser beams. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANU

A new study by the University of Liverpool's Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease has identified food stuffs that can help prevent chronic inflammation that contributes to many leading causes of death.

Inflammation occurs naturally in the body but when it goes wrong or goes on too long, it can trigger disease processes. Uncontrolled inflammation plays a role in many major diseases, including cancer, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer's disease.

Diets rich in fruits and vegetables, which contain polyphenols, protect against age-related inflammation and chronic diseases.

A new study has implicated farms as a bigger source of fine-particulate air pollution than all other sources. This is no surprise in Europe, China, Russia and Europe, since food is the most important strategic resource everywhere. 

And it's an easy enough problem to solve. As technology continues to improve, emissions will go down anyway, so fumes from nitrogen-rich fertilizers and animal waste that combine in the air with industrial emissions to form solid particles could double and particulate matter would still go down. 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Nearly everybody thinks that presidential candidates routinely dodge hard-hitting questions, providing evasive answers to simple questions.

But a new study that analyzed the full transcripts of 14 U.S. presidential debates from 1996 to 2012 provides some surprising insights that might temper that belief -- and help explain why people believe politicians are evasive.

The research found that presidential candidates accused their rivals of evasion quite often -- 54 times in the 14 debates analyzed.

But rivals were actually guilty of some form of evasion no more than 35 percent of the time that they were accused, the study found.